I Catch My Alpha with His Mistress

Thorne's POV

The bond screamed.

I felt Aria's pain ripping through our connection like shattered glass embedded in my chest. Each wave of her agony hit me as I walked up the driveway, Lyla's hand warm in mine, the fresh marks on both our throats still throbbing with the heat of new bondings.

Fuck.

I'd known this would happen. Known the moment Lyla and I marked each other, the moment my wolf recognized her as my true mate, that Aria would feel everything through our partnership bond. But I'd done it anyway.

Because nothing—nothing—compared to what I felt when I was inside Lyla.

"You're tense," Lyla murmured, squeezing my fingers.

"I know."

She didn't push. That was one of the things I loved about her already—how she understood without demanding explanation. My true mate. My fucking destiny.

The front door opened before I could reach for it.

Aria stood in the doorway, her silhouette backlit by the warm glow of our home. Our home. The place where we'd built six years of memories, of partnership, of—

Her face was hollow. Eyes red-rimmed but dry. Her dark hair spilled over her shoulders in tangled waves, and she wore nothing but a thin nightgown that I'd bought her two years ago.

She looked at the mark on my throat first. Then at the mark on Lyla's.

Her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. Anyone else would have missed it. I'd been reading that face for six years.

The first thing I felt through the bond wasn't grief.

It was calculation.

That should have warned me.

She let me deliver every line I'd rehearsed. Let me explain about destiny and true mates and partnership contracts. Let me offer her the dissolution papers, the housing stipend, the dignified exit.

Through it all, she watched me with hollow eyes and said exactly what I expected her to say.

"What's there to talk about?" she said. "I felt everything, Thorne. Every thrust. Every moan."

"I didn't want you to find out this way."

"You let me believe you loved me."

The script played out. I'd written it in my head a hundred times over the past month—what she'd say, what I'd answer. She hit her marks. I hit mine.

But underneath, the bond hummed wrong.

She wasn't broken. She was reading me.

When I guided Lyla toward the stairs and told Aria the papers were on the table, she didn't argue. Didn't demand more time. She just stood there, watching us climb.

I kept my hand on Lyla's back as we ascended—proprietary, protective. My wolf purred at having my mate close, at having her safe in my territory.

But as we reached the bedroom door, something yanked at my chest.

The bond.

Aria's emotions had shifted again. The hollow flatness was gone. Underneath—determination. Something hard and bright that I'd never felt in her before.

Something was very wrong.

"I need to talk to her," I told Lyla. "Alone."

Lyla nodded, pressing a kiss to my jaw before slipping into our bedroom. Our bedroom. The bed where I'd fucked Aria countless times, where I'd soon claim my true mate properly.

I headed back downstairs.

Aria stood at the dining table—but the papers were gone. The envelope sat beneath the fruit bowl, the corner just visible, untouched.

She hadn't read them. She hadn't signed them. She'd put them aside like junk mail.

"Aria." I kept my voice low. "Those papers need to be signed by morning."

"Do they?"

"Yes."

She turned to face me. The hollowness was gone. In its place was something I couldn't name—a quiet, focused thing that made the hair on the back of my neck rise.

"What am I, Thorne?" she asked. "A placeholder? A warm body until destiny came knocking?"

I moved closer, unable to stop myself. "No. Aria, no." I reached for her, brushed a strand of dark hair from her face. "You're my wife. Six years of partnership. That means something."

"Means something," she repeated.

"I care about you. I always have." I let my voice soften. "My wolf needs her—needs the true mate bond to be whole. But my heart..." I cupped her face, feeling her trembling beneath my palm. "My heart still holds you. Both of you."

Her breath came fast and shallow.

"Is that supposed to comfort me?" she whispered.

"It's the truth." I stepped closer, close enough to feel her body heat. "I can care for you both. The bond doesn't have to end—"

Aria's hand shot up, gripping my wrist hard.

"Don't you dare," she hissed. "Don't you fucking dare stand there, reeking of her, and tell me you can keep me too."

"Aria—"

"I want to break the contract."

The words hit me like ice water.

"No." The refusal came instantly, instinctively. "Aria, you can't—breaking the bond would tear us both apart. You know that. The pain—"

"I don't care."

"I do." I gripped her shoulders. "I'm not letting you destroy yourself. Or me."

"So that's it?" Her laugh was sharp. "I don't get to choose? I don't get to walk away?"

"It's not that simple—"

"Because you'd feel it too." She shoved at my chest. "That's why. You don't want me gone—you just don't want to hurt."

"That's not—" I pulled her closer, pressed my forehead to hers. "Aria, please. My wolf needs her. But I love you. I still fucking need you."

"Liar."

"I'm not lying." I ran my thumb across her cheekbone, felt her sharp inhale. "Let me keep you both. Let me—"

She pushed me away hard, her strength fueled by rage.

"Keep us both?" Her voice shook. "You selfish bastard. You want to keep me as what? Your consolation prize? Your backup fuck while you play destiny with her?"

"Aria—"

"Don't touch me."

She walked past me toward the stairs—not to our bedroom, but to the guest room at the end of the hall. I heard the lock click.

For the first time in six years, my wife had shut me out of a room in my own house.

And the bond between us still hummed with that strange, focused determination.

She wasn't breaking.

She was planning something.

I stood in the kitchen for a long time, staring at the fruit bowl with the unsigned papers underneath, before I finally went upstairs to my true mate.