Fated to My Homeless Billionaire Alpha novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Alpha

Mathias admits who he is; Alden offers a check and Bryn tears it; Preston and Whitney come to mock her and Preston recognizes the man in her doorway.

I pulled on jeans and went down the stairs two at a time.

The twelve men were still kneeling on Penn Avenue, and not one of them looked at me.

Mathias stood in my shop between the buckets of tulips, with his arms crossed and his jaw tight.

"Who are they?" I said.

"My pack," he said. "I should have told you last night."

"Pack of what?"

He didn't answer, and a man in a charcoal overcoat stepped through the door.

He was lean and gray-haired, with pale blue eyes, and he looked at me.

"Alden Stoke," he said. "Beta of the Three Rivers pack. And you are the florist."

"She's my wife," Mathias said.

"She's a human who has signed nothing," Alden said. "Nineteen days, Alpha. We have searched every shelter in this county."

"You left a company of six thousand employees without a word."

"What company?" I said.

Mathias looked at the floor.

Alden took a folded newspaper off the counter and laid it in front of me.

The front page of the business section showed a man in a black suit on the steps of a glass tower across the river.

The caption read, Ardrey Holdings Chairman Missing, Board Calls Emergency Meeting.

It was him.

He had been clean-shaven in the photo, and his hair had been cut short, but the eyes and the jaw were his.

"You're a billionaire," I said.

"Yes."

"You let me propose to you on a bus bench."

"You didn't know," he said. "You asked a man with nothing, and you meant it."

"Nobody has ever asked for just me before."

His voice cracked on the last word.

I hadn't known anyone could look at me like that.

Alden cleared his throat.

He took a long check out of his coat and slid it across the glass counter.

"Five million dollars," he said. "Take it, and the marriage is forgotten."

"A human cannot be Luna, Miss Halvorsen. She cannot stand in a wolf's circle, and she cannot hold the Alpha."

"The vow you spoke was a night's folly, and the pack will never accept it."

I picked up the check and read the number twice.

Then I tore it in half, tore the halves in half, and dropped the pieces into the bucket of tulip water.

"I don't need five million dollars," I said. "I own a flower shop, and I'm very happy."

"And I was married last night."

Alden's mouth went thin.

Outside, the kneeling men didn't move.

The bell above the door rang.

I turned, and my stomach dropped.

Preston stood in the doorway in yesterday's blazer with his hair uncombed.

Whitney was holding his arm.

She had fixed her makeup, and she wore a bright, mean smile.

"Bryn," Preston said. "We came to see if you were done with the tantrum."

"My mother is furious with you, you know. You humiliated us."

I stared at him.

He actually thought I was going to come back.

"You have a nerve," I said.

"We brought your things," Whitney said sweetly.

She dropped a plastic bag on the counter.

My coat was in it, and my car keys, and the sad, crushed remains of my engagement bouquet.

"I'm sorry about last night, hon," she went on. "We should have told you. But honestly, Preston needed someone more fun."

"You were always so serious about your flowers."

She looked around the little shop, and then past me to the man behind the counter.

"Oh, who's this? Another one of your strays?"

Mathias had come around the counter without a sound.

He stood beside me, and he was a head taller than Preston and twice as wide.

He still wore my sweatpants.

"I'm her husband," he said quietly.

Whitney burst out laughing.

"Her what? You married a hobo, Bryn? Is this what you did after you left?"

"Look at him! He looks like he sleeps in a dumpster."

Preston was looking at Mathias, too, and his face had gone strange.

His eyes went to the newspaper on the counter and then back up.

"Whit," he said slowly. "Stop."

"What?"

"That's Mathias Ardrey."

"Who?"

"My father's biggest client," Preston said. His voice cracked. "He owns the tower the firm insures."

"He was at our Christmas party, and my father shook his hand for ten minutes."

The color left Whitney's face in a slow wave.

Mathias looked at Preston without blinking.

"I remember your father," he said. "I don't remember you."

"Mr. Ardrey," Preston said. "I had no idea. I'm so sorry, I didn't know she was yours."

"She isn't mine," Mathias said. "She's her own. I'm hers."

He put his arm around my waist and pulled me against his side, in front of both of them.

"Get out of my wife's shop," he said.

Preston backed up so fast he hit the door.

Whitney grabbed his sleeve and dragged him out onto the pavement, past the kneeling men, who didn't so much as turn their heads.

The bell rang behind them, and then it was quiet.

I put my hand over my mouth and started to laugh.

Mathias looked down at me, and for the first time his mouth curved.

It changed his entire face.

"You never said you were hers," I said.

"I just did," he said. "I'd say it again."

Alden watched all of it with cold eyes.

He picked up his hat from the counter.

"Very touching," he said. "The Alpha has made his claim, and a claim must be tested."

"Tonight at the lodge, the pack will meet the human."

"If she fails the circle, the marriage is void."

He opened the door and looked back at me.

"I would wear something sturdy," he said.

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