I sit in the office. My office. My laptop sits open with nothing written. Tyson recommended writing down my feelings, expressing the emotions that I can't convey aloud. Tusk recommends screaming at the top of a mountain and letting every single burning feeling escape all at once. Neither sound great, especially when your mate is avoiding you like the plague. We see each other at meals, during meetings for the pack, and when I've helped the adjustment between the pack policies. It's becoming heart wrenching to see him. My entire body aches to hold him close, shed tears against his skin, and I think he wants the same. We're just so stubborn. Our own worst enemy.

The college wasn't excited about me withdrawing, not that I'd done anything yet, but they're losing a "big name." It was obvious in their attempts to cut me a discount, even a full-time scholarship, just to get me to stay on their campus. It took Tusk repeating what I'd said for the third time before they relented allowing me to file for refund and drop the classes, "You look like shit." Speak of the devil. Tusk struts into the room with Gerald behind him. He's always a sight for sore eyes. I've learned that Tusk understand me.

In between my wails of tears, Tusk shared his own demons. He's adopted. His birth parents tortured him brutally to keep him working the farm. As the second son, he was deemed useless, a hinderance to the power that the first was granted. A beta's second son. What a crime that is. Tusk ran as soon as he had the strength to get himself across the river. He refused to tell me the age but landed practically dead in the front yard of his now loving family. They cared for him, fed him, and provided all the clothes and hugs in the world. When he finally spoke, the whole time choosing to remain in silence for fear they'd return him to his abusive family, he asked for a new name. To this day Tusk hasn't shared his name with anyone, nor which beta he's the son of. I would assume Gerald knows the whole truth, but his lips are just as sealed.

"I appreciate your honesty."

"Is he still avoiding you?" Tyson joins the group coming in behind the couple. I groan dropping my head on the wood. I'm floored when Monica and Reynolds join the damn party with a platter of food for lunch, "Oh hey girls!" Tyson waves them in, Tusk and Gerald moving so they can rush up to my desk. Both the ladies have been excellent in their time here. Avoiding men and working hard, "What's your plan for the day, Luna?"

As my request, they only address me by title in front of people not inner circle. I've decided to have my own support group. I don't get a beta or anything like the alpha, no matter how much Tyson tells me I can boss him around just as much as Ares. It just doesn't feel right. Inner circle including (for wisdom, snacks, and tears only): Tusk, Gerald, Tyson, and the crabby servant Delia. She's a bitch and hates my guts- or pretends to. She's in the circle so I don't rip her face off for disrespect, however she lets me rant in silence and never takes it from the room. Delia doesn't gossip, nor does she want to. I'll give her that, "I haven't the slightest idea. Delia told me that I'm too skinny, so she's convinced me to go out for sweets with her in the city."

"Is the Alpha aware that you might leave the land?" Tusk grunts from his corner of the room while Gerald looks terrified of my response.

"As he's been avoiding me, and I him, I would bet that he doesn't know. He'll find out when he needs to." Speaking of the woman, she enters the space with a silent glare towards Monica and Reynolds.

"Aren't you ladies meant to be cleaning the basement? I don't remember sending you up here with lunch." Delia scans her eyes over the girls that squirm under her judgmental gaze. It takes a good swallow to keep from laughing at the girl's fear. I've come to know that Delia wouldn't harm a fly, while she acts like it, "Get out before I say something you'll regret later." Tusk informed me of her past. Her mate died a week after they met, nothing extravagant or heroic, just a car accident with a drunk driver that sent him into a tree. His wolf couldn't heal around a branch causing him to bleed out before the responders could get to him.

No. The responders assumed no one could survive such a thing and kept him in the tree until they finally crawled up the ladder to find him finally dead. This led to a hatred of humans from Delia. She tries her best not to take it out one people, and she has a soft spot for the servants that run through the pack lands honestly paying back their debts. If she wasn't so cold to everything around her, I could consider her a friend, but I'll have a long while before I allow myself to get close to someone like that again. Jessica's ruined me for the time, and while the guys take care of me most of it appears out of obligation to the Alpha.

