A. Emma Matos

My Alpha's Rules Killed My Brother, So I Left

My husband put my brother's life-saving money in the hands of his ex-fiancée. So I filed to dissolve our mate vow and left his pack. At first, he wasn’t worried. He sent me a hundred dollars, then a curt email. “Cover the miscellaneous medical charges you forgot.” “Anything over a thousand still goes through the fund first.” “Why haven’t you replied to the care facility’s email?” He didn’t know I’d left right after my brother’s funeral. And that hundred dollars wasn’t compensation. It was an insult—the Alpha of Nightfall Pack tossing scraps to his own Luna. I put my phone on airplane mode and boarded a bus to Portland. As the bus crossed the line out of Nightfall territory, the pack bond faded from the edge of my senses. My wolf didn’t urge me to look back. When he couldn’t reach me, he finally got angry. Call after call. His texts turned harsh. “Pick up. Now.” “Or I’m cutting off the nursing home payments.” I didn’t respond. Convinced I would never abandon my brother, he went straight to the Northpass Wolf Recovery Center. He assumed I’d be there, dealing with the aftermath. But the receptionist couldn’t find my name. They couldn’t find Eli’s admission record, either. He demanded to know what had happened. The answer was simple. “We never received the deposit.” “The bed for wolfsbane dependency treatment was given to the next person on the waitlist yesterday at five p.m.” Graham’s face went white. Five days ago, I’d told him. Eli had barely survived a wolfsbane sedative overdose. His healing abilities had all but stopped, his inner wolf had gone silent, but for the first time, he was finally willing to get help. The bed would only be held for a few hours. It required a five-thousand-dollar deposit. I’d begged Graham to save him. But he refused to bend the rules he'd created, telling me to submit an application to the Vale Bloodline Fund. The person in charge of reviewing it? His ex-fiancée, Celeste Ward. She wasn’t just the fu......