Xesha's POV:

My fated mate cheated on me.

At the bridal shop.

The girl was wearing my wedding dress while he wrinkled it for her.

If the Moon Goddess really is watching from up there, I'd like to suggest a redesign of the mate-matching system. Every soulbond should come with a thirty-day return policy. No signs of wear, original packaging intact, full refund on presentation of the soul contract.

Though judging by what was happening in that fitting room, Jasper had long since voided his warranty.

I stood outside the thick, plush velvet curtain, and listened to the breathless little gasps leaking through it. Cedar and gardenia rolled out through the gap in the fabric, thick and indecent, sickly sweet.

"Jasper..." the woman simpered, "does this dress look better on me, or on your fiancée?"

Interesting question. Shame the one answering it wasn't me.

If I'd been asked, I'd have told her the dress would look better on a corpse than on her. At least a corpse knows how to lie still and not go chasing after someone else's Alpha.

"You, obviously," Jasper's voice was low, rough, threaded with pleasure. "I can't bring myself to pull out of you. Isn't that proof enough of how irresistible you are?"

I closed my eyes and swallowed down the roiling in my stomach.

The woman, thoroughly satisfied with his answer, giggled.

"We can't get married, but I'm going to make sure you never forget me. Every bonding anniversary from here on out, you'll think of today. You'll think of me in this dress."

A tearing pain shot through my chest. I clutched at my heart on reflex - the wolf inside me let out a grief-stricken howl, hurling itself against the walls of my mind. It wanted to tear through that curtain and rip out both their throats. It wanted an answer from the Alpha who'd sworn eternal loyalty to it. Why he'd broken the bond they'd sealed together.

Honestly? I was fully on board with that plan.

But an Omega losing her mind in a bridal shop, brawling with a beta and an alpha mid-act, would be front-page news in New York by morning. Some reporter would slap an inflammatory headline on it -

POUR OMEGA LOSES IT CATCHING ALPHA CHEATING - TIME TO ABOLISH THE FATED MATE SYSTEM?

And Jasper would only need to put on his most soulful face for the cameras and murmur, "She just loves me too much," to walk away looking like the victim of the whole circus.

Not happening.

I could survive a broken heart. I could not survive a broken heart and public humiliation both.

Seven years ago, I was eighteen and had just come into my wolf. At a full-moon party, Jasper's wolf woke the same moment mine did. He tracked my scent straight to me, took my hand under the moonlight, and swore he'd protect me and stay faithful forever.

I'd been embarrassingly moved at the time.

Looking back, I can only say eighteen-year-old me lacked life experience. A gorgeous Alpha whispering promises under the moon is basically a heavily filtered photo on a shopping app - for reference only, actual item may vary.

A month from now we were supposed to hold our final bonding ceremony. Jasper would sink his teeth into the back of my neck in front of the community and the Moon Goddess, leaving a permanent mark, binding our scents, our minds, our lives together for good.

Thank god we hadn't gotten there yet.

Otherwise, on top of a lawyer, I'd also need to book a priest, a surgeon, and possibly an exorcist to deal with the aftermath.

No wonder the bond between us had been fading for months. No wonder he traveled so often, always coming home doused in scent blockers. I'd thought he just didn't want other werewolves' pheromones affecting me. Now I understood he'd been on bond-suppressants the entire time.

I didn't pull back the curtain. I didn't storm in and demand, hysterically, why he'd betrayed me. Because the question had no point. He hadn't cheated because I did something wrong. He cheated because he had a rotten little heart no amount of love could ever fill.

I turned and walked out, got into my car.

Jasper and I had been together seven years.

The year we graduated, we started our company crammed into a drafty little office out in the New York suburbs - leaked in winter, air conditioner died every summer. We couldn't even afford a secretary. I took every client call; he closed every deal. Eventually we grew JD Group from a company that could fold any minute into a conglomerate that could move the New York economy.

Business magazines called us "the golden couple, blessed by the Moon Goddess." The elders loved holding us up as an example to young werewolves who refused to settle down. In their eyes, Jasper and I had the perfect careers, the perfect mate-match, and a wedding about to headline every society page in the city.