The Alpha that wants nothing to do with me right now.

"I'll eat this, and we can grab the sweets we talked about. Or is there something else?" I motion to the lovely meal settled in front of me. Delia nods once, then walks back to the door where the other two servants just rushed from, "Maybe half an hour?"

"I'll be back in twenty. I need to change, and every bit of that plate will be eaten by the time I return, Veronica." She spits over her shoulder, then leaves. I shake with laughter. Such a crabby woman.

"She scares me." Tyson rubs the back of his head. I throw my head back falling into more laughter, "Why are you laughing? She could rip you to shreds and have no regrets!"

Tusk shoves at his shoulder, "Don't joke about such things. Not now. Delia is loyal to the crown without fault. Do not make such jokes about an honorable woman broken over the death of her love."

"And what does she owe the Alpha? She was brought in as a mate, not as a servant." Tyson looks back to the now closed door, "Why does she choose to stay here when she could be seeing the world?"

I bite my lip to keep from telling her secret. She'd fallen pregnant in that week. They'd slept together the same night they'd met, and right before the accident she was puking and holding the positive test. While she was confused, he told her the truth. In her anger she sent him away. That car accident happened after they're argument. Right after he pronounced being a wolf, and how happy he was to become a father. Her human fear ate at her, then guilt wrecked her. In her sorrow the baby was pronounced dead in the womb. She had to give birth to a still born child, then handle all the medical bills that came with it.

We'd had a similar background. Her and I. She'd worked herself to the bone to keep afloat, meaning she had no money to her name. As she wasn't marked, her mate's parents refused to give her money. The Alpha handled all her bills and then some. Now she works, as the newly promoted, head servant. Her debt was paid long ago. Now it's simply the need to belong. Delia could leave whenever she wanted. But why would she? The Alpha that supported her, the servants that – while they are scared – care for her, are all here. The loss she's experienced was easier to handle with the love of the wolves.

I wouldn't leave either. However, her guilt has made her bitter. She blames herself, "That's her story to tell, yes?" I answer. Tyson shrugs while I pick at the meal shoveling down as fast as my gullet could handle. No matter how much I know about her, and care for her, she's still terrifying and I don't want to be on the receiving end of her anger.

~

"Alpha, shouldn't you speak to her?" Hours later I sit in front of Ares. He's drunk across the desk singing his sadness into the air. I pity Veronica in these moments. Being tied to such a broken man who doesn't know how to process real feelings. He stole her away, thought money was all it'd take, felt fear, excitement, and then pure terror. Now he sits across from me with the glassy look of lost. He doesn't know what to do other than work to the bone and drink, "She's hurting just as much as you are, and you two need to work together to get through this."

"She doesn't need me. She's never needed me. Always making her own decisions and rushing away for this and that. Instead of telling me her plans... always just fucks me to do it herself. Only claimed me to protect the baby, I marked her without consent, I just keep fucking up." He slams his head against the table a red mark blotting over his tan skin. I don't know how to comfort him, I'm not a comforter in the slightest, but something must give, "I hold her back, Tyson."

"Alpha..."

"Drop the formalities. In these walls you're a brother." He tips his glass to me. I take in a deep breath.

"Ares. Yes, you've fucked up. Many times, more than I can count actually..." He shoots me a deadly glare. I submit that it wasn't the best thing to say, "But she's still here. She took on your mother in the challenge, accepted her role as Luna. Does it really fucking matter how it happened? She loves you. You should spend every day thanking her, praising her, showing her what it means to be loved. All I see you doing is throwing a pity party because your mate can counter your strength."

"You speak your mind so freely."

"Someone has to take the Alpha off his pedestal every once and while." I grab the glass from his hand and dump the leftovers into the local plant. Poor thing, "Your mate wasn't made to be submissive. Why would we want a Luna that bends to the will of her mate? She's supposed to your check. You should kneel to her, Ares. Why are you mumbling such sad things when you have such a badass mate sitting down the hall? Yes, you lost your pup. Yes, she goes against your wishes. Yes, she doesn't need you. But fuck man. She chooses you. What more could you want? What more could you ask for?"

