My Boyfriend Cheated With My Best Friend, So the Pack Law Handed Me to His Brother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cake Box
Zia lets herself into her boyfriend's apartment with his birthday cake and finds him on the sofa with her best friend; his older brother, the head Alpha, walks in behind her and goes white. She puts the cake in Tomás's lap, tears off her pack bracelet, and a text says: do not leave town tonight.
I let myself into my boyfriend's apartment at ten past nine with a cake box in my hands.
It was a lemon sponge from the bakery on the avenue, with his name in blue icing.
It was his twenty-seventh birthday, and I had worked a double at my family's shed to pay for it.
There was still scallop grit under my nails.
The lamp was on in the front room.
My boyfriend was on the sofa, and my best friend was with him.
They were not sitting up.
Her name is Bianca, and she has been my best friend since we were six years old.
Her red lipstick was on his collar, and his hand was inside her blouse.
I stood there holding the box level, because that is how you carry a cake.
My boyfriend saw me first and went completely still.
"Zia," Tomás said. "It's not what it looks like."
Bianca didn't take her hand off his chest.
She turned her head slowly, looked at me from under his arm, and smiled.
"You were never going to be enough for him," she said. "You know that, right?"
I want to say I screamed.
I didn't make any sound at all.
I was thinking that the icing had a small smear on one corner where my thumb had been.
Then the door opened behind me.
It was opened with a key, which meant it was someone who had one.
A man stepped in out of the stairwell in a black wool overcoat, rain on his shoulders, a folder under one arm.
Duarte Cabral.
Tomás's older brother was thirty-six, the head Alpha of the Night Tide pack, and the owner of every boat I weighed a catch for.
The pack called him the Ledger, because he had never lost a count or forgiven a debt.
In two years of dating his brother, I had never once been alone in a room with him.
He was supposed to be at the Harvest Council in the Fatima hall.
He stopped in the doorway and looked at the sofa, and his face did nothing at all.
Then he breathed in.
It was a small breath through the nose, the way a wolf checks the air.
Every wolf in the room felt it change.
Duarte went white.
His folder slid out from under his arm and hit the floor, and papers fanned across the boards.
He was looking at me.
He was not looking at the sofa, or at his brother, only at me, with his mouth a little open.
On the sofa, Tomás had gone the color of the wall.
He looked at his brother's face, and I watched him understand something in one second that I did not understand at all.
"Duarte," Tomás said. "Wait."
Something moved through the room then, heavy and warm and close, and it brushed my skin like a hand.
I felt it in my ribs and in my knees, a pull toward the doorway that had nothing to do with anything I wanted.
I am an Omega, the lowest rank in the pack.
I am not supposed to feel what an Alpha feels.
Duarte took one step toward me.
His left hand came up, the scarred one, and stopped an inch from my wrist.
It did not close.
His fingers shook once and went still.
I looked at that hand and told myself it was shock, and the sofa, and a bad night.
"Zia," he said, low and rough.
"Whatever that is," I said, "I'm not part of it."
I walked to the table and set the cake box down.
Then I changed my mind.
I picked it up again, crossed the room, and put it in Tomás's lap, square on his good jeans.
The lid popped.
Lemon sponge pressed up through the crack, and his name in blue icing smeared across his knees.
"Happy birthday," I said.
Bianca opened her mouth.
I looked at her until she closed it.
I turned around, and the head Alpha of the Night Tide pack was standing in the doorway, in my way.
He moved aside at once, with his back flat against the frame, as if I were something he was not allowed to touch.
I went out past him and down three flights.
On the stoop the October wind came off Buzzards Bay with rain in it, smelling of diesel and low tide.
My hands were shaking, so I looked at my wrist.
Tomás had put the pack bracelet there for our first anniversary: a braid of tan leather with a little brass tag that said T + Z.
I had worn it every day for fourteen months.
I picked at the clasp and it wouldn't give.
I pulled until the leather bit my skin, and then it tore.
The storm drain at the curb was open, with water running into it.
I dropped the bracelet through the grate and heard it hit the dark.
My phone buzzed in my apron pocket.
It was a number I didn't have saved.
*Do not leave town tonight. I will explain at the Council. D.C.*
I looked up at the lit window on the third floor.
He was standing in it, watching me read.
I did not text back.
I went to the Council.
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