Four Alphas Chose Her Over Me, Until I Disappeared and They Searched the World for Me Chapter 04

Four Alphas Chose Her Over Me, Until I Disappeared and They Searched the World for Me Chapter 04

That evening, Soren showed up to take me out.

Fine. One last date. Might as well end things properly.

He took me to the diner we’d been going to since we were kids.

But he spent almost the entire meal with his head down, answering messages.

Maren hadn’t eaten yet, apparently. He ordered her takeout on the spot.

Then Maren was worried she wouldn’t get along with her college roommate. He sent voice note after voice note, soothing her.

The burger in front of me had gone stone cold.

He never even noticed.

“Soren.”

“Hm?”

“Do you know what tomorrow is?”

He finally looked up.

“…Your birthday?”

I smiled. “Close enough.”

Tomorrow I’d be leaving. My new birthday—the first day of a whole new life.

Thinking he’d guessed right, he visibly relaxed and slid a milkshake across the table.

“Quit making that face.”

“Keep your head down at Northreach and behave.”

“I said I’d come see you, and I don’t break my word.”

When we left, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead.

“Be good and wait for the semester.”

“Once things settle down, the five of us will head up to the Northern Frontier together to visit.”

Oh.

Come find me.

Too bad you never will.

Back home, I plugged the portable hard drive Ronan had given me into my computer.

Then—file by file, I deleted everything from our shared past.

Eighteen years that belonged to me.

Why should a single minute of them go toward decorating Maren’s life?

I unplugged the drive, boxed it up, and mailed it to our secret hideout.

My last gift to them.

A past without me in it.

Clean. Spotless.

The next day, Maren showed up at my door.

When the pack first took her back in, I could tell her unfamiliar scent was getting her frozen out. So I was the one who brought her into our little group.

I’d treated her like a friend. She repaid me with a knife in the back.

“What do you want?”

Without her four bodyguards around, Maren’s true face came right out.

She gave my open suitcase a kick. “Packing already? The genius who pulled a 1490 on the UPT—and she’s settling for a trash school like NI.”

NI wasn’t trash.

It was the single most powerful strategic asset the werewolf alliance had.

It sat way out in the remote Northern Frontier precisely because its research had to stay classified.

Maren looked every inch the victor.

“Do you know what my friends say about you?”

“They laugh that you were the one who confessed—only to get dumped after barely a day.”

“They say you grew up alongside four heirs and actually started believing you were some kind of princess. And your precious loyal knights? Toys. One crook of my finger, and they all rolled over for me.”

So that was the story going around about me now.

There was a time when people in Crown City whispered about me—Soren taught himself pack law, rallied the other three, and dragged every last one of them into court.

Whatever. That was a lifetime ago.

She strutted and gloated, realized I wasn’t giving her a single reaction, and stormed off in a huff.

I glanced at my laptop. The camera had been running this whole time.

I’d set it up to document my new beginning. Instead, it had caught something far more entertaining.

Half an hour later, I was cutting the video together when someone started hammering on my door.

Soren and the other three barged straight in, Maren trailing behind them.

“Where’s Maren’s silver wolf pendant?”

“She was wearing it right before we came over.”

“One trip to your place, and it’s gone.”

I leaned against the doorframe.

That pendant—when I gave it up yesterday, Maren had insisted she couldn’t possibly take it. Then she’d turned around and put it on faster than anyone.

“Once I throw something out, I don’t make a habit of digging through the trash for it.”

Ronan’s face went cold.

“Who else would’ve taken it?”

“You regret giving away something that belonged to the five of us.”

“Hand it over. It belongs to Maren now.”