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The Alpha of the Columbia Basin pack picked glass out of the palm of his hand. Despite the usual nature of his home as the pack’s base of operations, there was no one here to help him clean up this particular mess. Even his daughter was out seeing friends, leaving him alone.
Considering that he was about five seconds from fully changing because he just heard the woman he loved with another man, that was a very good thing.
By all rights, he should not have been able to hear her. But something about her made it impossible to lose track. She lingered in his brain like spots after staring at the sun. As soon as he had declared her his mate to the pack - something he had done for both practical and deeply, deeply selfish reasons - the connection he had with her blossomed. They had been moving towards something more, towards the place where she actually accepted not only being his mate but being his. Maybe that was why it felt like being shot in the heart when he heard her come.
His ears strained against all his better judgement, so he ground his palm back into the broken glass, hoping that would distract him, stop him from searching for any indication that they were still, that she was still…
He couldn’t hear anything more. Somehow, that was worse. He banged his fist on the counter, the glass dancing from the impact. A loose shard impaled itself into the meat of his palm. He stared as blood dripped onto his marble countertops. He should take the glass out. It’s not like he could go to him for quick medical care.
He pulled the shard out, leaving a jagged hole behind. Fuck it - the wound would heal itself in minutes, but the visceral pain of knowing that his fucking mate was over there, not here ...
He had imagined what she would be like. He knew that she would look fucking magnificent spread out beneath him, or maybe kneeling above him. Knew the taut lines of her body would shake from the pleasure that he would bring her. Knew her voice, usually teasing and acerbic, would get sweet and needy the longer he would draw it out.
That someone else got to hear her as she sounded like that? Got to be the reason her voice broke as an orgasm ripped through her?
That she could have another man’s cum in her?
It was untenable. It took all of his self-control to keep from giving in to his rage, shedding the last grips on his humanity. He took deep breaths, something he learned to help calm the anger that could turn him. He was the fucking Alpha. He could hold his wolf by the scruff of its neck and keep it inside even when he wanted nothing more than to give into his baser instincts. Especially because the baser instinct was to turn, run to her, and rip the other wolf to shreds. That wouldn't be how he won this battle.
He had been so aware of her boundaries, the walls that she put up between them. He had backed off when she gently stopped their dates. He had known she had stuff going on - who doesn’t have shit going on? He hadn’t wanted to stop, had been beyond belief that he was starting to get to see the deeper side of her, the one he had always suspected existed. You didn’t get to be as independent as she was without also having known loneliness. He knew loneliness. But he was playing the long game, letting her move at her pace. On pain of death did he want to be the reason for her hurting.
He slowly, carefully, began to gather the glass into his palm to throw it out. The wounds were already starting to heal, red and raw. He wasn’t some pup anymore, going around taking his rage out on every inanimate object in the vicinity. He was a respected Alpha and, almost more importantly, a fucking adult.
He tossed the glass in the trash can, remembering how he had acted when his rival arrived. He had known the weight of the years between the two of them, but had felt confident - maybe wrongly so - that the woman she had become wasn’t still in love with that shared past. The interactions between his mate and his rival had looked more like those of old friends, to his eye.
And it wasn’t like he didn’t understand what baggage people could have. She herself had been intimately privy to his own relationship falling apart. So, he’d understood. Or he thought he had. Then he had smelled the scent coming off the other wolf - heady, heavy, dark with want, curling around her, invading his territory and his mating bond. As much as he respected the man - and knew, logically, that he also had no claim to the woman - his wolf disagreed.
He’d never pushed, even when he had wanted to, even when the power that surged in his veins told him to, told him that it was his right to. She was her own person, and he was trying so damn hard to be respectful.
But then he remembered her voice, from moments before, the keening sound sweet like wolfsong after a hunt.
And not for him.
He slammed his hand into the wall, felt the skin on his knuckles break and his resolve strengthen.
He thought he had had enough control of himself that he could be a gentleman. But she was his mate, and he wouldn’t stop until everyone who mattered knew.