The Alpha's Other Woman

Bonus Forward

Heidi

The only good thing about the whole Alpha Assembly was that Dane had finally just been honest after our most recent fight, instead of the way he usually just tried to manage me, as if I were just another troublesome pack matter that he had to deal with. It was not a good feeling to constantly feel more like I was an issue to him than a person.

Aside from that tiny bit of progress in our relationship, the assembly was the most boring thing I had ever experienced in my life, and that wasn't an easy accomplishment. Even the idea that I was going to be duty-forced to come to these things as long as I was Greenwood's luna was almost enough to bore me to literal tears.

From what I could tell, it was largely a bunch of wolf-fuelled egos patting themselves on the backs and reminding each other how macho and powerful they all were. Kind of like how some males got so invested in sports, except this didn't even have any action to at least give me something to watch while they did it. Maybe they could start tossing a football to the person speaking or something. I'd take anything at that point. I desperately wanted to pull out my phone and post something to one of my accounts or text my friends, but I couldn't risk it like I used to in school. There, worst case scenario, I'd get snapped at by a teacher, maybe have my phone confiscated until the end of class. Here, if I shamed Greenwoods, I would never live it down. Pretending to listen when it got too much was my only option.

Well, at least Dane was hot, I thought, as I let my eyes wander over my mate. Maybe I would let him mark me tonight, if he didn't return to Heidi-management mode before then. He clearly still wanted to after the whole nearly forced marking—again—thing, and my wolf was dying for it. But there were things far more important than giving in to my wilder instincts.

Still, in the short time since our last fight, he had seemed somehow different. I was hopeful, and he'd better not screw that up. I was really tired of crying over him, something I had been doing far too often since the issuing of that luna challenge that I had miraculously won. Still didn't know how I pulled that off, but I wasn't complaining that I had survived.

After a bit more endless tedium, we got to the matter of some new Glen-something pack, which didn't even seem like a big deal to me. Why were they even arguing about it? Let the rogues form a pack, wasn't that better for everyone? If packs didn't like rogues or want to take them in, and the rogues didn't want to be rogues and wanted to make their own pack, the solution seemed pretty obvious to me.

Maybe I was missing something, or maybe it was just these alphas and their detail drama. No, not drama, drama was way too interesting a word for this torture. I didn't roll my eyes since apparently that wasn't luna-like behaviour, even though I really wanted to. Dane had better appreciate how hard I was trying here. Maybe I wasn't all perfect like certain chosen lunas might have been, but I was doing my best and it was time I started to get some credit.

Then the grumpy-looking old alpha from some random pack I couldn't be bothered to remember the name of spoke next, his intrusive voice rudely interrupting my thoughts.

"Mark my words, these are exactly the sort of wolves we don't want grouping and gaining power. They're unfit to be a part of a pack. And if you need more evidence of that, the new luna of this dangerous pack is little better than a status hunting whore. She couldn't bag a proper alpha, so now she's slumming it with the rogues."

I cringed. Why was that alpha being so hateful?

Dane's muscles grew tense beside me, and he had on his angry-but-trying-not-to-let-it-show expression, his lips in relaxed line above a tightly clenched jaw, and that clued me into what was going on.

The guy at the front wasn't just some random alpha defending his pack, the Glen-something alpha—I forgot his actual name already, Jessie Bradley or something like that maybe, I hadn't been listening again—was the true mate of Dane's ex-chosen mate. The luna that the hateful alpha was talking about wasn't just any Carrie, but the impossible-standard Carrie that I was always being silently compared to by everyone at Greenwoods.