After My Alpha Mate Chose Her Over Me

I should have kept a closer eye on Matheo.

That's the thought that hits me first — not the sleek black SUV, not the long white scratch running down its passenger door, not the small crowd of people in Silverpine's town square already turning to look. Just that one thought, flat and familiar: I should have been watching.

But I'd been distracted. The market vendor had shortchanged me again, and I was standing there recounting my bills with one hand while holding a canvas bag of groceries in the other, and Matheo had drifted three steps to my left the way he always does when something catches his eye. He's like that — drawn to shiny things, moving things, anything that glitters in afternoon light. The SUV's chrome trim must have caught the sun just right.

He didn't mean to scratch it. He was reaching for his own reflection.

"Mattie." I say his name quietly, setting down the groceries. He looks up at me with that open, guileless expression he always has — no guilt, no fear, just curiosity — and points at the door.

"Pretty," he says.

"Yeah." I crouch down and take his hand. "Come here, baby."

That's when the SUV's door opens.

I smell him before I see him.

Wild honeysuckle. Rain-soaked cedar. My own scent, twisted and thrown back at me from somewhere deep in my chest — because that's how the mate bond works, that's what no one warns you about. You don't just smell your mate. You smell yourself in them, and it's the most disorienting, most devastating thing in the world.

I haven't smelled it in five years.

My knees go soft. I lock them. I press my thumbnail into my palm, hard, and I breathe through my nose slowly, the way I taught myself to do when the grief got too big to carry standing up. The pain is small and clean and it gives me something to focus on that isn't him.

Kaden Carter steps out of the vehicle.

He's taller than I remember, or maybe I just forgot how much space he takes up without trying. Dark coat, no tie, jaw set like he's already decided how this goes. His eyes move over the scratch on the door first — just a flicker — and then they find me.

For one second, something crosses his face. Something that isn't anger.

Then it's gone.

"Whose kid?" he says.

His voice is the same. Low. Absolute. The kind of voice that doesn't need to get louder to get heavier.

I straighten up slowly. Matheo is still holding my hand, and I squeeze his fingers once — our signal for stay close, stay quiet.

"My brother," I say. "He didn't mean to. I'll cover the damage."

Kaden looks at Matheo for a moment. Something moves through his eyes that I can't read and don't want to. Then he looks back at me, and whatever it was is gone, replaced by something colder and