They Called Me a Homewrecker——Then Three Wolves Refused to Let Me Go

POV: Ivy

I was halfway through a vanilla latte and three pages into my seminar notes when a stack of glossy photographs slapped onto my table.

Coffee jumped over the rim of my mug and bled across my notebook.

I jerked back. My chair scraped hard against the floor of the campus cafe.

Three girls stood over me.

The blonde in the middle planted both palms on my table. She was beautiful in the polished, expensive way girls from powerful pack families tended to be, but there was nothing polished about the hatred in her eyes.

"You're sleeping with my fiancé."

The cafe seemed to lose sound.

I stared at her. "I'm sorry?"

"Don't." Her mouth twisted. "Don't play stupid."

She shoved one of the photographs toward me.

I looked down.

A man and a woman walking through a park. Another shot of them on a restaurant patio. Another of him kissing her cheek while she laughed up at him.

The woman was standing in front of me.

The man was Dean Carter.

My boyfriend.

My fingers went cold.

Dean and I had been together for six months. He knew my coffee order. He kept spare clothes at my apartment. He had spent nights quizzing me for exams and mornings stealing my shower before his early meetings. On our first date, I had asked him outright if there was anyone else.

He had smiled and said, Not even close.

"There has to be an explanation." My voice sounded far away. I picked up the nearest photo.

A date stamp sat in the corner.

Two weeks ago.

The same weekend Dean had told me he was visiting his sick grandmother.

The blonde let out a humorless laugh. "The explanation is that you thought you could steal someone else's Alpha."

"I didn't know he was engaged."

"Of course you didn't."

"I didn't."

The bell over the cafe door rang.

"Sarah, wait!"

Dean.

Relief hit me before common sense could stop it. I stood so fast my knee struck the table.

He would explain.

He would tell her there had been some mistake.

He would look at me the way he always did and make this nightmare make sense.

"Dean." I stepped toward him. "What is going on? Who is she?"

He walked past me.

Straight to the blonde.

He caught her by the arms. "Babe, please. Let's go outside. We can talk about this."

Babe.

One word. That was all it took.

I stopped breathing.

Sarah shoved him away. "Tell her. Right now. Tell her what she is."

Only then did Dean look at me.

The warmth I knew was gone. In its place was calculation.

He was scared, but not because he had hurt me.

He was scared of losing her.

"Ivy." He rubbed the back of his neck. "You misunderstood what we were."

A whisper ran through the cafe.

I stared at him. "Misunderstood?"

"We studied together. We hung out. You got attached."

For a second, I honestly wondered if I had lost my mind.

Then anger cut through the shock.

"You asked me to be your girlfriend."

Dean's gaze flicked toward Sarah.

"No, I didn't."

"You told me you loved me."

"I never said that."

The lie came too quickly.

Around us, phones appeared.

Of course they did.

The Vale Pack university loved a scandal, and nothing traveled faster than a humiliating video with a pretty victim and an easy villain.

Dean slid an arm around Sarah's shoulders.

"I'm engaged to Sarah," he said. "Ivy took a friendship too seriously. That's all."

I could barely feel my hands.

He was erasing six months while I stood ten feet away.

Every date. Every night at my apartment. Every message he had sent after midnight. Every promise.

Gone, because admitting the truth would cost him more than sacrificing me.

"He's lying," I said.

My voice cracked, and I hated that it did.

Sarah stepped closer. "You expect me to believe you?"

"He told me he was single. I swear."

"Mistress."

A girl behind her muttered it first.

Then someone else said, "Homewrecker."

Heat crawled up my neck.

Sarah's eyes shone with furious tears. I understood why she hated me. That almost made it worse.

She grabbed the iced coffee from her friend's hand and ripped off the lid.

"This is what women like you deserve."

She drew her arm back.

I raised both hands on instinct.

The coffee never hit me.

An arm locked around my waist and pulled me backward.

My spine collided with a solid chest as ice and coffee splashed across the floor where I had been standing.

A scent hit me next.

Pine. Wet earth. The metallic edge of a storm about to break.

Alpha.

Not Dean's polished, expensive cologne layered over a carefully restrained wolf scent. This was deeper. Older somehow. The kind of presence that made every weaker wolf in the room go still before their human brains caught up.

The man behind me looked down.

"You okay?"

His voice was low enough that I felt it against my back.

I turned in his hold.

Tall. Broad shoulders. Black overcoat. Dark hair. A hard jaw and eyes that seemed almost black under the cafe lights.

I had never met him.

At least, I didn't think I had.

He released my waist the second I found my balance, then looked at Dean.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop.

"You're still following my girlfriend?" he asked.

Dean went pale.

His inner wolf reacted before he could hide it. His shoulders lowered. His gaze dropped.

Whoever this stranger was, Dean knew exactly where he stood beneath him.

"I wasn't following anyone," Dean said.

"She turned you down." The stranger's tone stayed calm. That made it worse. "Get over it."

The story changed in real time.

A minute ago, I had been the pathetic Omega chasing an engaged Alpha.

Now every phone in the cafe was pointed at Dean.

Sarah turned on him. "You were following her?"

"No. Sarah, listen to me—"

"Don't touch me."

She jerked away when he reached for her.

Dean shot the stranger one quick, wary look, then hurried after Sarah as she stormed outside.

"Sarah. Wait. Let me explain."

The cafe exhaled.

People lowered their phones. Conversations started again in embarrassed little bursts.

I stood in the middle of spilled coffee, ruined notes, and photographs of a relationship I had never known existed.

The stranger stepped away.

"Thank you," I said.

He studied me for a moment.

There was something unsettlingly familiar about his face.

Not enough to name. Just enough to make the back of my mind itch.

"Pick better next time," he said.

I blinked.

Then he turned and walked out.

No number. No introduction. No attempt to turn rescuing me into something I owed him for.

The bell chimed above the door, and he disappeared into the afternoon crowd.

A barista hurried over with towels. Someone asked if I wanted a fresh drink.

I barely heard them.

I gathered the photographs with numb fingers and shoved them into my bag.

On one of them, Dean had his hand at Sarah's lower back.

It was the same possessive touch he used on me.

That hurt more than I wanted it to.

I sat down because my legs stopped cooperating.

My phone buzzed.

Dean.

Three missed calls. Then a message.

Don't make this worse. Sarah's family is powerful. Just tell people you misunderstood.

I stared at the screen until the words blurred.

He wasn't sorry.

He wanted me to help him bury me.

I took a screenshot.

Then another.

For the first time all afternoon, my hands stopped shaking.

I didn't know what I was going to do with the evidence yet.

But I knew I wasn't deleting it.

And long after the stranger's pine-and-storm scent faded from the cafe, my inner Omega stayed awake beneath my skin, restless and strangely certain that I had smelled it before.