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?"