The Wolfless Mate's Hidden Primordial Blood

Brea Barnett POV:

I folded my rain-soaked black umbrella and pushed open the heavy wrought-iron doors of the Marshall Pack manor, my soles making zero sound against the plush carpet.

The charcoal in the main hall fireplace was dead, yet an abnormal warmth hung in the air, thick with hard liquor and the cloying, sickly-sweet pheromone of a female werewolf in heat.

I pressed my fingers against my throbbing temples. As a wolfless woman born without an inner wolf, the raw, musky stench of a beast's mating heat made my stomach churn.

Hanging my drenched trench coat on the foyer rack, I stepped lightly up the spiral wooden staircase padded with sound-absorbing wool, my eyes catching a faint warm glow spilling from a guest room door left ajar at the end of the second-floor hallway.

Right in the middle of the hallway lay a dark gray cashmere tie, the gift I had tied around my husband Eldridge Marshall's neck with my own hands at last year's Full Moon Gala.

Less than three steps away lay a torn lilac silk robe, a seasonal piece taken straight from my master bedroom closet.

Low, suppressed male groans drifted through the crack in the door, tangled with a woman's trembling, breathless whimpers that cut through the dead silence of the early morning.

Leaning against the freezing carved marble wall, I peered through the half-inch gap and saw two naked bodies tangled together on the bed in the guest room.

A tall, muscular gray-wolf Alpha loomed over the woman, his bronze back crisscrossed with old, jagged burn scars left from ten years locked in a pure-silver dungeon.

The woman's slender arms clung weakly around his neck, and under the dim wall sconce, a tiny light-brown mole right below her right earlobe exposed her identity-Deloris Sweeney, the chief secretary to the CEO of Marshall Group, who had clearly used her position by his side to seduce her boss and covet my place.

Eldridge lowered his head to roughly kiss away the tears at the corner of her eye, a low, territorial rumble vibrating deep in his throat with a wild abandon I had never seen before.

My stomach cramped violently as if twisted by a fist. A mate's betrayal trampled the oath of the Moon Goddess, and even without a permanent marking bite, it left a festering poison in the soul.

I dug the fingernails of my left hand deep into my palm until crescent-shaped bloody grooves formed, using the sharp physical sting to force back the tears burning my eyes.

Instead of kicking the door open and screaming like a hysterical housewife, I drew a slow breath of cold air to steady my trembling knuckles.

Pulling open the hidden zipper of my handbag, I slipped a button-sized micro holographic spectrum camera out of the inner lining.

My fingertips brushed its cold metal casing before I held my breath, used the blind spot of the hallway shadow, and pressed the magnetic lens firmly behind a vintage bronze ornament above the doorframe.

A tiny blue light blinked once as the lens locked onto the sweating pair on the bed, writing high-definition holographic footage and voiceprint waves irreversibly onto an encrypted chip.

"Alpha, what if Luna comes back early from the herb base... will she tear me apart?" Deloris's syrupy voice floated out from the bed.

Eldridge let out a condescending scoff, his rough palm gripping her chin.

"She's a wolfless cripple without an inner wolf, as tame as a declawed cat. As long as I scrub my scent, she won't suspect a thing for the rest of her life."

His words were like a bucket of ice water dumped over me from head to toe, freezing every last drop of warmth from our three years of marriage into solid ice.

Making sure the lens was running smoothly, I pulled my arm back and retreated down the dark hallway without making a sound.

As I stepped back into the pitch-black foyer, the foul stench of lust and betrayal nearly brought me to my knees by the shoe rack, and I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep from retching out loud.

The backlash of the violated mate bond swept through my limbs like a sudden wildfire, boiling my skin while leaving the marrow of my bones freezing cold.

Snatching my wet trench coat off the rack and leaving my suitcase untouched by the wall, I shoved the front doors open and ran straight back into the pouring rain.

Freezing raindrops lashed against my burning cheeks as I gripped a stone pillar outside the manor gates and threw up until only bitter stomach acid came up.

Stumbling down the empty private tree-lined drive, I let the downpour wash away my staggering footsteps.

When I reached the main road outside the pack territory boundary, my cramping fingers pulled an unregistered burner phone from my inner pocket.

The screen lit up my pale face as I accessed an offshore safe account and prepaid for an unregistered suite at a discreet hotel downtown.

A cruising yellow cab sliced through the rain and splashed muddy water up to my knees as it braked by the curb, and I yanked the rear door open to throw myself onto the damp vinyl seat.

The driver glanced into the rearview mirror, startled by my pallor and dripping clothes.

"Hospital, ma'am? You look like you're burning up with a terrible fever."

