After My Alpha Betrayed Me, I Took His Pack

I stood in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom—*his* bedroom, really, though the pack still called it ours—and smoothed the silk of my gown one last time. Deep emerald green, the color Jackson once said made my eyes look like cut glass. I'd chosen it deliberately. Tonight was our fifth mating anniversary, and I intended to look every inch the Luna he'd married.

The dining table downstairs was set with precision: candles that cost more than most pack members spent on groceries, wine from the cellar he thought I didn't know he kept locked, and a meal I'd overseen personally because I no longer trusted our kitchen staff not to gossip. The anniversary gift I'd wrapped sat beside his plate—cufflinks engraved with the pack insignia, because sentimentality had stopped working on Jackson Moreno years ago, but vanity never failed.

I checked my phone. He was twenty minutes late.

My wolf stirred uneasily in the back of my mind, a low whine I felt more than heard. *He's not coming*, she murmured, and I silenced her with the practiced ease of someone who'd been having this conversation for longer than I cared to admit.

"He'll be here," I said aloud to the empty room, my voice steady. I didn't believe it, but I said it anyway.

Another ten minutes passed before I heard the front door open. I didn't move from my seat at the table. I'd learned not to rush to greet him—it only made the disappointment land harder.

Jackson walked into the dining room still wearing his patrol jacket, dirt on his boots, and that look on his face I'd come to recognize as guilt wearing the mask of authority. He met my eyes for a fraction too long—his tell, the one he didn't know I'd catalogued within our first year together—and I felt something cold and familiar settle in my chest.

"Border patrol picked up rogue scent near the eastern perimeter," he said, his voice carrying that alpha command that worked on everyone but me. "I need to handle it personally."

I didn't blink. "On our anniversary."

"It's urgent, Adalee." He was already turning toward the door, as though the conversation was over simply because he'd decided it was. "I'll make it up to you."

The candles flickered between us, their light catching on the untouched plates and the gift I'd wrapped with hands that hadn't trembled even once.

"Of course," I said softly. "Go."

He hesitated—just for a second—and I wondered if some part of him wanted me to fight, to demand he stay, to give him an excuse to justify what he was about to do. But I'd stopped performing that role a long time ago.

The door closed behind him with a sound like a period at the end of a sentence.

I sat in the silence for exactly sixty seconds, counting each one, before I pulled out my phone and opened the encrypted message thread I kept with Dara Osei, my most