My Mate's Betrayal Led Me To His Alpha Uncle's Bed

AMY'S POV

I couldn't believe my eyes as I stood frozen in front of my mate's bedroom. He was driving his dick into some she wolf without even noticing my presence.

A sickening wave of nausea rolls through my stomach. My fingers turn cold, and my knees threaten to give way beneath me. I try to take a breath, but my chest feels painfully tight, as though an invisible hand is squeezing the air out of my lungs.

No. This can't be happening.

I blink several times, desperately hoping that my eyes are playing tricks on me. Maybe I'm exhausted. Maybe the grief of losing my father has finally made me see things that aren't real.

But the sight in front of me doesn't disappear.

The rumpled sheets. Her clothes scattered across the floor. Derek's bare chest. And the unmistakable scent of another woman mixed with his familiar scent, lingering all over the room.

Derek finally finished with his whore before his eyes landed on me. They widened in shock as he jumped away from the she-wolf on the bed.

He quickly grabbed the bed sheets to cover himself as he gave an apologetic look. "Amy, what are you doing here? I thought you were going to be with your mom after the funeral."

"Really, Derek?" I stared at him in disbelief, fighting back the tears burning behind my eyes. "That's the first thing you're going to say to me?"

He rushed forward, reaching for my hand, but I stepped away before he could touch me. My knees go weak, and the knot in my stomach turns to a solid block of ice. With a defiant smile, the woman darted past me and, at Derek's signal, disappeared down the hall.

"Amy, please. It was a mistake. I swear I didn't mean for it to happen. I was drunk, and things just got out of hand. You're the only woman I love. She means absolutely nothing to me."

"How can you stand there and claim you love me when you just had another woman in your bed?" My voice rose with every word. "Do you have any idea how disgusting that is? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

"Come on, Amy. I'm sorry, okay? What more do you want me to say? It happened once. Can't we just forget about it?"

"Forget about it?" I repeated, staring at him as though he'd grown another head. "You cheated on me, Derek. You didn't accidentally spill a drink on someone. You made a choice. And now you expect me to pretend nothing happened?"

He finally stood up, his expression growing impatient.

"I said I was sorry. What else do you want from me? You know I love you. You're going to be my wife and the future Luna of this pack in two months. We can't let something this stupid ruin everything we've built together."

I shook my head, unable to believe what I was hearing.

"Something stupid? Is that what you're calling it? I suppose the next time you sleep with someone else, I'll just have to remind myself that it's no big deal."

"Don't twist my words!" he snapped.

"Then choose your words carefully."

His jaw tightened. For a moment, he looked like he wanted to argue, but he quickly forced a sigh and tried a different approach.

"Look, I know things haven't been easy between us lately. Ever since your father's condition got worse, you've barely had any time for me. I understood that you were worried about him, but I have needs too, Amy. I can't be expected to wait around forever while you shut me out."

I stared at him, momentarily stunned by his audacity.

"Are you seriously blaming me for this?"

"I'm just saying we both made mistakes. You haven't exactly been the most attentive mate lately."

A bitter laugh escaped my lips.

"My father was dying, Derek. I was watching the man who raised me slowly slip away, and somehow you think that gives you an excuse to crawl into another woman's bed?"

"I didn't say that!"

"You didn't have to. You're standing right here trying to make your betrayal my fault."

"God, you're impossible!" He threw his hands up. "Why do you always have to make everything so dramatic? Other couples go through things like this and move on. Why can't you just be reasonable for once?"

"Reasonable?" I took a step closer, looking straight into his eyes. "You want me to be reasonable? Fine. Let's be reasonable. If I had walked into this room with another man in my bed, would you be standing here telling me we should forget about it? Would you still want me as your future Luna?"

His expression darkened.

"That's different."

"Of course it is. When you do it, it's a mistake. When I do it, it's betrayal. How convenient."

"Watch your mouth, Amy."His eyes narrowed."You know what your problem is? You've gotten too comfortable. You seem to have forgotten where you came from."

My heart gave a painful thud, but I kept my face expressionless.

He scoffed, his patience finally wearing thin.

"Don't pretend you don't know. Every she-wolf in Rainwood would kill to be in your position. You're a low-class girl from an ordinary family, Amy. Without me, do you honestly think you'd ever get the chance to become Luna? My family accepted you. My father agreed to this marriage. You should be grateful instead of acting like you're too good for me."

For a few seconds, I simply stared at him. He wasn't sorry he'd hurt me. He was angry that I wasn't willing to swallow it.

"Derek. I never begged your family to accept me, and I certainly never begged you to marry me."

I pointed at his chest."You're the one who asked me to be your mate. You're the one who promised to love and protect me. And now you're standing here acting as though being chosen by you is some kind of favor I should spend the rest of my life repaying."

