Mated To My Cheating Ex's Powerful Alpha novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Ashes for Rhett

I turned from the bowl and faced him.

For eight years, I had been the one waiting for Rhett to look at me.

Now he looked, and he couldn't stop.

"You kept me alive," I said.

My voice carried farther than I meant it to.

"Is that what you tell yourself, Rhett?"

"Freja, listen to me. I did it for you." He took a step up the aisle. "They'd have taken you. Every pack in this room would have..."

"Did you send the lock of hair?"

He stopped.

"To the registry. Eight years ago. Did you send it?"

The Judge had risen behind me, and he spoke before Rhett could answer.

"Alpha Garrison. A sealed result can be lifted only by its sender. Did you send the hair?"

The hall waited.

I watched Rhett's mouth work, and I watched him decide.

"I did," he said. "To protect her."

"Then lift the seal."

"No."

"Why not?" I said.

"Because you don't need it. You have the bowl." His smile came and went. "It's over, Freja. You can have your little throne. You don't need to ruin me over a piece of paper."

"A piece of paper that said null."

His father shifted in the front row.

"The paper you gave me two weeks later," I said, "after you cut my hair in the ashes and kissed me and promised me always."

"I never lied about that."

"You told me I was nothing."

"I told you what kept you safe!"

"You told me what kept me yours," I said.

A murmur stirred near the back.

I let it hang.

"Cora," I said. "Tell them about the lake house."

Rhett's head snapped around.

Cora stood up from her knees.

She was shaking so hard I thought she'd fall, but she lifted her chin.

"I heard him on the phone with his father," she said, loudly enough for the whole hall. "He said once the Aaltonen seat was his, he would move Freja to a lake house. She'd have his child. No one would register it, because no one else knew the line was alive."

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