When the Alpha Chose Her Over Me

I was three blocks from the den when my wolf, Wren, went rigid inside my chest.

*Something is wrong.*

I'd heard her say those three words maybe twice in eight years. I started to run.

My name is Maya Scott. I'm the Healer of the Silverfang Pack, and the youngest wolf ever admitted to the Lycan Royal Healing Circle. I'm also the mate of Alpha Lucas King, though most days you wouldn't know it. For eight years, my life has fit inside one sealed room at the back of the pack house. A quarantine lock. Three incubators. Six journals. One pathogen culture I have been feeding and coaxing and rebuilding from nothing since I was twenty-two years old.

It is the only viable Bloodfade culture in existence.

It is the only thing standing between my mate and a slow, bleeding death.

He doesn't know that. That's the whole point.

I hit the corridor at a dead run and stopped.

There were pack members crowded around my door. My door. The one with the biohazard placard and the lock only two people in the world had the override for, and I was one of them. The other one was standing in the middle of my den with his hand on the small of Brynn Ellis's back.

Lucas. My Lucas. In a clean white shirt with the sleeves rolled, looking like he belonged.

Brynn was crying.

There was a cake on my workbench. Pink frosting. Little sugar flowers. Someone had pushed my centrifuge aside to make room for it.

And on the floor, in a slow halo of amber medium and broken glass, was eight years of my life.

I didn't scream. I have never been a screamer. I pressed my fingertips together once, the way I do when a problem is about to break open, and I made myself look at it. Really look. The incubation vessel had hit the tile at an angle. The seal had cracked first, then the wall. The culture was already turning the wrong color where it touched the air. Three minutes. Maybe four. After that, nothing in there would be salvageable.

Wren was howling. I could feel her clawing at the inside of my ribs.

*Eight years. Eight years, Maya.*

I know, I told her. I know.

"Maya." Lucas's voice. Low. Warning. He'd turned toward me and angled his shoulder so that Brynn was tucked behind him. Behind him. Like I was the threat. "Before you say anything—"

"What is she doing in here."

It didn't come out as a question. It came out flat, the way a scalpel comes out flat.

"It's her birthday." He said it like that should mean something to me. "I brought her up. I thought—"

"You overrode my lock."

"It's our pack house, Maya."

Brynn made a small, hiccupping sound against his chest. Jasmine. She was wearing jasmine again. I'd asked her once, very politely, to stop wearing scented things in a sterile space. She'd looked at me with