My Cheating Mate (Emma and Jeremy) novel Chapter 203

Chapter 203

My Cheating Mate

Courtney pov

I watched from the tree line as Connor sat on that ridiculous garden bench with Grace, their heads beut close in conversation. Talking. Actually talking, like they’d known each other for years instead of being strangers connected only by a mystical bond that had ruined everything.

He was going to choose her.

I could see it in his body language–the way he leaned toward her, the way his whole posture had softened from the defensive tension he’d carried at dinner. The way he looked at her like she was something worth studying instead of the weird artist girl everyone knew she was.

Three hours ago he’d been at dinner with me. With ME. Telling me he needed time to think, to figure things out. And now here he was, choosing her. Choosing Grace fucking Trent and her vampire–obsessed family and everything wrong about supernatural integration.

My hands were shaking. From rage, from b betrayal, from the sick feeling in my stomach that came from watching something that was MINE being taken away by someone who didn’t deserve it.

Grace didn’t deserve Connor. Didn’t deserve his attention or his consideration or the mate bond the Moon Goddess had thrown at her like some cosmic participation trophy.

She was WRONG. Her whole family was wrong. Vampires and wolves weren’t supposed to mix. Uncle Cas–the way she said it, should have been kept at arm’s length, treated as the political so casual, so comfortable–was an abomination. Lord Castell

ally he was, not welcomed into a pack family like he belonged there.

And now Connor was falling for it. Falling for Grace’s act, her manipulation, her use of the mate bond to force him into a relationship with her weird fucking family.

I pulled out my phone with trembling fingers. Stared at the number I’d saved months ago. The one I’d sworn I’d never use. The one my father had given me “just in case the integration model ever became a genuine threat to pack purity.”

Rogues. Professional ones. The kind who took contracts for the right price and didn’t ask questions about motivation.

The kind who’d made the Trent family’s life difficult before, back when Grace was a baby. Before Lord Castellan and his vampire alliance had eliminated the threat.

But there were always more rogues. Always more wolves who were willing to take money to cause problems. My father had maintained contacts with several groups over the years–insurance, he called it. A way to protect traditional pack values if the integration model ever went too far.

Well. It had gone too far.

Grace Trent was using a mate bond to pull Connor into her family’s twisted worldview. Was sitting there in her garden having deep conversations like she deserved his time and attention. Was going to win him over with her “authenticity” and her ” bravery” and her fucking paint–stained hands.

I pulled up the contact. Stared at it.

This was extreme. I knew it was extreme. Calling rogues to that choosing her came with consequences?

to what? Attack the Trent family? Hurt Grace? Make Connor see

But what choice did I have? Connor was MINE. We’d been building something real for six months. Six months of dates and conversations and planning a future. Six months I’d invested in him, in us, in the relationship we were supposed to have.

And Grace–Grace who barely knew him, who’d given him some manipulative twenty–four hour deadline, who’d spent eighteen

+15 Bonus

years being weird and different and wrong was going to take him away because of destiny?

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