The Alpha Paid Me to Let His Mistress Live

Twelve years I'd loved him. It took him nine minutes to tell me our marriage was a transaction.

The kitchen smelled like warm milk and cedar.

I'd heated it the moment I heard his key in the lock—an old habit, the kind that lives in your hands before your brain catches up. Damon always ran cold after long flights. Three days in Seattle, and I'd counted every one of them. Not because I missed him, exactly. More like the way you count the seconds between lightning and thunder. Waiting to know how close the storm was.

He came in without saying my name.

That should have told me everything.

I set the mug on the marble island and watched him shrug off his jacket. He looked the same as always—broad shoulders, jaw tight with that particular brand of exhaustion that powerful men wear like a badge. But underneath the cedar and the travel and the faint ghost of airport coffee, there was something else.

Perfume. Floral. Wrong.

My stomach turned before my mind could name it. A slow, animal nausea that started somewhere below my ribs and climbed. I pressed my palm flat against the counter. Breathed through my nose. Said nothing.

Damon didn't look at me. He was already scrolling his phone, thumb moving in that bored, automatic way. With his other hand, he reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a manila envelope. Thick. Sealed with a metal clasp.

He slid it across the marble toward me like he was passing a report to an assistant.

"There's two hundred thousand in there," he said, eyes still on his screen. "Camille's scared you'll do something. Don't. Whatever she took from you, I'll pay double. Just don't touch her."

The mug of warm milk sat between us, steaming.

I looked at the envelope. Then at him.

He already knew. That was the thing that landed first—not the money, not the name, not the casual way he'd delivered it like a weather update. He already knew that I knew. And he hadn't come home to explain or apologize or even lie to me with any real effort. He'd come home to manage the situation.

I was the situation.

"Camille," I said. "That's her name."

My voice came out flat. Steady. I didn't recognize it.

Damon finally looked up. His eyes moved over my face the way you scan a spreadsheet—quickly, efficiently, looking for the number that's off.

"Selene." He set his phone down. "You're a Luna. Act like one."

Five words. That was all. No apology wrapped inside them, no softness, not even the decency of discomfort. Just a reminder of what I was supposed to be. What I was supposed to perform.

I picked up the envelope.

I walked to the bathroom and locked the door.

---

The tiles were cold through my socks.

I sat on the edge of the bathtub and held the envelope in both hands for a long moment before I opened it. Inside,