When My Alpha Left Me to Burn

The boat smelled like cedar and expensive whiskey and the particular kind of ambition that makes a room feel smaller than it is.

I stood near the stern railing with a glass of sparkling water I hadn't touched, watching Joel laugh at something Brielle Hoffman said. She had her hand on his arm. He let her keep it there. The Pacific wind off the Sound pulled at her dark hair and she tilted her face up toward him like a flower tracking sunlight, and Joel — my Joel, the man I had spent five years quietly keeping alive — smiled down at her like she was the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life.

I looked away.

The Puget Sound stretched gray and wide around us, the Seattle skyline already shrinking behind the stern. The chartered vessel was big enough to feel like a statement — Reid Hoffman's money, everyone understood, even if no one said it out loud. This joint gathering between Silverfang and Black Ridge was dressed up as a celebration of deepening alliance, but what it really was, was a preview. Joel auditioning for a future. Brielle auditioning for a title. And me, standing at the margins in a borrowed cardigan and flat shoes, playing the part I'd been playing for five years.

Omega. Packless. Invisible.

My wolf stirred somewhere deep in my chest — a slow, restless shift, like something large turning over in its sleep. I pressed her back down. Not yet. Not here. Not ever, if I could help it.

I was good at that. Pressing things down.

"You look like you're doing math in your head."

The voice came from my left. I turned and found a man leaning against the railing a few feet away, a glass of something amber in his hand, watching the water with the relaxed posture of someone who had nowhere better to be. He was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed well but not formally — the kind of effortless that costs money. Dark hair. A jaw that looked like it had opinions. And a scent that hit me sideways before I could prepare for it: pine and something electric, like the air before a storm breaks.

I didn't know him. I knew of him, the way you know of weather systems moving in from the coast. Tristan Walker. Lycan Prince. The one the gossip channels called reckless, charming, and constitutionally allergic to responsibility.

He didn't look at me when he spoke. That was the first thing I noticed.

"I'm just watching," I said.

"Mm." He took a sip of his drink. "Watching and doing math. There's a difference."

I didn't answer. He didn't push. After a moment he drifted away toward a cluster of Black Ridge wolves, drink still in hand, and I watched him go with the vague, unsettled feeling of a thread I hadn't meant to pull.

Across the deck, Joel caught my eye for exactly half a second. Then Brielle said something and