"Don't be ridiculous. You have no idea how much I've done for you."

"And you have no idea how little I need you."

His face twisted with anger.

"You really think you can just walk away from me? Where exactly do you think you'll go? Back to that little house of yours? You don't have my family's name, my position, or anything else that comes with being my mate. Do you think anyone will look at you the same way once they know you couldn't even keep your own fiancé?"

I felt something cold settle in my chest.

For two years, I'd loved this man. I'd trusted him with my heart, my future, and every dream I'd ever had of becoming his Luna.

And this was how he saw me.

A poor girl who should consider herself lucky to have him.

I lifted my chin and met his contemptuous gaze.

"You know what, Derek? I may come from an ordinary family, but at least my parents taught me the difference between love and ownership. You seem to have inherited your father's title without learning the first thing about being a respectable man."

His eyes widened.

"Watch what you say! I'm still your fated mate, Amy!" he barked. "You can't just throw away two years because of one stupid mistake!"

"Being my fated mate doesn't give you permission to humiliate me. And becoming Alpha doesn't give you the right to do whatever you want and expect everyone to bow their heads."

I stepped away as he reached for me again.

"Get your filthy hands off me. I can't believe someone as shameless as you is going to become the Alpha of this pack one day. The pack deserves so much better, and I definitely deserve better than this."

Then I drew a breath and said the words I'd never imagined I would say.

"I, Amy Hart, reject you, Derek Wellington, as my mate."

I didn't care what would happen next. There was no way I would marry Derek.

"Fuck!" He doubled over, face gone gray, the breath tearing out of him. "Damn it, it burns. I don't accept it, Amy. Do you hear me? I don't accept it."

I turned on my heels and stormed out before he could say another stupid words. My chest was burning, and I could barely see through the tears blurring my vision. I needed to get away from him. Away from that room, that bed, and the suffocating scent of another woman.

The moment I reached the street, I spotted a car pulling up near the sidewalk. Without thinking twice, I hurried over and pulled open the passenger door.

"Please, take me to the nearest bar," I said breathlessly, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

I sank into the seat and turned toward the window, watching the familiar streets blur past as I tried to hold back another wave of tears.

I didn't want to think about Derek. I didn't want to think about the wedding, the pack, or what everyone would say when they found out.

If Derek thought he could sleep with another woman and get away with it, he was dead wrong. If he could find someone else to warm his bed, then so could I.

The driver dropped me off at the nearest hotel bar.

I paid him, stepped out of the car, and walked inside without a second thought.

"Vodka. Neat."

I swallowed the first shot almost immediately. The alcohol burned its way down my throat, but I welcomed the sensation. At least it gave me something else to focus on besides the image of Derek and that woman in our bed.

"Whiskey for me, and a martini for the lady," a deep voice said somewhere behind my shoulder. "Is it the day or the man that's put you in a mood?"

I didn't turn around. "I'm just not good company tonight."

"Neither am I." The stool beside mine creaked. "I spent my afternoon at an obligation I would have preferred to skip."

The bartender set the martini in front of me and I drank half of it in one go, waiting for the alcohol to dull what the evening had sharpened. Lexie lay curled up and silent inside me, licking at the bond Derek still refused to let go of. Hours ago I had buried my father. Hours ago I had watched Derek with her.

How had my life turned so cruel, so fast? Two years of making myself smaller for him, and he couldn't wait a single night. Had being fated meant so little to him?

"Thank you for the drink," I told the stranger, and slid off the stool.

My sleeve caught on the edge of the bar. Fabric ripped. The floor tilted up to meet me, and I shut my eyes and braced for the impact.

It never came.

Instead, two strong arms closed around me and lifted me clean off the ground. I looked up, and forgot how to breathe.

He was devastating. Dark hair, green eyes, a mouth that tilted at one corner as if he found the world mildly amusing. He held me as though I weighed nothing, and I could feel the hard line of muscle under his shirt.

"Careful," he said. "Most women wait for the second drink before they fall for me."

I squinted at him. "You're a funny one, aren't you?"

"Rarely. You seem to bring it out of me." His gaze dropped to my sleeve and the smile vanished. "That blouse is ruined. I keep a spare shirt in my suite upstairs."

My heart skipped. "Your... what?"

"A shirt. You can't walk through a hotel like that." He glanced at the bartender. "Put our drinks on my suite."

"Yes, sir."

I let him carry me out. I told myself it was the martini.

His arms were warm, and somewhere between the bar and the elevator my head came to rest against his chest. Lexie, silent all night, lifted her head. She had been licking her wounds for hours. Now she seemed to have forgotten she had any.

"Take off the blouse," he said, once the suite door had closed behind us. He was already walking toward the closet.