I pulled the cold, soaked coat tight around my chest, my teeth chattering as I forced my voice to stay flat.

"Take me to the express hotel on Seventh Avenue. Drive fast, and I'll pay triple the fare."

Twenty minutes later, I staggered out of the cab into the dingy hotel room and collapsed onto the cheap mattress in my soaking clothes. My hand was still clutching the burner phone as the fever dragged me into darkness.

Brea Barnett POV:

I gasped and bolted upright from a suffocating nightmare, cold sweat dripping down my forehead onto the rough synthetic sheets of the hotel bed.

Morning sunlight sliced through the thin plastic blinds into the dusty room, the storm outside replaced by the sharp honking of downtown rush-hour traffic.

Propping myself up on aching, weak arms, I noticed the raging fever from the mate-bond backlash had faded, leaving my head cold and clear.

Walking barefoot across the freezing floor to the stained bathroom sink, I twisted the faucet and splashed biting cold water over my face again and again.

In the mirror, my dark chestnut hair hung in tangled strands around a pale face, and my amber eyes were bloodshot, stripped of the soft devotion they used to hold.

As I stared at the water swirling down the drain, the past three years with Eldridge flashed through my head one frame at a time.

I remembered the late nights when he came home exhausted, blaming sudden security crises at the pack headquarters while subtly turning his nose away whenever he hugged me.

I remembered the faint red scratches on the side of his neck that he always brushed off with a gentle pat on my head, claiming a rookie warrior had nicked him on the training grounds.

I remembered the expensive dress shirts he tossed into the laundry basket, carrying a trace of ylang-ylang perfume that happened to be Deloris's signature scent.

Every tender look and bowl of soup he made me was just a cage built by a dominant Alpha to keep a docile canary trapped inside.

Under the brutal genetic laws of werewolf society, a wolfless person born without an inner wolf was treated like untouchable trash, yet nobody knew that the unawakened blood of the primordial White Wolf flowed inside my veins, and I had foolishly mistaken his control for salvation.

A drop of cold water fell from my chin and hit the ceramic basin with a sharp plink, snapping me out of my thoughts.

Pulling a rough paper towel to dry my face, I walked back to the bed and dug the burner phone out of my bag.

Swiping across the screen, I opened the remote cloud drive linked to the micro lens and pulled up the recording from the guest room.

The video paused at six in the morning, showing Eldridge pressing a light kiss to Deloris's bare forehead before dressing neatly and walking out the door.

His sharp, handsome face looked relaxed and satisfied, showing zero guilt for breaking his vow to the Moon Goddess.

I copied and encrypted the video files, uploading them through multiple proxy servers to three separate offshore cloud drives.

Under ancient pack law, a male mate's infidelity was a felony, but without holographic footage and pheromone voiceprint samples, the Elder Council would never approve a unilateral contract termination.

Besides, Eldridge was a billionaire Alpha CEO commanding the city's largest business empire, while in the public eye, I was just a bankrupt Barnett heiress working as a lowly finance intern with no inner wolf.

To strip him of his pride and walk away clean, I needed the sharpest legal weapon on the continent.

Scrolling to the very bottom of my encrypted contacts, I stopped on a name I had not touched in three years-Jeanett Flynn.

Three years ago, when the Barnett Pack collapsed and I insisted on giving up our family liquidation rights to marry Eldridge, my best friend Jeanett had smashed her wineglass on the floor in fury.

She had warned me then that betting my life on a ruthless dictator of an Alpha would leave me chewed up to the bone, and we had parted ways after a bitter fight, though she remained the most lethal pack-law attorney in the country.

My thumb hovered over the call button for thirty seconds before I pressed down firmly.

A monotonous ringing tone echoed through the receiver, each beep tapping against my taut nerves.

Right before the call could go to voicemail, the line clicked open and a crisp, cold female voice spoke up.

"Who is this? If you're selling something, hang up."

I gripped the casing of the phone, my throat dry and tight as I spoke.

"Jeanett, it's me... Brea."

Dead silence fell on the other end of the line, the sound of flipping legal papers cutting off mid-rustle.

After a long pause, Jeanett's voice came back, thick with biting sarcasm and barely concealed anger.

"What a rare honor. How did the noble Luna of the Marshall Pack find time to remember a poor lawyer like me?"

Closing my eyes by the sunlit window, I skipped all pleasantries and kept my tone level.

"Jeanett, I need you to take a case for me. A lawsuit to dissolve my mate contract."

A heavy thud echoed through the speaker as Jeanett's fountain pen dropped onto her mahogany desk.

