The Alpha’s Enemy Claims His Human Mate Chapter 08

The Alpha’s Enemy Claims His Human Mate Chapter 08

## Elena

I woke up in a stranger’s room.

The sheets were softer than mine at home. The water in the shower was hotter. The robe on the bathroom door had the weight of a towel.

I had three unread texts from Dr. Marin.

Elena, you do not have to come in. But if you come in, I’ve held your office.

I stared at that one for a long time.

I did not go in.

I showered, dressed in the clean scrubs I had packed, pulled the hotel comb through my hair, and watched another small handful of it come out. Today was my twenty-eighth birthday. Three years ago on this day Barrett had knelt in a rented restaurant and asked a question with the ring already open in his hand. I had said yes before he finished.

I opened the door of the suite.

The hallway was full of roses.

White ones. Waist-high columns of them, flanking the carpet, all the way to the elevator. A line of hotel staff stood along the wall with their hands folded at the front.

“Happy birthday, Dr. Halloran.” The girl nearest the door. Name tag CASSIE. “You have the most romantic husband.”

“Your flower path is breathtaking, ma’am,” said the next. “We should all be so lucky.”

“This way, Dr. Halloran.”

They walked me past three thousand white roses to a glass elevator marked with a gold B & E. I let them.

Reid was waiting at the rooftop.

He would not meet my eyes.

“Ma’am.”

“Reid.”

“The Alpha has arranged — he wanted you to have a proper birthday. Please. Let me show you.”

I had wanted a birthday from Barrett for two years. I had wanted one simple dinner in a restaurant where he and I could be seen at the same table at the same time. I had asked twice. He had told me, both times, it was not the time.

This was the time.

The rooftop had been dressed for a woman I had, until yesterday, believed I was.

Fourteen settings laid out on one long table. A string quartet in white tie. A private chef bowing at the sideboard. The sun coming through the glass in gold slabs. My own name, unlit, spelled out in globes on the roof of the tower across the river.

One place setting.

“Please sit, Dr. Halloran.”

I sat.

The quartet began. The chef came over with a single orchid. I thanked him in the voice I used for husbands who would not look at the ultrasound screen.

I pulled out my phone to check if Barrett had sent me anything.

Barrett had not.

The news app had.

ALPHA BARRETT SHOPS ROSE GOLD WITH PRESS SECRETARY — IS IRONBOUND’S NEXT LUNA PREGNANT?

I clicked it before I decided to.

Two photographs. Barrett on Dresden Avenue with Sophia on his arm. Her left hand resting on the first slight curve of her belly. Her right hand, clearly visible, on a rose-gold pendant at her throat.

She’s wearing the necklace he just bought, said the first comment.

He took the WHOLE NEW COLLECTION, said the second.

So romantic to buy jewelry with your baby’s mother ✨

Alpha Barrett is SO hot when he’s in love.

I read to the bottom of the thread.

Then I set the phone face-down on the linen.

I stood up.

“Dr. Halloran.” Reid was at the doorway. “Ma’am. Please. The Alpha is on his way. He must be stuck in traffic.”

My phone lit.

Barrett.

I lifted it to my ear.

“Elena, love, I am so sorry. Something came in with the Vitalis team that has to be handled today. I am going to be late. Start without me. I’ll be there.”

I watched Reid’s face through the call. He could hear him.

“Fine,” I said.

I set the phone down and turned back to the table.

“Bring the food,” I told the chef.

I ate alone.

The quartet kept playing. The wine was good. The roof was cold. When I was finished I stood, thanked the chef by his first name, which I had learned in the first course, and walked out past Reid.

He did not stop me this time.

“Don’t follow me, Reid. Please.”

He bowed his head.

On the sidewalk I typed family law attorney downtown into my phone.

The nearest was eight blocks east, in a building I had driven past a hundred times. It was four in the afternoon. The light was starting to drop. I walked.

Four blocks in, I noticed the three men.

They were at the far corner, leaning on the rail of a construction alley. Jackets open over bare chests. A bottle in one hand. The kind of bare-armed wolves the news called Rogues because unpacked was too generous a word.

One of them looked up at me.

I kept walking. A human alone on a gray afternoon, scrubs under a coat. I calculated what I could hit him with: phone, satchel, the hem of my coat belt. Nothing that would slow down a wolf who had not been fed a full meal in a week.

Their eyes followed me down the block.

Then another one stepped off the rail.

“Hey, baby. Birthday girl, huh.”

I did not answer. I kept walking, faster.

“We can do something about that.”

I pulled up Barrett’s thread and dialed him without looking.

It rang and rang.

Voicemail.

Behind me, one of them laughed the kind of laugh a wolf makes when a human has not noticed the other two crossing the street behind her.

I called again.

Ringing, ringing. Voicemail.

My hand on the phone went cold first, the way my hand had gone cold in the archive. And I thought, somewhere underneath it, my husband does not pick up when I am in trouble, this is the fact.

I called a third time.

The line connected for two seconds. A thumb on the wrong side of the screen, or the right side.

The call ended.

My husband had picked up the call and hung up on me.

My heart did not race. It did not climb. It went down. Through the sidewalk, through the sewer, through the earth.

The Rogue in front of me grinned.