"If I offered her the chance to break our bond, she'd take it Tyson."

"You wouldn't."

"I've been thinking about it this week. Offering her the chance. It's what kept me away, just two cuts and she's free to be the human she's always wanting to be. All the money, travel, education she could ever want. And I wouldn't hold her back. It's clear to me that I'm nothing but a wall for her. Shouldn't I be more than that? Shouldn't I be a ladder into the better world? And yet here I am. Drinking away the pain because I know at the end of this hellish day, I am not worth the woman you so coldly remind me sits at the end of this hallway."

I dragged myself from the pack lands after that. A local coffee shop sits in the middle of town, a perfect place to pretend the dreadful life of the wolfs sits within the forest. Ares hasn't been flying into the office, and I've been splitting my time between beta work and bank work. It's like the time we used to manage so well isn't the same time we deal with now.

"Hi, yes. May I get a hot coffee, three sugars, with oat milk? Thanks. No, no. You keep the change." That voice. I turn my head up from the americano in my hand. Her. My insides fizzle, heart hammering from the deepest parts of my chest. It's her. She's here. She's here. The woman I'm meant to worship stands at the counter clicking across her phone waiting on the girlish coffee order. I don't care. I'll buy her all the oat milk in the world if it gets her beside me. Is oat even a milk?

Her hair's midnight black, one eye green, the other blue. I've never seen such a combination. Her smile brings dimples to her cheeks when she says thanks, and with the smallest gap between her two front teeth. She's maybe five feet. Perfect to toss around. Well, those kinds of thoughts wouldn't make me approachable. I'm enchanted by the swish of her long hair while she walks, and the laughter that bubbles from her when she settles at the table with her friends. In a horrible fashion, I use my enhanced hearing to tune into the conversation begging for her name to be spoken, "Yeah Chels. It's terrible what boss did to us. How can he ask for overtime like this right before my vacation?" Her voice is like sweet honey. My wolf is barely keeping it together. Her friend agrees, asking what she plans to do with the new development.

"I have absolutely no idea. My teams project just hit another wall. I won't be able to review this code until my software developer fixes all the other problems I pointed out. Rushing something like this won't get them anywhere." Beauty mumbles in irritation, then takes a long drag of her coffee.

"That's what you get for working in quality assurance at a major company. Always rushing. Too bad they haven't the smallest idea that you're leaving soon. Where did you say you were going Milo?"

Is her name really Milo? How cute, "I've finally got the money from the settlement. Selling the house was easy in this market, and I've enough money to travel. Maybe I'll fall off the face of the earth."

And that pulled me from my seat walking straight up to the table. I pop out a business card, my nostrils flaring at her delectable scent, "So sorry to interrupt. My name is Tyson. I work for a top bank in the area, and we're looking for QA. I overheard that you were planning to leave your company, and I want to offer double-no triple what they were paying you." Fucking desperate.

Milo flattens her brows. I catch her eyes going large at the sight of me, her own nose flaring to match my own. Even human she can identify me as someone important to her, "I'm s sorry. That sounds wonderful, but I'm taking time off."

"Whatever number you write down on this napkin," I pull one from the table's holder, then pop a pen from my suit jacket, "I'll pay you. If you agree to work for us."

"I doubt you want to pay me what I'm worth." She smirks, eyes turning a shade mischievous.

"Petal, I'll pay you whatever gets you at my side, even then I plan to offer you much more."

"Is that the case?" She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth; I restrain the claws that want to break into the table. I've gone without a mate while watching everyone else find theirs. I've suffered in silence silently begging the gods to gift me my angel, and now she sits here. Taunting me.

How perfect is she?

"Milo Holden. Why don't we talk details tomorrow? Over lunch?" She holds out her hand, red polish glinting in the café light.

"Tyson Wells. It'd be a pleasure." I wrap my hand through hers. The sparks shudder over my skin, her own hand tugging from mine in confusion, "Sorry. Must be the carpet in here."

She frowns, another glance over my face, "Yes. The carpet."

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