"Excuse me?"

"So you can change into something that isn't torn."

"Right," I breathed.

I pulled the ruined blouse over my head and dropped it on the bed, standing there in nothing but my bra. He turned with a shirt in his hand and stopped dead. His eyes moved over me once, slowly. I was too busy staring back to notice. In the lamplight I finally saw his face properly, and something in it clicked into place.

The sharp jaw. Those eyes. I had seen that face once, across a ballroom, on the night of my engagement party.

"It's you," I whispered, stepping back.

His eyebrow rose. "You know me?"

"I know of you."

The corner of his mouth curved. He came toward me slowly, like a man in no hurry at all. "And what do you know of me?"

"You're Richard Wellington. Alpha of Darkwood." My voice came out thinner than I wanted. "You're ruthless. You're thirty-eight, with no mate, no girlfriend, and no weaknesses."

He kept coming. "Go on."

Derek's uncle.

I should have grabbed the shirt and run. I should have told him who I was. But all I could see was Derek on that bed, with the champagne and the black tie hung over the bedpost, and I thought: if he can take what he wants tonight, so can I.

My back met the wall.

"What else have you heard?" he asked, close enough now that I felt his breath.

"That you don't lose," I said. "That when you look at someone, the whole room goes quiet."

"And?"

"And I think I believe it."

His gaze dropped to my mouth. "Last chance to walk out that door, sweetheart-"

I didn't hear the rest. I kissed him.

He kissed me back like a man who had been waiting a very long time, hungry and certain, and every thought I owned went white. His hands closed around my waist and lifted me against the wall. I wrapped my legs around him and pulled at his tie, and he laughed against my mouth and helped.

"Are you sure?" he asked, low, between kisses. "Say the word and I stop."

"I'm sure," I said. "We're both adults. Why not?"

I woke to gray light and the sound of running water.

For a moment I didn't know where I was. Then I remembered all of it, and what I felt wasn't shame. It was a cold, clean satisfaction. Derek had taken someone else to bed on the day we buried my father. I had taken his uncle. The score was settled. One night, nothing more, with a man who had never asked my name and would forget it by lunch. I eased out from under the sheet, gathered my shoes in one hand, and listened to the shower behind the bathroom door. Go. Now.

My phone was buzzing in my bag before I reached the door. Sixty-three missed calls. Forty-one messages, every one of them Derek. I don't accept it. Come back. Where are you? Pick up. I scrolled with a thin smile. Of course. The man who had never been refused couldn't bear it. When the screen lit up again with his name, I answered with the sneer already loaded. "If you're calling to beg, you can-"

"Amy, it's your mother." His voice was raw, stripped of every performance. "She called an ambulance herself, then collapsed. She's in the ER at City Hospital. They phoned me because I'm still your emergency contact. I've been calling since four a.m. Where the hell are you?"

AMY'S POV

I made it from the hotel to City Hospital in thirty minutes and one very long lifetime.

My mother lay behind a pane of glass, small and gray, wired to a monitor that drew green mountains across a screen. Her hand rested on top of the blanket, palm up, the way it always did when she was waiting for someone to take it. I pressed my own palm to the glass instead.

"Where were you?"

Derek stood behind me in yesterday's suit, his shirt creased, his eyes red. For half a second he looked like a man who had been awake all night. Then his voice hardened into something I knew far too well.

"I called you sixty-three times. Your mother dialed 911 and collapsed on the floor, Amy. By herself. I'd like to know where you were."

"That's not your business," I said. My voice didn't shake. Lexie did, somewhere deep inside. 'Don't cry,' she whispered. 'Not yet. Not in front of him.'

"Miss Hart?"

The doctor had come out of the ward, tired, a clipboard against his chest. I jumped to my feet.

"Doctor, how is she? What's wrong with her?"

"Your mother suffered a severe cardiac episode from prolonged stress and underlying conditions. She needs an emergency bypass to prevent further damage."

"Then please go ahead."

"The surgery costs sixty thousand dollars," he said. "It has to be settled within twenty-four hours before we can proceed. Any delay puts her at greater risk."

The floor tilted. Sixty thousand dollars. We could barely cover this month's rent.

Before I could speak, Derek stepped in beside me, one smooth movement, his palm settling at the small of my back as if it had never left. "Doctor, I'm Derek Wellington, Amy's mate." His voice had gone soft and grave, the voice he used on board members. "She's had a terrible few days. Her father's funeral was yesterday. Give us a moment, please. We'll sort out whatever's needed."

The doctor looked relieved. "Of course, Mr. Wellington. But time matters."

He walked away. The moment the ward doors swung shut, Derek's hand left my back and the concern slid off his face like a coat.

"Sixty thousand," he said, and dropped into a waiting-room chair as if he owned it. "Do you have it?"

