My Alpha Framed Me to Protect His Pregnant Lover

The phone rang while I was cutting silver paper for Lyla's gifts.

I knew it was him before I looked. Seven years of marriage teaches you the rhythm of a man's calls, even the ones that lie. I picked up and tucked the phone against my shoulder.

"Amelie." Cullen's voice was tired in that careful way of his. "There's a problem at the northern border. Rogues. I can't make it back for the Solstice."

I kept cutting. The scissors made a clean, even sound.

"How many?" I asked.

"Six, maybe seven. We're tracking them now."

"Be safe."

"I always am."

I ended the call and set the phone down. Then I stood very still in the middle of the den, surrounded by half-wrapped gifts for our daughter, and waited for the disappointment to arrive the way it always did.

It didn't come.

Something else came instead. A small, cold thing that sat down in my chest and did not move.

I turned to finish the wrapping and my eyes caught on the jacket draped over the armchair. The one Cullen had left behind on his last visit. I picked it up to hang it in the closet, the way I always did, and the smell hit me before I had taken two steps.

Pine. Cedar. His scent, the one I had loved for seven years.

And under it, something sweet. Floral. A perfume I did not own.

My mating mark flared on my neck. Not the sharp pull of his nearness. Something duller. A slow, sourceless burn that had been with me on and off for years, and that I had told myself was nothing.

I lowered the jacket onto the chair. I did not pick it up again.

I told myself I was being a paranoid wife. I told myself there were a hundred reasons a man could come home smelling like a woman's perfume. A pack visit. A diplomatic dinner. A handshake with someone's sister.

I told myself a lot of things on the way to his study.

The Winter Solstice guest list was supposed to be in his desk. That was what I told myself I was looking for. I sat down in his chair and opened the top drawer, and even as I did it I knew I was lying.

I was not looking for a guest list. I was looking for the truth.

I found it under a folder of border permits, tucked inside a generic envelope. A bank confirmation. A property purchase. A luxury den registered in a quiet, expensive corner of Seattle territory, the kind of place a wolf goes to be invisible.

The name on the deed was Cullen's.

I sat very still for a long moment. Long enough that the heat clicked on. Long enough that my fingers went cold around the paper.

Then I opened his laptop. I had his pack codes. I was the Luna. I had every code he had.

The pack travel logs went back seven years.