Only my sister Ale never bought the fairy tale.

Her assessment of Jasper had always been simple.

"He's got a face made for the cover of GQ and a rap sheet that would get Damage Control to drag him off in the middle of the night."

Turns out Ale wasn't being harsh. She was just better than me at spotting garbage in human shape. For seven years she'd been flagging every red flag while I was busy folding each one into a rose and dropping it into the vase of our so-called love.

My phone screen was still open on the message she'd sent.

[I won't be at your bonding ceremony with Jasper. The Foxx family won't send anyone either. We won't call an Alpha we can't trust family. What you do next is up to you.]

I stared at it until my eyes stung, though my fingers stayed steady.

[No need to decide. The wedding's off.]

The typing indicator flickered above the chat, vanished, flickered again. After a few rounds, Ale finally answered.

[Thirty days. Get your company, your property, and that bastard sorted in New York.]

A second message followed right after.

[And if you crawl back to him again, don't call me and make me watch him take you apart piece by piece. I love you, but I'm done helping you hold together a relationship that's killing you.]

So very Ale.

I typed back "okay" and put my phone away. When I started the car, I saw the shop door open in the rearview mirror.

Jasper walked out with his arm around a young woman - barely twenty, long hair, white dress, a smile sweet and harmless enough to belong to exactly the kind of girl who could sleep with someone's fiancé and still say, wide-eyed, "there's no first-come-first-served in love."

Sensing something, Jasper looked toward my car. I hit the gas and left the two of them tangled together far behind me.

I could live without love. I could not live without my money. Money, at least, had never cheated on me with another woman.

Back at the house, I didn't get out right away. I sat in the driver's seat and called my lawyer. Before long, familiar footsteps sounded in the garage, and the door was wrenched open from outside.

"Going somewhere?"

Jasper tossed his jacket onto the passenger seat and leaned in.

He'd showered and changed already. Black shirt, two buttons undone, a slice of solid chest on display. Nothing on him but the clean, cold bite of cedar - not a trace of any other woman's scent left.

Thorough cleanup.

If I hadn't seen that live show with my own eyes, I might actually believe he'd just come from a board meeting instead of a moral trainwreck of an afternoon.

Seeing me stay quiet, he leaned down to kiss me. I pressed a hand to his face and pushed him back.

"Get away from me."

He arched a brow, seeming to finally register something was wrong.

"Who upset you?"

Same as always. First to notice, quick to hunt down the cause, generous with the reassurance. It used to be my favorite thing about him.

I just smiled. "Nothing."

Jasper studied me like he was trying to dig a crack out of my expression. I didn't look away. If anything, that made him smile. He pulled me in by the waist and let a wave of calming cedar roll over me, the scent an Alpha uses to settle his mate.

"Tell your Alpha - who upset my girl?"

I used to melt for that line. Now I just felt like I'd been hugged by a very expensive air freshener.

"Jasper. The wedding's off."

The smile dropped off his face. The cedar in the air went cold with it, carrying the flattening weight that comes off a high-tier Alpha when he's done being patient.

"Say that again."

Men love that line, like making someone repeat themselves will scare the truth back into hiding.

"I said the wedding's off." I held his eyes, calm. "You've been so busy lately, there didn't seem to be much point going through with it. Wouldn't want you spread too thin."

He grabbed my arm, voice edged with real anger now. "You think I'm doing all this for myself? It's for JD Group. For our future. Our kids deserve the best start there is. You want them born already behind the heirs of every rival family in this city?"

Fascinating. A man dancing on the edge of infidelity, and the first thing on his mind isn't an apology. It's conjuring up unborn children just to draft them into guilt-tripping me. Those kids hadn't even been conceived and they were already saddled with saving their father's marriage.

Cheater dialogue really is like the menu at a chain restaurant. No matter which branch you walk into, the dishes taste exactly the same.

I pulled my arm free and walked into the house.

A month until the wedding. My sister had given me one month to handle things here. In a month, I'd go home and have the clan elder cut this already-rotten bond.

Before that: assets, shares, property, and one Alpha too confident to imagine he could ever be thrown out.

Back in the bathroom, I turned on the tap. Before long, Jasper followed me in.

"This is on me, Xesh." He wrapped his arms around me from behind, chin resting on my shoulder. "Work's been insane. I know I've been neglecting you. Starting now, I'm canceling every dinner, every obligation, coming home on time every night. Good?"

He let calming pheromone roll off him, mild cedar curling around me, trying - the way he had a thousand times before - to smooth everything over.

I looked up at the two of us in the mirror.

Jasper still looked handsome, tender, soulful as a cologne ad shot on a beach at sunset. I looked pale, shadows under my eyes, seriously weighing the logistics of shoving my toothbrush up his nose.

"Don't bother," I said.

Before he could answer, a soft, saccharine love song started playing.

It was one of the songs blowing up right now - I heard it on TikTok practically every day. Jasper had always just used the default ringtone.

I remembered, suddenly, that back when we first started dating, I'd made him set our song as my special ringtone too. He'd said his phone always went off in board meetings and client calls, and a love song would be both childish and unprofessional.

Turns out "unprofessional" was never really the issue. The real issue was that I wasn't worth making an exception for.

He pulled out his phone, glanced at the screen, hung up fast.

"Spam call."

I saw the contact name clearly on the screen.

831.

"Spam calls have custom ringtones now?" I watched him through the mirror. "Telemarketers are getting personal these days."

"System auto-set it."

"Of course." I nodded. "Your phone's more romantic than you are, and apparently configures itself without you touching a thing. Apple should hire you for a commercial."

His jaw ticked. He didn't answer.

The phone rang again, fast.

He hung up again. It rang a third time, relentless. That kind of persistence, put toward job applications, could probably knock a couple points off the city's unemployment rate.

By the fourth ring, Jasper finally walked out of the bathroom, phone in hand, back to me, voice pitched low. The bond was too badly jammed by suppressants for me to catch the voice on the other end, but I could feel his irritation - laced, faintly, with something almost like relief.

That's not how a person reacts to a spam call.

A moment later he hung up and turned to face me.

"Something came up at the office. I need to go handle it. Don't wait up - get some rest. I'll come by in the morning for the fitting."

"Of course." I gave him a smile so thoughtful it was nearly flawless. "Say hi to your spam call for me. She sounds like she really needs you."

His eyes lingered on my face, like he was trying to gauge exactly how much I knew.

A few seconds later he grabbed his jacket and left the room.

Not until I heard the front door close downstairs did I take out my phone and type that strange contact name into the search bar.

"831 meaning relationship"

831 means "I love you."

Eight letters. Three words. One meaning.

I stared at the screen for a long time.

Had to admit - it really was romantic. I closed the search page, opened a real-estate app, and listed the house at a bargain price.

In a month, I'd be gone from here. And I wasn't planning to keep anything behind - including the Alpha who'd once promised, under the moon, to be faithful to me forever.

Xesha's POV:

The listing came in tens of thousands under market value. Inside half an hour of going live, the app was flooded with inquiries.

By the time I'd answered every buyer, it was the middle of the night. Wide awake, I opened one of those anonymous social apps everyone's on lately, and the top post on my feed landed in front of me with almost surgical precision.

Big data, it turns out, is sometimes more reliable than a mate bond.

A post: my boyfriend's bonding ceremony with his fated mate is in a month. Today I wore his fiancée's wedding dress while he held me in the fitting room. Stealing someone else's Alpha feels thrilling. Feels amazing.

The comments were a masterpiece of profanity. Convert curse words into electricity and that post alone could probably power New York for three days straight.

I clicked into her profile and scrolled back to her very first post, six months old. A man and a woman, fingers laced together in the photo - a small mole on the man's index finger, and on his ring finger, an engagement ring identical to mine.

The post date was exactly one week before Jasper proposed to me.

Which meant he'd been helping me pick out a ring with one hand while building an underground romance with the other. Impressive time management. If JD Group ever went under, he could teach a seminar.

I looked down at the ring on my own finger.

