Xesha’s POV:

My fated mate cheated on me.

At the bridal shop.

The girl was wearing my wedding dress while he wrinkled it for her.

If the Moon Goddess really is watching from up there, I'd like to suggest a redesign of the mate-matching system. Every soulbond should come with a thirty-day return policy. No signs of wear, original packaging intact, full refund on presentation of the soul contract.

Though judging by what was happening in that fitting room, Jasper had long since voided his warranty.

I stood outside the thick, plush velvet curtain, and listened to the breathless little gasps leaking through it. Cedar and gardenia rolled out through the gap in the fabric, thick and indecent, sickly sweet.

"Jasper..." the woman simpered, "does this dress look better on me, or on your fiancée?"

Interesting question. Shame the one answering it wasn't me.

If I'd been asked, I'd have told her the dress would look better on a corpse than on her. At least a corpse knows how to lie still and not go chasing after someone else's Alpha.

"You, obviously," Jasper's voice was low, rough, threaded with pleasure. "I can't bring myself to pull out of you. Isn't that proof enough of how irresistible you are?"

I closed my eyes and swallowed down the roiling in my stomach.

The woman, thoroughly satisfied with his answer, giggled.

"We can't get married, but I'm going to make sure you never forget me. Every bonding anniversary from here on out, you'll think of today. You'll think of me in this dress."

A tearing pain shot through my chest. I clutched at my heart on reflex — the wolf inside me let out a grief-stricken howl, hurling itself against the walls of my mind. It wanted to tear through that curtain and rip out both their throats. It wanted an answer from the Alpha who'd sworn eternal loyalty to it. Why he'd broken the bond they'd sealed together.

Honestly? I was fully on board with that plan.

But an Omega losing her mind in a bridal shop, brawling with a beta and an alpha mid-act, would be front-page news in New York by morning. Some reporter would slap an inflammatory headline on it —

POUR OMEGA LOSES IT CATCHING ALPHA CHEATING — TIME TO ABOLISH THE FATED MATE SYSTEM?

And Jasper would only need to put on his most soulful face for the cameras and murmur, "She just loves me too much," to walk away looking like the victim of the whole circus.

Not happening.

I could survive a broken heart. I could not survive a broken heart and public humiliation both.

Seven years ago, I was eighteen and had just come into my wolf. At a full-moon party, Jasper's wolf woke the same moment mine did. He tracked my scent straight to me, took my hand under the moonlight, and swore he'd protect me and stay faithful forever.

I'd been embarrassingly moved at the time.

Looking back, I can only say eighteen-year-old me lacked life experience. A gorgeous Alpha whispering promises under the moon is basically a heavily filtered photo on a shopping app — for reference only, actual item may vary.

A month from now we were supposed to hold our final bonding ceremony. Jasper would sink his teeth into the back of my neck in front of the community and the Moon Goddess, leaving a permanent mark, binding our scents, our minds, our lives together for good.

Thank god we hadn't gotten there yet.

Otherwise, on top of a lawyer, I'd also need to book a priest, a surgeon, and possibly an exorcist to deal with the aftermath.

No wonder the bond between us had been fading for months. No wonder he traveled so often, always coming home doused in scent blockers. I'd thought he just didn't want other werewolves' pheromones affecting me. Now I understood he'd been on bond-suppressants the entire time.

I didn't pull back the curtain. I didn't storm in and demand, hysterically, why he'd betrayed me. Because the question had no point. He hadn't cheated because I did something wrong. He cheated because he had a rotten little heart no amount of love could ever fill.

I turned and walked out, got into my car.

Jasper and I had been together seven years.

The year we graduated, we started our company crammed into a drafty little office out in the New York suburbs — leaked in winter, air conditioner died every summer. We couldn't even afford a secretary. I took every client call; he closed every deal. Eventually we grew JD Group from a company that could fold any minute into a conglomerate that could move the New York economy.

Business magazines called us "the golden couple, blessed by the Moon Goddess." The elders loved holding us up as an example to young werewolves who refused to settle down. In their eyes, Jasper and I had the perfect careers, the perfect mate-match, and a wedding about to headline every society page in the city.

Only my sister Ale never bought the fairy tale.

Her assessment of Jasper had always been simple.

"He's got a face made for the cover of GQ and a rap sheet that would get Damage Control to drag him off in the middle of the night."

Turns out Ale wasn't being harsh. She was just better than me at spotting garbage in human shape. For seven years she'd been flagging every red flag while I was busy folding each one into a rose and dropping it into the vase of our so-called love.

My phone screen was still open on the message she'd sent.

[I won't be at your bonding ceremony with Jasper. The Foxx family won't send anyone either. We won't call an Alpha we can't trust family. What you do next is up to you.]

I stared at it until my eyes stung, though my fingers stayed steady.

[No need to decide. The wedding's off.]

The typing indicator flickered above the chat, vanished, flickered again. After a few rounds, Ale finally answered.

[Thirty days. Get your company, your property, and that bastard sorted in New York.]

A second message followed right after.

[And if you crawl back to him again, don't call me and make me watch him take you apart piece by piece. I love you, but I'm done helping you hold together a relationship that's killing you.]

So very Ale.

I typed back "okay" and put my phone away. When I started the car, I saw the shop door open in the rearview mirror.

Jasper walked out with his arm around a young woman — barely twenty, long hair, white dress, a smile sweet and harmless enough to belong to exactly the kind of girl who could sleep with someone's fiancé and still say, wide-eyed, "there's no first-come-first-served in love."

