The Breaking Point of Mate: Giving Up on My Alpha novel Chapter 67

Chapter 67

Melanie’s POV

The engine cut out, and the courtyard went dead quiet.

Then I heard Trista’s excited voice downstairs. “Hey, it’s Mom’s car! Dad, Mom is home!”

“Mhm.” Archer’s response was short and flat, as cold as ever.

I snapped my laptop shut, locking all those cold algorithms behind a black screen. I was just about to head out of the master bedroom when the door flew open.

Trista charged in like a little wrecking ball and tackled my waist, clinging to me. “Mommy!”

“Hey, baby,” I murmured. I gave her hair a quick, light stroke–just a brush of my fingertips. But I didn’t wrap my arms back

around her.

The exhaustion was so deep in my bones that even pretending to be the “doting mother” felt like a marathon I wasn’t ready to

run.

Trista didn’t notice the distance. She was already off to the races, rambling about her weekend.

I only tuned back in when I heard heavy, rhythmic footsteps approaching. I looked up over her head and locked eyes with Archer.

His face was a mask of sharp, handsome indifference. I matched him with a look of pure, stagnant calm.

“Go haye Shannon help you with your bath, sweetie. I need to talk to your dad alone for a minute,” I said, cutting her off.

Archer stopped in his tracks. He’d been heading for his study, but now he lingered in the hallway.

Trista pouted–she’d clearly been having too much fun lately to want the night to end–but she didn’t argue with Archer in the room. She followed Shannon back to her own wing.

The hallway fell silent. The air instantly felt heavier, thick with that Alpha aura he always carried.

Archer leaned against the wall, scrolling through his comm–stone. His fingers moved across the screen with purpose, acting like whatever was on that little rock was way more interesting than his Luna standing three feet away.

“Want to talk in the room?” I asked.

“Sure.”

I pushed the door open and walked in first. The second he stepped over the threshold, I added, “Close the door.”

I didn’t want whatever fight was coming to bleed into Trista’s dreams.

It’s funny, actually–we’d been mated for years, and even though we were basically strangers living in the same house, we’d never had a real, screaming match.

To Archer, fighting with me was probably a waste of time. And me? I used to treat every second with him like it was made of glass. I was too scared to break the silence with something as ugly as an argument.

The door clicked shut. Archer turned to me, a flash of impatience crossing his face. “What’s up?”

I didn’t dance around it. I went straight for the jugular. “Camille’s uncle bought the villa right across from the Red Rose Pack They’ve been renovating for months. They’re moving in soon.”

Camille’s mother is Zara Cummings.

The blood feud between the Willises and the Cummings went back way further than Zara and my mother, Rosemary.

Chapter 67

+30 Bonus

It was a textbook betrayal–my grandmother basically saved Camille’s grandmother from the gutter, and in return, those parasites turned around and bit her. Zara even used my parents‘ mating as a stepping stone to get what she wanted.

Over the years, the Cummings family got rich and lost their minds, trading their history of begging for a new brand of toxic arrogance. They’d forgotten where they came from.

Archer was the Alpha of the Razor Pack; there’s no way he didn’t know this history.

He had a predator’s instinct for this kind of thing. He had to know that moving them right across from my family was a blatant

act of war.

A look of realization flickered across Archer’s face.

His dark eyes glinted with something sharp–the look of a hunter who’d just spotted his target.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He flicked his lighter, then paused, his gaze raking over me. “You mind?”

I shook my head.

The bitter scent of tobacco filled the room, but it couldn’t drown out his own scent–that powerful, chilly Alpha pine.

“You want me to make them move?” He blew out a cloud of smoke, his voice low and muffled behind the grey haze. He sounded totally detached.

“Yes.”

Archer took another long drag. He didn’t answer right away.

My hands were balled into fists on my lap. I was wound so tight that Frost started whining in the back of my mind.

I could feel my pheromones leaking out–a mix of grief and “I’m done“-drifting toward him through the ragged, dying threads of our bond. 17

I could handle anything else, but not this. This was about the last shred of dignity the Willises had left. It was about my mother’s peace and Monica’s health.

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