It had once moved me to tears for an entire night. Now it looked more like an expensive certificate of my own gullibility.

I pulled it off, dropped it in the toilet, hit the flush.

The page refreshed. A new update from the same poster: everyone needed to stop attacking her - she had already agreed that in a month, she'd hand him back to his fiancée completely intact.

Attached was a photo of a man's bare back, lying in bed.

I'd looked at that back for seven straight years. I knew it better than I knew my own reflection.

I wasn't sure she understood the word intact. Food bitten into once can maybe still pass for mostly whole. But a man rotted from the heart down to the bone barely qualifies as biological waste holding a human shape.

Early the next morning, Jasper - who hadn't come home - called and told me to meet him at the bridal shop.

When I arrived, the dress hung in the third-floor VIP showroom, pure and dignified and untouchable-looking. Werewolf tradition says it's meant to be marked with both mates' scents during the bonding ceremony - living proof of mutual fidelity.

Now, knowing what it had wrapped around yesterday, all I could think was that the designer should reclassify it as hazmat gear.

A staff member walked over, sympathy poorly hidden behind her professional smile.

"Ms. Foxx, should we get you into the dress first? That way Mr. Dawn sees you in it the second he walks in."

"No need."

"Why not?"

An arm looped around my waist from behind, familiar cedar rolling in with it.

Jasper leaned close, voice still dripping tenderness. "Xesha, you know how long I've waited for this. Put it on for me. Please?"

I turned and studied him. Clean hair, pressed shirt, not a trace of mistress scent on him anywhere. Say what you will about the man - his crime-scene cleanup skills were genuinely professional.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing. Just wondering if the city water authority knows how many showers you take in a day."

His brow creased - and then I looked past him.

A young girl stood a few feet off in a white shirt and pale jeans, hair falling soft over her shoulders, a smile sweet enough to look harmless. Gardenia drifted faintly off her - the same scent still buried deep in Jasper's skin from the night before.

Some men, once they cheat, keep it hidden. Jasper had apparently decided to bring his mistress straight to his fiancée. Cutting out the shipping costs, I guess.

"That's Helena. An intern our partner sent over for the new project." Noticing where I'd looked, Jasper explained, unbothered. "She reminds me of you, back when we first met. I thought you two would hit it off."

"Is that right?" I glanced at him. "I don't remember having a hobby of sleeping with other people's fiancés when I was young. You might be thinking of someone else."

The air went still for a beat.

Helena's smile stiffened, then smoothed back over as she walked toward me, hand extended, expression innocent enough to frame.

"Hi, Xesha. I'm Helena. So nice to finally meet you."

She said it so easily, like we'd been introduced through mutual friends and not because she'd slept with my fiancé.

I looked down at her hand and didn't take it.

"Helena." I said it slowly. "Pretty name. Pity a good name usually can't make up for terrible judgment."

The arm around my waist tightened.

Jasper leaned in close to my ear, voice pitched for only me. "Be angry with me at home. Helena's young - don't embarrass her in public."

When the staff lifted the dress off the mannequin, Helena's eyes lit, unmistakably.

"Do you like it?" I asked.

"I love it," she said, almost before I'd finished the question.

Then, as if remembering she still had a role to play - sweet, fragile, wronged - she lowered her eyes and added, wistful: "Not every woman gets this lucky. Wearing the dress she loves, marrying her own fated Alpha."

"You're right, not every woman's as lucky as you." I nodded along. "Sleeping with someone else's Alpha and getting personally walked in to show the wife your trophy."

Her color drained.

"Since you like it that much, why don't you try it on for me," I went on. "We're about the same size. I'm not feeling well today - don't want to move around much."

The staff member hesitated, glancing at Jasper. His expression had already gone dark, clearly unhappy at the idea of the bonding dress touching another woman.

Fascinating, really. He could hand over his body. I couldn't lend out a dress.

Helena reached for it herself, smile blooming back. "I'd be honored to try it on for you."

I turned to Jasper, tone light. "Aren't you going in to help her?"

Everyone around us froze.

He stared at me, wary. "Xesha. What exactly are you saying?"