Sensing something, Jasper looked toward my car. I hit the gas and left the two of them tangled together far behind me.

I could live without love. I could not live without my money. Money, at least, had never cheated on me with another woman.

Back at the house, I didn't get out right away. I sat in the driver's seat and called my lawyer. Before long, familiar footsteps sounded in the garage, and the door was wrenched open from outside.

"Going somewhere?"

Jasper tossed his jacket onto the passenger seat and leaned in.

He'd showered and changed already. Black shirt, two buttons undone, a slice of solid chest on display. Nothing on him but the clean, cold bite of cedar — not a trace of any other woman's scent left.

Thorough cleanup.

If I hadn't seen that live show with my own eyes, I might actually believe he'd just come from a board meeting instead of a moral trainwreck of an afternoon.

Seeing me stay quiet, he leaned down to kiss me. I pressed a hand to his face and pushed him back.

"Get away from me."

He arched a brow, seeming to finally register something was wrong.

"Who upset you?"

Same as always. First to notice, quick to hunt down the cause, generous with the reassurance. It used to be my favorite thing about him.

I just smiled. "Nothing."

Jasper studied me like he was trying to dig a crack out of my expression. I didn't look away. If anything, that made him smile. He pulled me in by the waist and let a wave of calming cedar roll over me, the scent an Alpha uses to settle his mate.

"Tell your Alpha — who upset my girl?"

I used to melt for that line. Now I just felt like I'd been hugged by a very expensive air freshener.

"Jasper. The wedding's off."

The smile dropped off his face. The cedar in the air went cold with it, carrying the flattening weight that comes off a high-tier Alpha when he's done being patient.

"Say that again."

Men love that line, like making someone repeat themselves will scare the truth back into hiding.

"I said the wedding's off." I held his eyes, calm. "You've been so busy lately, there didn't seem to be much point going through with it. Wouldn't want you spread too thin."

He grabbed my arm, voice edged with real anger now. "You think I'm doing all this for myself? It's for JD Group. For our future. Our kids deserve the best start there is. You want them born already behind the heirs of every rival family in this city?"

Fascinating. A man dancing on the edge of infidelity, and the first thing on his mind isn't an apology. It's conjuring up unborn children just to draft them into guilt-tripping me. Those kids hadn't even been conceived and they were already saddled with saving their father's marriage.

Cheater dialogue really is like the menu at a chain restaurant. No matter which branch you walk into, the dishes taste exactly the same.

I pulled my arm free and walked into the house.

A month until the wedding. My sister had given me one month to handle things here. In a month, I'd go home and have the clan elder cut this already-rotten bond.

Before that: assets, shares, property, and one Alpha too confident to imagine he could ever be thrown out.

Back in the bathroom, I turned on the tap. Before long, Jasper followed me in.

"This is on me, Xesh." He wrapped his arms around me from behind, chin resting on my shoulder. "Work's been insane. I know I've been neglecting you. Starting now, I'm canceling every dinner, every obligation, coming home on time every night. Good?"

He let calming pheromone roll off him, mild cedar curling around me, trying — the way he had a thousand times before — to smooth everything over.

I looked up at the two of us in the mirror.

Jasper still looked handsome, tender, soulful as a cologne ad shot on a beach at sunset. I looked pale, shadows under my eyes, seriously weighing the logistics of shoving my toothbrush up his nose.

"Don't bother," I said.

Before he could answer, a soft, saccharine love song started playing.

It was one of the songs blowing up right now — I heard it on TikTok practically every day. Jasper had always just used the default ringtone.

I remembered, suddenly, that back when we first started dating, I'd made him set our song as my special ringtone too. He'd said his phone always went off in board meetings and client calls, and a love song would be both childish and unprofessional.

Turns out "unprofessional" was never really the issue. The real issue was that I wasn't worth making an exception for.

He pulled out his phone, glanced at the screen, hung up fast.

"Spam call."

I saw the contact name clearly on the screen.

831.

"Spam calls have custom ringtones now?" I watched him through the mirror. "Telemarketers are getting personal these days."

"System auto-set it."

"Of course." I nodded. "Your phone's more romantic than you are, and apparently configures itself without you touching a thing. Apple should hire you for a commercial."

His jaw ticked. He didn't answer.

The phone rang again, fast.

He hung up again. It rang a third time, relentless. That kind of persistence, put toward job applications, could probably knock a couple points off the city's unemployment rate.

By the fourth ring, Jasper finally walked out of the bathroom, phone in hand, back to me, voice pitched low. The bond was too badly jammed by suppressants for me to catch the voice on the other end, but I could feel his irritation — laced, faintly, with something almost like relief.

That's not how a person reacts to a spam call.

A moment later he hung up and turned to face me.

"Something came up at the office. I need to go handle it. Don't wait up — get some rest. I'll come by in the morning for the fitting."

"Of course." I gave him a smile so thoughtful it was nearly flawless. "Say hi to your spam call for me. She sounds like she really needs you."

His eyes lingered on my face, like he was trying to gauge exactly how much I knew.

A few seconds later he grabbed his jacket and left the room.

Not until I heard the front door close downstairs did I take out my phone and type that strange contact name into the search bar.

"831 meaning relationship"

831 means "I love you."

Eight letters. Three words. One meaning.

I stared at the screen for a long time.

Had to admit — it really was romantic. I closed the search page, opened a real-estate app, and listed the house at a bargain price.

In a month, I'd be gone from here. And I wasn't planning to keep anything behind — including the Alpha who'd once promised, under the moon, to be faithful to me forever.