My Alpha Married My Best Friend Over a Game Chapter 01

For the fourth time, I was heading to the pack temple with Alpha Clive Pemberton for our bonding

ceremony.

We had just reached the marble steps when he and my best friend, Charlotte Reynolds, suddenly froze.

Their leg muscles bulged a little, as if they were bracing themselves. No matter how hard I pulled, I

couldn’t make them move an inch.

I knew it. They were playing the statue game again.

No warning. No reason. Just a contest to see who could stay still like a statue the longest.

The first time I joined the pack trial, we agreed all three of us would jump together.

Then they pushed me, terrified of heights, off the ledge into the lake below. After that, they just stood on

the platform without moving

When I climbed back up, soaked to the bone, and demanded to know why they’d done it, they gave me

nothing

Finally, they said, “We were playing the statue game. Whoever moves or talks first loses.”

When we confirmed we were mates, I shyly held out my hand and waited for Clive to put the laurel ring on

He froze.

He just let my hand hang in the air.

Pack members began whispering around us. “She can’t really be the Alpha’s mate, right? Look at him. He

doesn’t even want to claim her.”

I cried until my makeup was ruined and was about to go home. Only then did he put the ring on my finger.

“Crybaby. Why can’t you take a joke?”

Charlotte hooked her arm through mine affectionately. “Silly, how are you still not used to it?”

I thought I would get used to it eventually,

But today, before we left, I had warned them again and again not to play the game. At least not during a

bonding ceremony witnessed by The Moon Goddess.

And yet they had started again.

Exhaustion washed over me. I let go of them.

I would never get used to this game. I was done playing along.

Pack members watching us whispered.

“Why aren’t they going in? Is something wrong?”

“Can’t you see the Alpha isn’t moving? Felicity is the one panicking. I told you Alpha Clive would never bond with an Omega.”

Their voices were quiet, but I heard every word.

Each one cut into me like a blade.

I looked at Alpha Clive. “Are we going into the temple today to take the vow or not?”

He didn’t speak.

He didn’t even spare me a glance.

We hadn’t completed the bonding ceremony, but at least he could give me some comfort through the

mind link.

I laughed at myself.

I already knew the answer, and I was still humiliating myself.

I let go of his hand and stepped back.

A flicker of surprise crossed Clive’s face.

But he still didn’t move.

“Clive, play by yourselves, I’m done.”

I turned and walked away without looking at them again.

No footsteps followed.

They wouldn’t chase me until the game ended.

I went back alone to the small house near the pack border. The walk took over an hour.

No one called. No one even sent a message to ask how I was.

I took out my phone and replied to the Northern Outpost assignment order the pack elders’ council had

sent last week. Then I started packing.

My things were pathetically few. Half a suitcase and I was done.

When I first joined The Ironthorn Pack, I’d had three full boxes.

That was before Charlotte suggested the statue game.

The punishment for the loser was to hand my things over to her as trophies.

The first time, it was an obsidian necklace I’d saved three months’ salary to buy.

I didn’t want to give it up. Clive comforted me. “Darling, accept the loss. I’ll buy you another one later.”

Three years passed. I never got a new necklace.

The second time, it was a protection charm we’d made together at the Full Moon Ceremony.

At the Moon Goddess’s sacred spring, he and Charlotte started their statue game again.

No matter how hard I pulled, he didn’t move half an inch.

More and more werewolves gathered. I finally broke and shouted, “Why are you doing this to me?!”

Only then did Clive reach out and hug me. “Why can’t you take a joke? Look, I lost this game just to

comfort you.”

So Charlotte demanded the protection charm Alpha Clive had made.

I asked him, “Is that something you can just give away?”

Clive ruffled my hair. “I lost because of you. Don’t make a scene.”

The token we’d spent half a day making ended up in Charlotte’s hands.

The third time, it was the brooch my mom had left me before she died.

My wolf was unstable then. I had a fever so high I was close to passing out. I begged Clive to take me to

the pack doctor.

He and Charlotte didn’t move.

In the end, I collapsed, and only then did he take me to the pack hospital.

The price was that he lost my brooch as a bet.

I begged him through tears. “That’s all I have left from my mom. You can’t do this…”

His voice was gentle, but his words were cruel. “I had no choice. I lost. If you hadn’t fainted, I wouldn’t have lost.”

There were too many other times. I couldn’t count them all.

I once asked Alpha Clive why, when they played, it was always my things that were at stake.

He said, “Because you’re my future Luna.”

I used to be moved by those words. Now they only made me sick.

I was packing the last of my clothes when I finally heard the front door open.

Then came Charlotte’s voice. “Felicity, Alpha Clive lost the game again because he came back to find you. This time, the punishment is that he and I go to the temple first and complete a mate vow.”