Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 48

Chapter 48

Chapter 48

ELENA

+10 Free Coins

I came home from the bridal shop and sat down on the edge of the bed without taking off my coat.

Mara, who had driven me back and noticed my silence on the way, had asked twice if I was alright. I had told her yes, and she had accepted this because she was a good friend and knew the difference between “yes” that meant yes and *yes* that meant *please don’t ask me right now. She’d left me at the door with a hand on my arm and no further questions.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

Through the window, the afternoon was doing something with the light that made the room look warmer than it was. I looked at it without seeing it.

Denise. Rosaline Nightshade. A velvet chair. The whole vibe of a mother accompanying a future daughter-in-law through bridal appointments with the ease of someone who had already decided that this is the bride that they want for their son.

I had looked at Denise in that mirror and she had looked at me, and for a moment the whole shop had been very quiet, nobody staying anything as if anticipating something between us.

She had been wearing a dress that wasn’t right for her and she’d known it too. I wouldn’t have thought she would also be preparing for her day, just like I was, especially when she was the one who had sorted out my bridal shops with the efficiency of someone good at her job. I had been underestimating Denise since I met her, taking her for a lowly employee that got too close to my future husband, only to see that she was different and far more interesting than I gave her credit for. That was kieran’s mum. Kieran was an alpha of great standing, not one that Denise would find herself in the circle of, much less marrying.

I took off my coat. Folded it over the chair by the window. Sat back down.

I had been leaving threads alone.

This was a thing I was aware of about myself-the noticing things and not asking, Dante had always told me that I was perspective in a way, and he was right, but he didn’t know that being preceptive wasn’t the same as investigation. I could see things and choose where to focus on instead, I could notice threads and choose to leave them where they are.

I had been leaving threads alone for approximately eight months.

The first thread: Denise saying ‘Dante’ in the car. Not ‘Alpha Blackwood. Not even ‘Alpha.’ The specific first-name intimacy of someone who said a name without thinking because they had said it too many times to start doing otherwise.

The second thread: Dante at the police station. The drive there, going there at that time of the night, the whole fact that he went there at all, and the careful way he tried to explain how he framed it as a general concern for one of his employee and i allowed myself to not think too much about it, considering Denise was his PA, and was much closer to him than anyone else in the company and his being there was also right in a way.

The third thread: the credit card statements that Dante had left open on the shared household tablet two months ago-not the business account, the personal supplementary one. I had seen them for approximately four seconds before he closed the screen. Long enough.

The fourth thread: Dante’s face in the Grand Aldric when Denise came down that staircase. Two seconds of something unmanaged. I had counted them.

1/3

Chapter 48

+had left all of these where they were.

I was done leaving them

+10 Free Coins

The old device was in the drawer of the nightstand a phone Dante had stopped and kept because I hadn’t gotten around to clearing it and then kept because kept things accumulated their own inertia.

I plugged it in to charge and waited for it to boot.

While I waited, I looked at the room around me. The room that was going to be our room, after the ceremony. The room I had been gradually moving things into, trying my best to get ready as the married wife of Dante, and start living fully in his life. The phone

came on.

I went to the photographs first, not having anywhere particular to go, i went through the old pictures that we had.

Dante and I in the early days-a dinner somewhere, both of us younger, the specific ease of two people who had grown up together, knowing that one day or another, we were going to end up in marriage. He looked at me in those photographs with something real. I had always believed that.

I still believed it. I kept scrolling.

i came across a picture that had us in it, but there was a blurry picture of someone in the background staring at Dante with an expression that i couldn’t quite look away from. and i saw the message attached to it.

Then I read it.

I didn’t read all of it. I read enough.

Not because I couldn’t continue, but the fact that if i had kept reading, it would have been a way of just making myself a masochist at this point.

I had what I needed by the third exchange.

I closed the phone.

I put it down on the nightstand beside the charging cable and sat with my hands folded in my lap and looked at the window.

Eight months. The thread had messages from eight months ago, eight months ago, I had finalized my divorce and Dante had called me and said he’d been waiting, that he’d always been waiting, that i was finally coming back into his life as a free woman was everything he’d-

I stopped that thought where it was.

I breathed in slowly.

I sat with it for a while.

Then I picked up my current phone and scrolled to a contact I hadn’t called in two years.

Sera.

We had been close once-the closest, for most of the years that mattered. She had introduced me to the man I’d married and had

2/3

1:23 pm P P P P

Chapter 48

+10 Free Coins

apologized for it afterward with so much remorse and genuine distress that i ended up consoling her and it was that absurd we laughed about it, and since then, remained gooş friends,

She answered on the second ring

“Elena.” Her voice, warm and immediate. “I was thinking about you today.”

“Sera.” I looked at the window. “I need to tell you something, and then I need you to tell me something.”

A pause. “Alright.”

“I found a message thread today. On an old device.” I kept my voice even because it was even-that was the thing, it genuinely was. “Between Dante and someone I know.”

Silence on her end. A different quality of silence than before.

‘How long have you known?” I asked.

The pause that followed was exactly long enough to confirm what the pause meant before she said anything.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify