The Alpha Chose My Best Friend, I Abandoned Him

When my best friend was being beaten by her ex, I was the one who paid off her treatment, bought her an apartment, and put up the money for her to open a clothing boutique. Six months later, she was pregnant with my fated mate's child. She knelt in front of me and cried. "You've had him for ten years. Just let me have him this once." My mate told me she would be the pack's new Luna. As for me, I could stay on at the company, making money for them and cleaning up their messes. He said it like it was obvious, because for five years I had been the one closing the clients and holding the team together, the one who turned a nearly bankrupt Blackpine Group into the leader of its industry. But a woman like me never allows a single crack in her own relationship, and as for those two, I was going to show them exactly what regret feels like! Chapter 1 The year I got Clara away from the mate who beat her, I paid for the treatment to break their mark myself, bought the Bayview apartment, and funded a high-end clothing boutique for her. Damian did not like her back then. He said Clara was twenty-nine and still could not get through a single full moon night alone, and that sooner or later she would drag me down. It was the first time I ever fought with my own fated mate over someone else. "She saved my life when we were kids," I told Damian. "As long as she needs me, I'll take care of her." Six months later I wrapped up the European roadshow and came back to Seattle early. I did not tell Damian, and I did not tell Clara. I wanted to surprise them. By the time the driver dropped me at Clara's Closet, the store had closed for the night. Only the back room was still lit. Damian's black SUV was parked outside the staff entrance, and the Blackpine wolf's head on his license plate stood out in the rain like a mark. I assumed he had come by again to keep an eye on Clara's business for me. For the past six months, every day or two, Damian had bought a dress here and sent it back to the house we had set up together. He always fished for credit on video, saying he was looking after my sister's shop and filling the future Luna's closet ahead of schedule. When the ninety-eighth dress was delivered, he asked me through the screen, "Have I been good?" I laughed and said I would wear them for him when I got home. Then a stifled gasp came from the back room. I stopped outside the door, my hand still on the handle. Clara's voice came through the door. "Careful. The baby—" It was quiet inside for a few seconds. Then Damian said quietly, "Nothing's going to happen. The doctor says the baby is healthy." My fingers slowly loosened. Clara said again, "Don't forget to take the ninety-ninth one back with you. You still smell like me." Damian laughed. "A little scent blocker takes care of it. She can't even wake her own wolf. She won't smell a thing." I stood at the end of the hallway and did not push the door open. When I was seven, wolfsbane poison damaged my sense of smell and kept my wolf from ever surfacing. Any ordinary werewolf only has to get close to a mate to smell whether he has been with someone else. I could not. The two of them knew that flaw too well, so they spent six months wrapping ninety-nine betrayals into ninety-nine gifts. I took out my phone and photographed Damian's car, the store's closing time, and the staff entrance. Then I emailed the building management and asked them to preserve tonight's access logs and security footage. When that was done, I went home. The keypad rejected the old door code. I tried a second time and it still would not open. Finally I entered Clara's birthday, and the door opened. There was a pair of pink slippers in the entryway that were not mine. Clara's skincare products sat in the bathroom. Her nightgown hung in the closet of the master bedroom. She had even set a scented candle beside the photo of Damian and me, gardenia, her favorite. I walked into the dressing room and turned on every light. Ninety-eight dress boxes were stacked there in neat rows. Every box had a date written on it. The earliest was March twelfth. That day, in a hotel in Paris, my old wolfsbane injury flared and I hurt too much to stand. I called Damian six times. He answered with one message, saying there was an emergency in the pack and he would reach me when it was handled. He did not call back until the next day, and then he blamed me for interrupting him over and over while he was dealing with real business. I apologized. Now that date was printed on a dress box from Clara's store. I photographed all ninety-eight receipts, tags, and delivery records, then filled the living room with the boxes, arranged by date. At one in the morning, a car finally pulled up outside. Damian came in with Clara on his back, barefoot. They both stopped the moment they saw the boxes. Clara recovered first, still draped over Damian's back, and explained in a small voice, "Evelyn, I twisted my ankle trying on shoes. Damian happened to be at the store. He was only bringing me home." One of her arms stayed looped around his neck the whole time. Damian did not put her down right away. He frowned at me first. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming back?" I picked up the last gift box from beside the sofa and threw it at their feet. The lid flipped open and a long silver-gray dress spilled onto the carpet. "If I'd told you, how would I have heard the two of you talking about scent blocker?" Clara went white. Damian finally set her down. After a moment of silence, he stopped inventing reasons for driving her home. "Since you heard it, I don't want to lie to you anymore." Coming from a man who had lied to me for six months, it was almost funny. I asked, "How long?" "March twelfth." Damian answered fast, like he had rehearsed this conversation a long time ago. "The power went out at Clara's apartment that night. She'd just gotten free of her old mate and the dark hit her hard. I only went over to sit with her. Then it got out of hand." "Out of hand ninety-nine times?" His jaw tightened. "Evelyn, don't use that tone to humiliate her." I looked at Clara. She had a hand on her belly, and her eyes reddened fast. "Evelyn, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take Damian from you, but I'm pregnant." Something tore open in my chest. The mate bond carried Damian's tension and his protectiveness straight into me, and every bit of it was for another woman. Damian stepped in front of Clara. "Two months. The doctor says the baby is healthy." "So?" "So she needs a real family." He looked at me, his voice sliding back into the calm he used to announce decisions in meetings. "At the next full moon, Clara and I will hold the mating ceremony. She'll be Blackpine's new Luna." I stared at him. "And me?" "I'm not going to reject you yet." Damian said it like he was granting me a favor. "Blackpine still needs you, and my wolf is used to your scent. You'll keep running your projects. Your pay and your title stay the same. We can keep the personal side separate from work." Only then did I really understand. He wanted to hand my own mate over to Clara and still have me run the company for them, steady his wolf, and clean up every mess. Clara would get the love and the title of Luna. I would carry the responsibility. Damian watched me, and a thread of impatience showed on his face. "Clara takes the Luna position, you stay at the company. Evelyn, you're strong. You can handle this much." Chapter 2 The next morning I moved the other ninety-eight dresses and their receipts into a rented storage unit and took only the ninety-ninth with me to the Bayview apartment. The apartment was in my name. After Clara got away from the mate who beat her, she was afraid to live alone, so I paid for it outright and paid again to have it renovated. She said the sound of the bay calmed her, so I gave her the master bedroom. I never spent a single night there. Now Damian's shoes were in the entryway. A matching pair of toothbrushes sat by the sink. On the nightstand stood a photo of the two of them kissing by the water. A date was written on the back: April ninth. That was the day Damian told me he had to take one of Blackpine's elders to the hospital and might not be able to video call. Clara stood in the living room in a loose white dress. When she saw the gift box in my hand, her arm went to her stomach without thinking. "Evelyn, what are you doing here?" "Seeing when the apartment I bought turned into the home you two share." I set the box on the coffee table. "I paid for the treatment that broke your mark with your old mate. I bought this apartment. I covered the store's rent, the first round of inventory, and the staff wages. You said you were scared to meet clients, so I sent my own clients in to support you." I pointed at the photo in the bedroom. "Clara, you live in an apartment I bought and you run a store I paid for, and you used dresses from that store to keep a record of every time you betrayed me with my mate. What else do you want from me?" Her tears came instantly. "I never wanted to hurt you. I was just so scared." "Scared, so you slept with him?" "I haven't slept a night since I found out. I'm not strong like you, and I don't have a wolf of my own. Damian said he'd protect me. I only wanted the baby to have a father." She dropped to her knees and grabbed my hand. "Evelyn, you've had him for ten years. Just let me have him this once, okay? You've got a career, everyone respects you. All I have is this baby." I looked down at her. "Don't you have an apartment, a store, parents?" Her hand stiffened. "That's different." "Of course it's different. All of it came from me. You got so used to it that you stopped counting it as anything at all." I pulled my hand back and gave her one last choice. "Leave Damian, or move out of this apartment and give back the store and everything I put my name behind. As of today, we're not sisters." Clara stood up slowly. Her tears had not dried, but something in her eyes had changed. "You gave me the apartment and the store. Once you give something away, what right do you have to take it back?" "The right that comes from having my name on the deed and the lease." "You owe me your life!" She had finally said it out loud. The snow of twenty-three years ago came back in front of me. My birth father locked me, seven years old, in a cabin in the woods, with wolf-repellent powder laced with wolfsbane piled by the stove. He thought I was not a werewolf and left me to live or die. When the cabin caught fire, it was six-year-old Clara who smelled the smoke and ran out into the snow for help. She could not drag me, so she took hold of my arm and crawled toward the door inch by inch. By the time the Reids got there, we had both passed out. They brought me back, and they adopted me. From then on I believed my life belonged to Clara. She cried, and I fixed whatever was wrong. She got hurt, and I paid any price. She wanted a store, and I laid the road with years of savings. The first time Damian said she leaned on me too much, I took her side. Clara saw my silence and thought she had the upper hand again. "If it weren't for me, you'd have died a long time ago. Everything you've given me over the years is just paying that back." "So you think my mate is part of the debt too?" She pressed her lips together. "Damian isn't an object. He chose me himself." "Then go live with him and stop spending my money." I turned to leave, and Clara let out a cold laugh behind me. "You really think Damian only chose me because of the baby?" I stopped. "He got sick of you a long time ago. Everyone says Blackpine falls apart without you, that the future Alpha only got where he is because of his fated mate. You never once gave him a chance to be needed." She came toward me, one step at a time. "And you can't even wake your own wolf. You can't smell another woman on your mate. What makes a broken werewolf like you fit to be Luna?" I looked at the girl who used to cry in my arms and tell me I was the only person in the world who would never leave her. "That's what you actually wanted to say, isn't it?" Clara's face shifted, and her hands flew to her belly. "Evelyn, my stomach. It hurts so much." As she pitched forward, I knew she was probably acting again, and my arms went out and caught her anyway, before I could stop them. The apartment door swung open. Damian rushed in and saw only Clara collapsed in my arms. He did not ask what had happened. He shoved me into the corner. My shoulder hit the cabinet, and a glass frame came down and shattered at my feet. Damian lifted Clara into his arms, his eyes full of anger. "She's carrying a child. How long are you going to keep provoking her?" "She didn't—" "Enough." He cut me off, bent to check that Clara was not bleeding, and only then looked at me, cold. "Don't bother going to your old office tomorrow. I've eliminated the Chief Strategy Officer position." Chapter 3 The next morning I went to Blackpine Group anyway. My badge failed at the lobby turnstile. The receptionist would not look at me and said only that the notice had just come down from the CEO's office. I asked her to call the head of administration and stood in the lobby for ten minutes. In the end a security guard brought out a cardboard box holding my personal things, my spare shoes, and five years of awards. My office had already gone to Damian's cousin. Every project permission was frozen and my old team had been broken up. A few longtime employees stepped out of the elevator, saw the box, and stopped where they were. "Ms. Hart, what happens to the annual project?" "Follow whatever the company has arranged now." I was not going to make them pick a side that morning. Damian was waiting for me to walk out with something so he could cast me as an ex who had stolen company assets. My phone rang. Damian told me to come up to the top-floor conference room. He sat behind the desk I had once picked out for him. Clara leaned against the window drinking warm milk. She wore a loose knit sweater and still looked pale, as if she were the one who had been shoved into a wall the day before. Damian slid a tablet across to me. The social media accounts for Clara's Closet were buried in questions, and more than a dozen clients wanted refunds. Someone had recognized Damian's car as a fixture behind the store. Someone else had figured out that all ninety-nine dresses had been paid for on his card. "Who did you tell?" Damian asked. "I didn't tell anyone." "Then why are clients suddenly canceling?" "Maybe your car is too easy to spot." Clara set down her cup, her eyes going red again. "Evelyn, I know you hate me, but the people who work at the store haven't done anything. Could you post a statement saying you and Damian split up amicably a long time ago?" "No." Damian's face darkened. "It's one statement. Do you have to take everything she has?" "The apartment, the store, and most of the clients she has were mine to begin with. I'm not the one taking everything from somebody else." "So you are still keeping score." He tapped the tablet, and a drafted public statement came up on the screen. It said I had lost control of my emotions because I could not accept a change in my fated mate bond, and that Clara and Damian had only become official after I stepped aside. Sign it, and I could come back and keep running my projects. I pushed the tablet back. "I'm not going to lie for you." That afternoon Blackpine's official account posted the statement, almost word for word the draft, only without my signature. Damian announced that I had been removed from my position because personal emotions were affecting my work. Clara followed with a video of herself crying, saying she had only fallen in love with a man who was willing to protect her at the lowest point of her life, and that she had never meant to hurt anyone. The attacks under the video started fast. That I could not shift and had no business being Luna. That I could not stand being left, so I was jealous of a pregnant woman. Someone spliced my photo together with a picture of a lame wolf. Employees who spoke up for me got called in by HR. I turned off my phone and started sorting my personal files. The invitation from Silverbank was still in my inbox. Three months earlier, Seraphina had offered to make me a partner, and I had turned her down because I did not want to leave Damian. I answered that email. My wrist started to burn. A black pattern surfaced under the skin. I knew it was Damian's Alpha mark, but I had no idea why it would be tied to an ordinary employment contract. A moment later my lawyer sent over the supplementary project documents I had signed six months ago. Buried in the middle of a dozen pages of authorizations was a three-year non-compete. If I joined any other pack-owned company, the mark would keep eating away at my wolf, and it would trigger a penalty large enough to bankrupt me. Damian's call came through right after. "You saw the agreement?" "When did you put it in there?" "Before you left for Europe. You signed that stack yourself." I remembered the night before I flew out. He put a pile of documents in front of me and said everyone was waiting on my signature. I was packing. I did not check it page by page. "You were already planning to betray me back then?" Damian was quiet for two seconds. "I just didn't want the core of the company walking out with a personal relationship." So March twelfth was not where things got out of hand. By the time I left, he was already calculating how to keep me at the company. "Most of your savings went to the Reids and to Clara," he went on. "You can't pay the penalty. Give us your blessing publicly, stay at Blackpine and finish the projects you started, and I'll keep your package." "You think I have no other options?" "You can sue, of course, but that takes years. Evelyn, your wolf was always weak. It won't survive the mark grinding at it that long." He knew me too well, so every step he took landed on the place that hurt most. I did not argue. I hung up and dialed another number. Seraphina picked up right away. "Evelyn?" "I need you to get me out of a non-compete." I looked at the burning black lines on my wrist. "In return, Blackpine's biggest project next year will be our first project." Chapter 4 Seraphina's private plane landed in Seattle the next afternoon. She did not come herself. She sent her younger brother Rowan, two lawyers, and a doctor who knew old wolfsbane injuries. Rowan was quieter than I expected. He read the agreement through and did not open with a promise to fix it. He asked whether there were emails, cameras, or witnesses from the day I signed. "You can sue over how this signature was obtained," he said, "but litigation takes time. The fastest route is to pay the penalty first so you're free to work immediately, then use the evidence to claw it back." "I'll pay the penalty back." "Seraphina says that money becomes your equity stake in the new company. You're not taking charity. You're coming in with projects and with skill." I looked up at him. He did not offer pity for the state I was in and he did not tell me everything would be fine. He just laid out every risk in plain terms. It was the first time in days that I could breathe. For the next three days I stopped responding to anything online and filled in the evidence piece by piece. Ninety-nine card receipts. Access logs. Parking records for Damian's car. The exact times the store cameras were switched off. Hotel photos. Prenatal records. And the messages he sent me at those same hours. March twelfth, ten at night, Damian's car entered the Bayview parking garage. That same night at 10:07, he texted back, "Pack business. Don't start." April ninth, he took Clara to a hotel. That same afternoon he sent me a photo of his desk and said he was clearing my backlog for me. The most complete record came from the day of Clara's prenatal appointment. The hospital system showed Damian signing as the child's father. Half an hour later he texted me, "Everything's fine at home. I'm helping look after your silly little sister's shop too. Have I been good? Miss you." I stared at that line for a long time, then dropped it into the evidence folder and did not reply. The scent left on the ninety-ninth dress could only support the rest. What mattered were verifiable times, payments, access logs, and footage. Building management also recovered two deleted audio files from inside the store. The first was the conversation I had heard the night I got back. The second was from a month earlier. On the recording, Clara asked, "If she finds out, is she really not going to go to Silverbank?" Damian answered, "The non-compete carries my Alpha mark. She can't afford the money and she can't take the backlash." "But she's good at this. What if she finds a way?" Clara laughed. "Once the non-compete has her boxed in, she can know everything and still have no choice but to keep working for us." The recording ended there. Rowan lifted the headphones off me. "That's enough to prove the signature was obtained by deception." "Not enough." I opened five years of Blackpine project files. What I needed to prove was not that they had betrayed me. It was that while they betrayed me, they were setting up to keep everything I had built. A few longtime employees quietly sent me original drafts, authorization emails, and client correspondence. The first version of every one of Blackpine's seven biggest projects had come off my personal computer, and the major clients had stated in writing that they wanted me leading the work. Meanwhile Clara posted another video. She hinted that my old wolfsbane injury had left me unable to have children, which made me unfit to be Luna. Damian did not correct her. He had Blackpine's PR account share the video. Rowan watched it and asked, "Do you want to make your medical history public?" "No." "Then we don't." He went through my old medical records and told me I was not without a wolf. The poisoning in my childhood had never been fully treated. With rehabilitation I might still shift. "But you don't have to become a wolf first to earn the right to prove anything." I closed the file. For twenty-three years everyone had treated my inability to shift as my defect. Damian and Clara had even assumed that as long as they held that over me, I would never dare leave. I stopped explaining. I laid the ninety-nine receipts out by date and copied the recording onto three separate drives. On the screen, Clara's laugh came again. "Once the non-compete has her boxed in, she can know everything and still have no choice but to keep working for us."