"Nothing. Figured you'd be more than happy to lend a hand." I sat on the sofa and picked up the coffee a staff member had brought me.

Not long after, the curtain drew back.

Helena stepped into the light in the dress, cheeks flushed, smile shy and sweet. It did suit her - maybe because she'd already had a dress rehearsal the night before.

I turned to Jasper.

"Does it look good?"

"Xesha. Have you had enough?"

I walked over, coffee in hand. Seeing me approach, Helena immediately raised a hand to shield her face, already braced to play the victim of a vicious first wife.

Too bad I had no interest in her face.

I tilted my wrist and poured the whole cup over the dress. Brown liquid soaked fast into white fabric. Gasps went up around the room, staff rushing over with tissues that did nothing.

"Xesha-" Helena's eyes went red on me.

"Something stained this badly doesn't come clean. How exactly were you planning to give it back to me intact?" I gestured at the ruin.

Her whole body went rigid. Fear-laced gardenia leaked off her.

Jasper's face went dark. He crossed the room in a few strides and grabbed my wrist. I let his own momentum spin me around - and slapped him across the face with everything I had.

The crack of it rang clean through the showroom. Not once since JD Group stabilized had he taken a public dressing-down - let alone a woman's hand.

A high-tier Alpha's pressure detonated in an instant, thick enough to taste, and the staff around us went white. My pulse hammered, the she-wolf in me already braced to fight - but I didn't step back.

Jasper stared at me hard, jaw working, before he reined the pressure back in and pulled me into his arms.

"Feel better now?"

Xesha's POV:

"No," I said, rubbing at my numb wrist. "Mostly your skin's just too thick. Not a lot of payoff there."

He lifted my hand and kissed the inside of my palm.

"Did it hurt? I'll ice it for you when we're home. Don't let someone who doesn't matter damage what we have."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Someone who doesn't matter - you mean Helena?"

"Yes." That's the fatal flaw in men, I think - short of catching them mid-act, they'll never admit to being wrong.

He answered without a beat of hesitation, and every trace of color drained clean out of Helena's face - nothing left of the challenge she'd been throwing my way when she first walked in.

Leaving the shop, I headed straight for my car. Jasper caught my hand and hauled me toward his passenger seat instead.

"Ride with me. I'll take you home."

"I have my own car."

He ignored the refusal, gripping hard enough that shaking him off wasn't an option - I got dragged the whole way to his car.

He pulled the passenger door open himself. A pink-and-white hair clip lay quiet on the dark gray seat, a faint thread of gardenia still clinging to it.

Jasper picked it up, unhurried, like he was clearing a parking receipt off the seat.

I leaned against the door frame, arms crossed, and watched him.

"Want to check again? Underwear, stockings, a used pheromone patch, maybe a copy of A Cheating Man's Guide to Detailing His Own Car. You'd better sweep it all in one pass - I'd hate to sit down and find something else not fit for public viewing."

His expression darkened fast.

"Xesha, do you have to make everything sound this filthy?"

"I'm not making anything up. I'm drawing reasonable conclusions from the physical evidence."

"I love you. That doesn't mean I'll indulge you without limits." He looked down at me, Alpha pressure settling over the words like a hand on the back of my neck. "JD Group is in an expansion phase. Not every partner I deal with is going to be male. You're my fated mate - you should be learning to trust me, not losing it every time you catch an unfamiliar scent."

I listened without interrupting.

"Today it was Helena, so I can let it slide. But what happens next time it's some clan leader's daughter, or a woman with real standing? Are you going to throw a tantrum like this every time? If you keep ignoring the bigger picture, how is JD Group supposed to grow?"

When he finished, I nodded, thoughtful.

"I think I understand. Let me summarize: you cheat for the sake of the company's long-term future. I catch you cheating because my mind's in the gutter. And when I expose you cheating, that's me being selfish and ignoring the bigger picture."

"That's not what I meant."

"Then maybe the problem's how you're saying it." I offered, sincerely, "Mr. Dawn, you should really get out of running a company and into manufacturing detergent instead. That kind of bleach-white spin is a rare gift."