I said nothing.

"Of course you don't. Let me save you the arithmetic." He ticked it off on his fingers. "A dead father's debts. A month of unpaid rent. A mother in cardiac intensive care. And here's what happens next. You withdraw the rejection. You put my ring back on." His mouth curled. "You come home, you stand next to me on Friday like nothing happened, and I sign for the surgery this morning. Nobody ever has to hear about yesterday."

"Withdraw it."

"Stop being willful, Amy. You were upset. Fine. You've made your point. Now let's be adults. I didn't accept your rejection, so as far as the Moon Goddess is concerned, you're still mine."

"And if I don't?"

"Then what's your plan?" He said it patiently, like a teacher walking a slow student toward the answer. "No job. No degree. No savings. Who hires a girl with no experience and no references? Who lends sixty thousand dollars to the daughter of a man who died owing half of Rainwood?"

"You're right," I said.

He blinked. He hadn't expected that.

"No job. No degree. No references. All true." I turned to face him. "Do you know why? Your family decided a Luna doesn't do menial work, so I quit. Your family decided a Luna doesn't need college, so I never went. For two years I held a full-time position, Derek. Unpaid, no benefits, performance reviews conducted by your entire family. If we're going to discuss my résumé, I'd like it noted that I resigned."

His jaw tightened. "Resigned." He laughed, short and unkind. "Amy. A girl with a dead father, a sick mother, and a mountain of debt. You think that's a prize? Everyone in the Pack respects you because you wear my name. Without it you're a charity case. No wolf worth his claws will look at you twice."

"I'm trying to help you," he snapped, louder now, a nurse glancing over. "I'm giving you a name, a home, a future, and you want to burn all of it down over one mistake?"

"One mistake." I almost smiled. "Counted in what unit? And that's your idea of help? Wait until my mother's on a ventilator, name a price, and call it kindness. You're not offering me help. You're offering me a leash with a hospital bill attached."

His mouth opened. Nothing came out.

He stood, adjusted his cuffs, and found his voice again. It had gone quiet, which was worse. "Twenty-four hours, that's what the doctor said. Sit here and think about it. And remember who your father borrowed from. One word from me and those men are at your door by noon. One word the other way and they forget every cent." He looked at me. "Your mother's heart or your pride. Choose carefully."

"You're not threatening me because you're strong," I said. "You're threatening me because you're afraid."

He went still.

"A rejection you won't accept still cuts. I've felt it all night, and so have you. A wolf rejected by his fated mate grows weak, and everyone knows it. And you can't stand the story either: the Wellington heir, rejected by the charity case. Somebody will tell it at every dinner table in New York City. You don't want me back, Derek. You want the weakness gone and the rumor buried."

For a second I saw it land, deeper than I'd expected.

"Twenty-three hours, Amy," he said, and walked out.

The ward doors closed behind him. I sat down on the nearest chair because my knees decided for me.

The television in the corner had been murmuring all time, the volume turned low for the ICU. I wasn't listening until a deep, unhurried voice made me look up.

Richard Wellington stood in front of a glass tower in a dark suit, a microphone in his face. The caption read Darkwood Alpha pledges full tuition for 300 orphans. Beneath it, a ticker: Darkwood wins harbor contract over Rainwood, again.

"Alpha Wellington," the reporter said, "the Rainwood Wellingtons have requested a meeting with you three times this year. Is it true you declined?"

"My calendar is full of schools," Richard said pleasantly. He smiled, faintly, as if at a joke only he found funny. The segment cut to an advertisement.

I sat very still.

The late Alpha's mistress's son. The family had once handed him a slum and a factory and waited for him to fail. Now Darkwood was richer than all of Rainwood put together, Derek's father couldn't get a meeting, and Richard spent his days giving away scholarships and, one lost contract at a time, making sure the Wellingtons felt it. He wasn't just Derek's uncle. He was the one man in New York they couldn't touch, and the only one who wanted them to fall.

And I was the thing they prized most: the heir's fated mate.

Last night I had needed a reason to forget. Now I needed a reason he couldn't refuse.

'It's a long shot,' Lexie said.

'It's the only shot.'

I looked up the number for the Darkwood Wellington Company and dialed before I could talk myself out of it.

"Alpha Wellington's office."

"I need to speak to him." My voice cracked. "Tell him it's Amy Hart. The woman from last night."

A pause. A click. Then a deep voice, unhurried.

"Amy."

Not a question.

"I need a deal," I said. My hand was shaking. I hated that it shook. "You've spent years making trouble for the Wellingtons. I can hand you the biggest one."

He was quiet for a long moment. I held my breath.

"What kind of deal?" he asked.

I took a breath.

"The kind where neither of us walks away empty-handed."