Mated To My Cheating Ex's Powerful Alpha novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: What You Knew

Declan was waiting at the end of the hall with his hands in his pockets.

He took one look at my face and took them out.

"Freja."

"Not here."

He didn't ask.

He walked me out to the car and held the door, and I sat looking straight ahead while he drove us down the hill.

I made it to the bottom before I said it.

"I read the folder on your desk."

He didn't swerve.

"I thought you might."

"Eight months, Declan."

"Yes."

"You had my address. You had a photograph of me carrying groceries."

"Yes."

"You knew about Rhett. And on the night, you stood by the east door and watched a woman pour wine down my dress and a man tell me to leave."

His hands tightened on the wheel.

"Yes."

He pulled onto the gravel shoulder under a row of bare trees and shut off the engine.

The quiet was loud.

"My Beta brought me your name last winter," he said. "A packless woman the Garrison pack kept off every roll. I wanted to know why. That is all the file was, until the terrace."

"And the note?"

"I wrote it myself." He looked at me, and he didn't look away. "The Seven's law bars the Apex from a private quarrel. If I stepped between an Alpha and his lover in public, the other six could call it an attack on a seat. I used that rule because it was easy to hide behind."

"Is that your excuse?"

"It's a reason. It isn't an excuse." His voice was flat and steady. "I watched you for eight minutes and did nothing. I didn't know you yet, and I told myself I had no right. I was wrong, and I would not do it again."

I had practiced a speech in my head all morning.

All of it was gone.

"You were the only person in that room who could have stopped it," I said.

"I know."

"Three hundred wolves watched me get thrown out like trash, and you let them."

"I know," he said. "You don't have to forgive it today. I'm not asking you to."

I was shaking, and I wasn't sure if it was anger or something worse.

"The Judge told me something," I said.

I told him all of it: the Hallowells, the sealed envelope, the lock of hair in the ashes, the word null.

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