I Saved An Alpha, He Recovered and Rejected Me

The champagne glass slipped from my trembling fingers, shattering against the yacht's polished deck. The sound was swallowed by the roar of applause as Charles—my Charles—pulled Eileen closer, his lips brushing her ear as he whispered something that made her laugh.

That laugh. Light, musical, everything mine had never been during those three years of darkness.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Charles's voice boomed across the luxury yacht's main deck, commanding the attention of every werewolf elite in attendance. The Pacific wind whipped through his perfectly styled hair, and he stood tall—so impossibly tall—on legs that had once been useless, legs I had massaged every night until my hands cramped and bled.

"Today marks not just the union of two souls, but the dawn of a new era for the Moonshadow pack." His voice carried that Alpha authority I remembered from before the accident, before the wheelchair, before he needed me. "Eileen Sterling is not just my bride—she is my Luna, my only Luna, and the future mother of my heirs."

The crowd erupted in cheers. Eileen, radiant in her designer wedding gown that probably cost more than I'd spent on his entire medical care, pressed a delicate hand to her chest in mock surprise. Her emerald eyes found mine across the crowd, and her smile sharpened like a blade.

My chest constricted. I shouldn't be here. I knew that. But when the invitation arrived—cream cardstock with gold embossing, my name written in elegant script—some masochistic part of me had to see it. Had to witness the final nail in the coffin of everything I'd sacrificed.

"Some of you might wonder about certain... complications from my past," Charles continued, his gaze sweeping the crowd before landing on me with surgical precision. "Let me be clear about something."

The yacht seemed to tilt, though I knew it was just my world spinning off its axis.

"There are those who mistake dependency for devotion, who confuse pity for love." His voice grew colder, each word a calculated strike. "During my recovery, I was... vulnerable. Certain individuals took advantage of that vulnerability, clinging to delusions of grandeur, believing that basic caretaking somehow earned them a place in my life."

Gasps rippled through the crowd. Heads turned. Eyes found me.

"But let me make this abundantly clear," Charles raised his glass, his smile cruel and satisfied. "Juliet Mills was never my mate. She was never my Luna. She was nothing more than a paid caregiver who refused to accept when her services were no longer needed."

The words hit like physical blows. Paid caregiver. The house I'd sold—my parents' house—to fund his experimental treatments. The jewelry—my mother's jewelry—pawned to pay for his physical therapy. The nights I'd held him while he screamed from phantom pain, promising him we'd get through it together.

Paid caregiver.

"Charles." My voice cracked as I stepped forward, my legs shaking. "You promised—"

"I promised nothing to a pathetic, wolfless omega who threw herself at an Alpha she could never have." His