When My Alpha’s Betrayal Took Our Miracle Pup

I had been sitting at the dining table for two hours when I heard his key in the lock.

The gift was still wrapped. A small thing — a leather-bound journal with his initials pressed into the cover, because Everett had mentioned once, years ago, that he used to keep one before the Alpha title swallowed his time. I had ordered it three weeks in advance. I had wrapped it myself.

Five years. Tonight marked five years since the Moon Goddess bound us together, and I had set the table, lit the candles, and waited.

He came in smelling of jasmine and vanilla.

I knew that scent. I had known it for a long time. I just had never let myself name it out loud.

"The treasury's dry." He didn't look at me when he said it. He dropped his jacket over the back of a chair and moved toward the hallway. "Border conflict ran over budget. No celebration this year."

I looked at the candles. At the wrapped journal. At the empty chair across from mine.

"Everett."

"I'm tired, Alina." His voice had that particular flatness he used when the conversation was already over in his mind. He glanced at me once — just once — and the look said everything his words didn't. Don't push this. Don't make it a thing.

He went to his study and locked the door.

I sat there for a while longer. The candles burned down. Through the wall, I could hear the low murmur of his voice — soft, unhurried, warm in a way it had never been when he spoke to me. He was mind-linking someone. I could tell by the rhythm of it, the way his voice dropped and then paused, like he was listening and smiling at whatever came back.

I blew out the candles and went to the administrative terminal.

---

As Luna, I had quiet authority over the pack's financial records. I had never used it to look for anything specific. I had always told myself there was nothing to find.

I found it in forty minutes.

Five million dollars. Moved in careful increments over eight months, routed through an account flagged under a pack business alias — something bland, something that would look like a contractor payment to anyone who didn't look twice. I looked twice. I cross-referenced the alias against Everett's mind-link directory, the one I had administrative access to but had never opened.

Lacey Hoffman.

I sat very still.

I pulled the property records. A luxury penthouse in the city, purchased outright. A high-end vehicle, registered the same week. The dates lined up perfectly with the months Everett had been telling me the pack was stretched thin — that my healer treatments were straining the budget, that I should be grateful the pack was funding them at all.

I thought about the last treatment. The blood draw that had left me feverish for four days. The herbal infusion that made my hands shake for