Owned by the Alpha Daddies

What was the ultimate form of betrayal?

It was when the person you loved and trusted the most… became the very source of your deepest pain.

And in this moment, I was living it. The betrayal came from the man I had given my heart to.

My boyfriend of four years wanted to end things with me—for a woman he had just officially acknowledged yesterday.

I stood frozen, a statue of disbelief, listening to him speak. The words reached my ears, but they refused to make sense in my mind. They couldn't. Because accepting them meant accepting that the last four years of my life had been a lie.

“Aurora, you have to understand,” Liam said, his voice unnervingly calm, as if he were discussing the weather and not dismantling my world. “I know I promised to mark you as my mate after our wedding, but that was before I met Scarlett. She’s my true mate. The bond… I can’t fight it. I can’t reject her. So… I’m sorry, but we have to end this.”

A single, traitorous tear escaped before I could stop it. I sucked in a sharp, painful breath, my chest constricting as if an invisible hand were squeezing the air from my lungs. I couldn’t breathe.

Liam had found his mate.

And she was standing right there, wrapped in his embrace, as he shattered my heart.

The day I had secretly dreaded for years had finally arrived—the day I would be discarded by the man I loved.

The cruelest irony? A part of me had always known this day would come. Yet, I had chosen to live in a beautiful delusion. I had clung to his promises, to his whispered assurances that even if fate intervened, his love for me would be stronger than any mystical bond.

He had sworn that he would never leave me.

It took less than twenty-four hours for those vows to turn to dust, for four years of shared history to be erased by a single night.

It would be laughable if it didn’t hurt so much.

My nails bit into my palms, the physical pain a feeble distraction from the agony in my chest. I forced my head up, my gaze landing on the stunning redhead in his arms. She looked at me with a pitying expression that didn’t reach her eyes. The subtle, triumphant curve of her lips told me everything. She was reveling in my devastation.

My eyes, against my will, dropped to the side of her neck. There, stark against her pale skin, was the fresh, claiming bite mark.

My world tilted. He hadn't just met her. He had spent the night with her. He had marked her.

“Aurora…” Liam took a step forward, his hand reaching for mine, his eyes a confusing mix of guilt and unwavering resolve. “I know you’re hurting, but you know what rejecting a true mate does to a wolf. I can’t risk my wolf’s stability, I can’t—”

“I don’t care about the mate bond, my love,” I interrupted, my voice a brittle echo of the words he had so often whispered to me. More tears fell, a hot, silent stream I was powerless to stop. “I don’t care if the bond affects me. What we have is real. It’s more than some ancient instinct. I would never leave you. I want a life with you… a family with you!”

My voice cracked, rising with each desperate plea, every cherished memory now a sharp blade twisting inside me. I saw his eyes widen slightly, a flicker of something—pain, maybe—before it was gone.

“So please, don’t worry about it,” I whispered, the sobs finally breaking through, making my body tremble. “I would never betray you…”

“Aurora…” he murmured, but I yanked my hand back from his touch.

The hands I had once loved to hold now felt like brands of betrayal. They repulsed me.

“Yet it only took one night for you to throw away every promise you made to me for four years, Liam!” I screamed, my control snapping. I raised my fist and pounded it against his chest. “Four years! And you forgot every single word just to sleep with her and mark her?!”

With each accusation, my fists struck his unyielding chest. He didn’t stop me. He didn’t speak. He just stood there, his gaze fixed on the ground, wearing his guilt like a cloak, letting me unleash my fury.

“Why, Liam? Why did you keep reassuring me? Why did you make me believe in you when you knew you would do this? Why?!”

I shoved him back with all my strength, the momentum sending me stumbling to my knees on the hard ground. Sobs wracked my body, violent and uncontrollable, blurring the world into a watery mess of pain.

Why was he doing this?

After my father’s death… after the tragedy that befell my mother…

He had been my anchor. My only true support.

And now?

Now, I couldn’t even summon the energy to hate him.

That was the true devastation.

I wasn’t even angry.

I was just… utterly broken.

“Please, don’t be so upset, Aurora,” a saccharine-sweet voice cut through my grief. I heard the click of high heels approaching. “I know you have every right to be, but this really isn’t Liam’s fault. You understand how overpowering the mate bond is, don’t you? When Liam and I met, the pull was… irresistible. We had to complete the bond. It was beyond our control.”

She paused, letting her words sink in before adding with faux sympathy, “But I suppose it’s something you might struggle to truly comprehend… given that you’re wolfless.”

I lifted my head, glaring at her through the veil of my tears. My hands clenched into fists so tight my knuckles turned white.

I knew her. Scarlett. Once, a long time ago, she had been a friend. Before my life imploded. Before my father, the former Beta of the Silverwood Pack, went to war.

Three years ago, my father and the Alpha led a charge against a rogue incursion. They never returned as the men who left. They returned in coffins.

As if that loss wasn’t catastrophic enough, my mother, in her bottomless grief, ingested wolfsbane that same night—a poison lethal to our kind.

She didn’t die, but she never woke up. She exists in a twilight coma, her life sustained by machines and expensive treatments in a specialized clinic. I spent our entire family fortune, every last coin, on healers and witches, chasing a miracle that never came.

When the money ran out and friends turned away, Liam stepped in. Our families had been close, and we were together. He took over the crushing financial burden of my mother’s care.

The trauma of that day—the dual loss, the near-loss, the soul-crushing heartbreak—is why I am wolfless.

Because that day was my eighteenth birthday.

The day my wolf was supposed to awaken.

A witch healer I consulted once told me the grief was so profound it shattered my connection to my wolf spirit before it could even form. I never heard her voice. I never felt her presence. She never came.

“You know, it’s almost amusing that you ever thought you could be with my mate,” Scarlett scoffed, her tone dripping with mockery. “He’s the Beta of the most powerful pack on this continent… and you’re wolfless. I guess it’s your own fault for clinging to such a delusion.”

I watched as Liam reached for her hand, giving a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head. A feeble attempt to silence her.

Yes. Liam was the current Beta, serving the three Alpha triplets who now ruled the Silverwood Pack. After the old Alpha and my father fell, leadership passed to the Alpha’s sons. With no male heir in my family, the Beta title went to Liam’s line.

“What? Why are you still defending her, Liam?” Scarlett snapped, jerking her hand away and glaring at him. “Didn’t you tell me you never really loved her? That you only stayed out of pity? I refuse to feel like the other woman when I am your destined mate.”

Liam looked flustered, his eyes darting to me for a split second before skittering away, unable to hold my devastated gaze.

A bitter, choked sound that was meant to be a laugh escaped me. I bit down on my lower lip so hard the metallic tang of blood flooded my mouth.

“Scarlett, enough—” Liam started, but she cut him off with a dismissive wave.

“No. I’m done. You promised to cut ties. And you’re going to start by stopping the payments for her mother’s clinic bills.”

The air vanished from my lungs. Time seemed to freeze. My head whipped toward Liam, my eyes wide with sheer, unadulterated terror.

He could break my heart.