Chapter 2

Brea Barnett POV:

I gasped and bolted upright from a suffocating nightmare, cold sweat dripping down my forehead onto the rough synthetic sheets of the hotel bed.

Morning sunlight sliced through the thin plastic blinds into the dusty room, the storm outside replaced by the sharp honking of downtown rush-hour traffic.

Propping myself up on aching, weak arms, I noticed the raging fever from the mate-bond backlash had faded, leaving my head cold and clear.

Walking barefoot across the freezing floor to the stained bathroom sink, I twisted the faucet and splashed biting cold water over my face again and again.

In the mirror, my dark chestnut hair hung in tangled strands around a pale face, and my amber eyes were bloodshot, stripped of the soft devotion they used to hold.

As I stared at the water swirling down the drain, the past three years with Eldridge flashed through my head one frame at a time.

I remembered the late nights when he came home exhausted, blaming sudden security crises at the pack headquarters while subtly turning his nose away whenever he hugged me.

I remembered the faint red scratches on the side of his neck that he always brushed off with a gentle pat on my head, claiming a rookie warrior had nicked him on the training grounds.

I remembered the expensive dress shirts he tossed into the laundry basket, carrying a trace of ylang-ylang perfume that happened to be Deloris's signature scent.

Every tender look and bowl of soup he made me was just a cage built by a dominant Alpha to keep a docile canary trapped inside.

Under the brutal genetic laws of werewolf society, a wolfless person born without an inner wolf was treated like untouchable trash, yet nobody knew that the unawakened blood of the primordial White Wolf flowed inside my veins, and I had foolishly mistaken his control for salvation.

A drop of cold water fell from my chin and hit the ceramic basin with a sharp plink, snapping me out of my thoughts.

Pulling a rough paper towel to dry my face, I walked back to the bed and dug the burner phone out of my bag.

Swiping across the screen, I opened the remote cloud drive linked to the micro lens and pulled up the recording from the guest room.

The video paused at six in the morning, showing Eldridge pressing a light kiss to Deloris's bare forehead before dressing neatly and walking out the door.

His sharp, handsome face looked relaxed and satisfied, showing zero guilt for breaking his vow to the Moon Goddess.

I copied and encrypted the video files, uploading them through multiple proxy servers to three separate offshore cloud drives.

Under ancient pack law, a male mate's infidelity was a felony, but without holographic footage and pheromone voiceprint samples, the Elder Council would never approve a unilateral contract termination.

Besides, Eldridge was a billionaire Alpha CEO commanding the city's largest business empire, while in the public eye, I was just a bankrupt Barnett heiress working as a lowly finance intern with no inner wolf.

To strip him of his pride and walk away clean, I needed the sharpest legal weapon on the continent.

Scrolling to the very bottom of my encrypted contacts, I stopped on a name I had not touched in three years—Jeanett Flynn.

Three years ago, when the Barnett Pack collapsed and I insisted on giving up our family liquidation rights to marry Eldridge, my best friend Jeanett had smashed her wineglass on the floor in fury.

She had warned me then that betting my life on a ruthless dictator of an Alpha would leave me chewed up to the bone, and we had parted ways after a bitter fight, though she remained the most lethal pack-law attorney in the country.

My thumb hovered over the call button for thirty seconds before I pressed down firmly.

A monotonous ringing tone echoed through the receiver, each beep tapping against my taut nerves.

Right before the call could go to voicemail, the line clicked open and a crisp, cold female voice spoke up.

"Who is this? If you're selling something, hang up."

I gripped the casing of the phone, my throat dry and tight as I spoke.

"Jeanett, it's me... Brea."

Dead silence fell on the other end of the line, the sound of flipping legal papers cutting off mid-rustle.

After a long pause, Jeanett's voice came back, thick with biting sarcasm and barely concealed anger.

"What a rare honor. How did the noble Luna of the Marshall Pack find time to remember a poor lawyer like me?"

Closing my eyes by the sunlit window, I skipped all pleasantries and kept my tone level.

"Jeanett, I need you to take a case for me. A lawsuit to dissolve my mate contract."

A heavy thud echoed through the speaker as Jeanett’s fountain pen dropped onto her mahogany desk.

"Are you out of your mind? Do you have any idea what you're saying right now?"