His expression was something worth framing.

I didn't take his car. I turned and went back to my own. Winning the argument on paper didn't mean I walked away unscathed - the bond kept throwing off dull, aching pulses that pulled my focus while I drove.

By the time I noticed, my front bumper had already met the black luxury car ahead of me.

Custom plate: FX1SLR.

Great. Week one of heartbreak, and I'd already lost a fiancé, a wedding dress, and my insurance company's good-customer discount.

I got out and owned it immediately.

"I'm sorry - that's entirely on me."

The driver of the other car didn't answer right away. He walked around to the back door instead, respectful, and opened it for whoever sat inside.

A tall man stepped out. Black shirt buttoned all the way to the collar, features cut sharp and cold, no pheromone released at all - and the air around us went still anyway.

Something in me - the wolf - opened its eyes.

It didn't pace, didn't shrink back in fear. It just fixed on this Alpha with something close to pure instinct, wary and locked in.

His rank sat far above Jasper's. If Jasper was a destructive blizzard, this man belonged to whatever decides how the whole climate system runs.

He glanced at me, briefly, eyes catching for half a second at the side of my neck - as if he'd clocked the cracked, half-broken mate-scent still clinging there.

I straightened my spine on reflex. I'd just dented his car, and my love life had turned into a full-scale waste-sorting disaster, but I still wanted to look like a functioning adult.

"Mr. Le Roux, the meeting's in ten minutes," the driver murmured.

The man gave a slight nod and stepped away to take a call. The driver handed me a card, polite as ever.

"Ms. Foxx, once the car's repaired, call this number. We'll send someone to collect it."

"Mr. Le Roux doesn't want to discuss compensation himself?"

"Mr. Le Roux is a busy man."

I glanced at my own dented bumper, then down at the card in my hand.

"I can tell. His license plate probably cost more than my whole car."

The corner of the driver's mouth twitched - years of professionalism the only thing keeping him from laughing outright.

The card held one name, Le Roux, and a private number.

By the time I looked up again, a black SUV had already pulled to the curb. Before getting in, the man glanced back at me once more. Maybe I imagined it, but I thought I caught the faintest trace of amusement in his eyes.

Normal people, seeing the state of my life right now, would only feel sorry for me. So that was probably just my love life crashing and dragging my eyesight down with it.

Over the next three days, Jasper didn't come home once, though the private investigator kept the photos coming to my phone.

Jasper and Helena, in and out of the same apartment. One shot especially clear: Helena on the balcony in his white shirt, him wrapped around her from behind - cozy enough to print straight onto a contraceptive ad.

The third afternoon, I was out trimming the purple roses in the yard when a pair of hands landed on my waist.

"Miss me, babe?"

Cedar rolled in from behind. Whatever scent remover he'd used worked well - but gardenia still clung, faint, deep in the bond.

"I did," I said.

He seemed almost surprised, a note of something pleased slipping into his voice.

"Really?"

"I've been wondering - did every hotel in New York collectively go out of business this week? What kind of business trip needs two people working out of the same apartment for three straight days?"

His body went rigid for a beat.

"What are you implying?"

"Nothing. Just curious about JD Group's new work-from-home policy."

I twisted out of his hold. He caught me back in, leaned in close to my ear.

"I only love you. Can we stop this?"

"Every time you say 'only,' I want to ask you something."

"What?"

"When you say 'only' - is that a number, or just filler for emphasis?"

His expression finally went dark.

"Xesha."

"Don't call me that." I pushed his hand away. "You're going to give me a permanent aversion to my own name."

I yanked a rose stem hard and the thorn caught my fingertip. The second blood welled up, Jasper's whole demeanor shifted - he grabbed my hand, some deep Alpha instinct to protect his mate kicking in, and bent to lick the blood from my fingertip.

Just before his mouth touched me, the balcony photo flashed back through my head.

That mouth had probably kissed Helena not long before this.

Nausea rose fast in my throat. I yanked my hand back and slapped him again.

Dead silence.

He stared at me, the cold in his eyes deepening by the second.

"What is wrong with you?"