My Fiancé Replaced Me, His Alpha Rival Chose Me

Dinner wasn't off.

Noah came back twenty minutes later, smoothing his tie, and said, "Ready?" I slid my phone into my pocket and didn't mention the text.

The restaurant was the old Italian place two blocks from Westbridge. Same red booths. Same garlic smell. I pushed open the door to the private room.

Stella hit me like a truck.

"Isabella Reed!" She grabbed my shoulders and sobbed into my neck. "How dare you make me wait five years!"

She punched my arm. Not hard. Then again, softer. Then she cupped my face with both hands, like I might vanish if she let go of me for even a second.

"You're warm," she choked. "You're actually warm."

I laughed. Then my face crumpled, and I cried right along with her.

Nobody had tested me. Nobody had stopped mid-sentence. She was just *glad*.

"Ethan's in Frankfurt," she said, wiping her mascara with a napkin. "He booked the first flight out. He's furious nobody called him sooner."

"Nobody called *you* sooner?"

Her eyes flicked to Noah, who was hanging up his coat. She leaned in close.

"Isa. Do you know about Noah and Ava?"

My mouth opened.

The door swung open behind us.

Ava stepped in holding a white gift bag with tissue paper sticking out. Her shoulders were hunched small.

"Hi." Her voice barely rose above a whisper. "I just wanted to apologize to Isabella. In person."

Stella's face turned to stone. She whipped around.

"Noah. Why is she here?"

He frowned. "Ava's carried guilt about that day for five years. I thought we could clear the air."

"Clear the air?" Stella laughed, short and ugly. "She put Isabella in a hospital bed for five years. And her way of making amends was moving into your apartment and taking over her office?"

Ava's eyes went pink. "That's not—I never meant—"

Noah stepped in front of her. Just one step. His body did it before his brain caught up.

"Stella, enough. Stop pushing her."

Stella slapped her palm on the table. The water glasses jumped.

"You keep talking about Ava's guilt." She jabbed a finger at his chest. "What about Isabella's pain?"

The color drained from Noah's face.

He still didn't move. "Ava's suffered too."

I sat between them with my hands folded in my lap. Stella was shaking. Noah was guarding the door. Ava was crying behind his shoulder.

And somehow, all of them were waiting to see what I would say about Ava's tears.

A laugh slipped out of me. Small. Dry.

Everyone stared.

"Sorry," I said. "I'm just tired."

Nobody ordered food.

---

Out on the sidewalk, Stella hugged me so hard my ribs ached.

"Isa," she breathed into my hair. "If you want to leave him, I'll help you."

I didn't answer. I squeezed her hand until my weak fingers trembled.

---

Noah talked the whole drive home.

"She was sixteen, Isa. She lost everything in that fire. Then she watched you go down. She stopped eating for weeks. I found her on the bathroom floor once—"

The streetlights slid over the windshield, one after another.

"She's not who Stella thinks she is. She's fragile."

"Noah."

"I'm just saying, if you'd seen her back then—"

"Noah, have you ever wondered how I feel?"

He blinked. His grip shifted on the wheel. He drew a breath to answer.

His phone rang through the car speakers.

*Ava.*

He hit accept before the second ring.

Her sobs filled the car. Wet and broken.

"I shouldn't have survived. I shouldn't be in your lives at all." She hiccuped. "Noah, if I had died that day instead… would you remember me?"

Noah slammed the brakes. The seatbelt bit into my collarbone.

"Ava. Where are you? Ava!"

The line went dead.

He turned to me slowly. His face had gone gray.

"Isa." His voice dropped low. "She might hurt herself."

I studied him.

Five years ago, the night he proposed, he'd said, *Whatever happens, you come first. I'll always protect you first.*

I'd been awake for four weeks. My knees still buckled on stairs.

I made my mouth curve up.

"Go. She needs you."

His shoulders sagged. Relief. Plain as day.

"I'll call you. I swear." He was already unlocking my door. "Get a cab. Text me when you're home."

I stepped out onto the curb. The Mercedes peeled away before the door had fully closed.

I stood there in the cold, watching the taillights shrink to two red dots. Then nothing.

Only when the wind stung my cheeks did I realize they were soaked.

---

I didn't go back to the townhouse.

"Pinecrest Memorial," I told the cab driver.

He checked the mirror. "Cemetery? Lady, it's almost eleven."

"I know."

---

Ten years ago, another fire had swept down these same hills.

My father and Noah's mother ran back in for two kids trapped in a barn. The kids made it out. They didn't.

Sixteen-year-old Noah had stood right here, holding me so tight I couldn't breathe.

*"Isa, we'll always have each other."*

I knelt in front of the gray stone. Dad's photo smiled back at me, gentle as ever. The crinkles by his eyes. The crooked front tooth.

"Hi, Dad."

My voice cracked down the middle.

"I think I lost my home."

The first raindrop hit the back of my hand. Then another. Then the sky opened.

I didn't move. I tucked my face against my knees, the way I used to when I was little, and cried without making a sound.

Then the rain stopped falling on me.

I could still hear it. It drummed on something above my head.

"Then let me help you find it."

A low voice. Rough at the edges. Familiar in a way that made my chest seize.

I twisted around.

A tall man stood over me, holding a dark umbrella so it covered me and left him half in the rain. His black coat snapped in the wind. Water ran off his sharp jaw.

And his eyes.

Gold. Real gold, like sunlight through honey. I'd only ever seen eyes like that on one person.

His face was harder now. Older. But the way he tilted his head, watching me like I was the only thing worth watching, was exactly the same.

I forgot how to stand up.

"Lucas?"

He took one step closer. His throat moved.

"I'm back, Isabella."

Lucas Blackwood. The boy who used to climb through my window with stolen cookies. The boy who held my hand at my father's funeral, and then disappeared the next week when a black car came to take him to a family I'd never heard of.

Ten years. Not one letter.

And now he was the Alpha of the Blackwood family. The man who ran Blackwood Defense. A name people whispered on the news.

He crouched in front of me and held out his hand.

His palm was warm. Burning warm, in the freezing rain.

"How did you know where to find me?" I whispered.

His gold eyes didn't blink.

"Isabella. I never stopped knowing where you were."