"Are you out of your mind? Do you have any idea what you're saying right now?"

Brea Barnett POV:

An hour after hanging up the phone, I left the hotel. Outside a private room at the Silver Moon Café on the edge of downtown, I pulled down the brim of my black baseball cap, adjusted my face mask, and pushed open the heavy velvet-curtained door.

Sitting in a mahogany leather chair inside, a tall woman with sharp, ear-length hair and a tailored dark gray suit immediately set down her coffee cup and fixed her gaze on me from behind gold-rimmed glasses.

I locked the wooden door behind me, walked over to the sofa across from Jeanett, and took off my cap and mask, exposing my pale, makeup-free face.

Our eyes met as the rich aroma of Blue Mountain coffee mixed with the low hum of the room's acoustic privacy shield, neither of us speaking for ten full seconds.

Jeanett let out a cold snort and slid a non-disclosure agreement across the table.

"You look like you just crawled out of a grave. What, did the great Alpha of the city forget to feed you?"

Picking up a pen, I signed my name at the bottom of the paper and looked straight into her eyes.

"At four o'clock this morning, I came back early from my herb inspection trip and caught him in the guest room bed with his secretary."

Jeanett's hand jerked on her porcelain cup, hot black coffee nearly splashing onto her cream-colored trousers.

"What did you just say? Eldridge Marshall cheated on you?"

"With Deloris Sweeney, the personal secretary he's kept by his side for just over a year."

I pulled a napkin from the holder and wiped the dark droplets off the table in front of her.

Fury flared in Jeanett's cold eyes, the sharp pressure of an angry Beta werewolf vibrating through the cramped room.

"That filthy bastard! By the Moon Goddess, how dare he break his vow? Doesn't he know how badly a mate's betrayal destroys the soul of an unmarked female?"

She lunged forward to grab my wrist, her fingers brushing the bloody crescent marks on my palm, and her anger instantly cracked into raw distress.

"Did you... did you suffer a mate-rejection fever last night?"

"Burned all night in an express hotel on Seventh Avenue, but I survived."

Pulling my hand back, I picked up the glass of warm water the waiter had left and took a small sip.

"Are you insane? Mate rejection damages your internal organs and nerves! You don't have an inner wolf to heal yourself-you should have called a pack ambulance immediately!"

Jeanett slammed her palm against the table, her voice dropping into a fierce growl.

"If I called the pack medical team, the manor's security grid would have alerted Eldridge within seconds that I was in the manor and knew his secret," I cut in calmly.

Jeanett froze, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose as she stared at me like she was seeing me for the first time.

"You... you didn't confront him?"

"Making a scene would only push him to use his Alpha's Command to lock me inside the main house and force a marking bite on my neck to shut me up forever."

Reaching into my handbag, I pulled out a micro card reader and slid it across the polished wood.

In pack law, once an Alpha left a permanent marking bite on a female's neck, any unilateral infidelity lawsuit became void, turning the female into a helpless possession.

Jeanett plugged the reader into her palmtop holographic computer, her fingers flying across the touchpad until the crystal-clear footage of the guest room floated in midair between us.

As she listened to Deloris's breathless moans and Eldridge's arrogant laughter on the recording, Jeanett's face darkened like a storm cloud.

"Absolute trash! That cheap tramp is even wearing your silk robe from the master bedroom!"

Shutting off the projection with a snap of her fingers, she narrowed her eyes at me.

"The angle is tricky and the resolution is military-grade. Where did a finance intern get a micro spectrum lens like this?"

"A self-defense gadget I modified myself. That's not important."

Brushing past the technical question, I leaned forward with my hands folded.

"With this video, can we make him walk away with nothing in the Elder Court?"

Jeanett let out a long breath and leaned back against the leather cushion, slipping into the cold calculation of a chief attorney.

"No, Brea. Reality is much uglier than you think. He controls over seventy percent of the city's werewolf defense forces and core industries, and those old fossils on the Elder Council all live off his security dividends. With just one video, they'll rule it a temporary loss of instinct, fine him a public apology, and order him to mark you immediately to stabilize the bond."

My mouth curved into a cold, mocking smile.

"Right. A world where genetics and power excuse everything."

"Which is why one video isn't enough," Jeanett whispered, leaning in as she pulled a classified agency contract from her briefcase and slapped it on the table. "We need systematic proof of long-term adultery and evidence that he embezzled pack funds for his mistress. Authorize me to hire rogue trackers using third-party funds to tap his every move."

Without a second of hesitation, I uncapped the pen and signed my name on the client line.

"Even if it costs everything I have, I'll make him pay a heavy price."