No Return Ticket for Our Lost Love Chapter 01

No Return Ticket for Our Lost Love Chapter 01

My fated mate was the top math prodigy at Argent Academy. Because of that, our friends strictly banned him from poker nights, dice, or any game that involved numbers.

One night, we were playing Truth or Dare at a supernatural lounge when he drew a dare: Kiss anyone in the room.

A collective groan echoed through the crowd. “What kind of a dare is that? Matthew and Hannah have been fated mates for four years. He’s obviously going to pick Hannah.”

I smiled, already leaning in toward him, when Matthew suddenly pressed his hand down on my wrist.

“Since it says anyone,” he announced, his voice smooth and steady, “let’s keep it completely random.”

“Starting from my right, we’ll count to the twenty-seventh person. Whoever lands on that number is the one.”

The entire room froze.

Including me, sitting right to his right.

…

“One, two, three…”

Spurred on by a few rowdy wolves who loved drama, the crowd began to chant the numbers out loud. Counting from Matthew’s right, I was number one. Then came two, three…

“Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…”

They didn’t even need to count. The exact second that number left Matthew’s mouth, my brain had already done the math.

My gaze cut across the crowded lounge, landing straight on the far end of the sectional sofa. There, sitting quietly under the glow of a floor lamp, was an Omega girl who hadn’t said more than a few words all night.

Rebecca Lowell.

Matthew’s direct junior in the department.

And the name that had been slipping out of his mouth with terrifying frequency lately.

“Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven!”

Right on cue, twenty hands pointed directly at Rebecca in her corner.

A suffocating silence dropped over the Lunar Lounge. The wolves who had just been chanting for a kiss now turned to look at me, their mouths half-open in sheer embarrassment.

Rebecca waved her hands in a frantic, flustered motion. “Matthew, this… this isn’t right…”

Her voice was barely a whisper, but her eyes locked onto his like a startled fawn. She looked so fragile that even I felt a sudden instinct to protect her.

And just as I expected, Matthew smiled.

He stood up, casually tugging at his collar, his tone dripping with effortless indifference. “Don’t worry about it. Rules are rules.”

“It’s just random luck. Whoever it lands on, lands on.”

Random?

He was a mathematical genius. In a lounge with fewer than thirty people, how could any number he picked possibly be random?

Under the incredulous stares of our friends, he walked toward her corner, his steps slow and deliberate. Finally, he stopped right in front of Rebecca and leaned down with a soft smile.

Sitting frozen in my seat, watching the sudden warmth ignite in his eyes, my mind flashed back to last autumn—the very first time he had mentioned her to me.

Matthew was the Alpha heir of the Nightveil Pack, an ancient and powerful bloodline. He was fiercely proud, arrogant, and rarely handed out compliments.

He had never praised me like that. Instead, he used to look at me with a slight frown and say, “How are you so clumsy?”

“Why is your fur always so dull and dry?”

Every time he said those careless words, my inner wolf would shrink back, deeply wounded. She had even convinced herself that a proud Alpha like Matthew was simply incapable of giving compliments to a she-wolf.

But she was wrong. Matthew was entirely capable of appreciation; he just didn’t appreciate me.

That evening, he had broken his usual silence to tell me, “We have a new girl in the department. She’s an Omega, but her grasp of logic is unbelievable. She almost tripped me up during the seminar.”

“And what’s even rarer—she shifted during advanced combat class. Her coat is so sleek and silver, it looks like it’s spun from pure moonlight.”

“She’s easily the most beautiful she-wolf I’ve ever seen.”

When he spoke about her, his eyes had held a striking intensity.

In the four years we had been together, I had only seen that look in his eyes twice.

The first time was the day he described her to me.

The second time was right now.

Matthew leaned closer to Rebecca until their silhouettes completely merged under the dim light. Then, he kissed her. Right in front of his fated mate.

The kiss grew deep and breathless, entirely unhurried, until the tension in the lounge began to shift into something thick and charged.

Our friends were completely stunned. When they looked over at me, their eyes held a mixture of pity, awkwardness, and a poorly hidden thrill. After all, nothing was more scandalous than an Alpha heir choosing a random Omega over his own fated mate.

It felt as though our fated bond was being violently ripped apart by an invisible hand.

A sharp, agonizing pain exploded in my chest, tearing down every single bone in my body. My inner wolf thrashed inside me, her claws scraping raw against my ribs.

She kept howling the same question over and over: Why? Why is our mate kissing another Omega?

To force down the suffocating pain, I grabbed a glass of ice water from the table and threw my head back, swallowing it in one massive gulp.

The freezing liquid rushed down my throat and hit my stomach like lead.

A violent shiver ran straight through me and my wolf.