The Alpha Heir’s Candle Game Chapter 02
The Crack
Two years ago, a new face joined the heir’s wing.
First day on duty, she dropped the blue-glazed cup I’d given Ethan for his birthday. Shattered it on the stone.
Ethan rarely lost his temper, but that day he wanted her punished. Heavily.
I wasn’t in a good mood either. But I stopped him. “Clara didn’t mean it. Let her off just this once.”
Clara’s room was next to mine. I’d heard her story. No father, no mother, no pack. An orphan wolf carrying herself through the pack attendant trials.
She’d fought too hard to be thrown out over a cup.
Ethan gave in. His fingertip tapped the space between my brows, soft. “Up to you, babe.”
After that, Clara clung close to me. Grew even more careful.
Ethan remembered the cup. He never warmed to her.
“Clumsy. No sense of anything around her. She breaks one more thing, she’s out of my wing. She’s like a mute. Gets hurt and doesn’t even speak up. If it were you, you’d have cried to me by now.”
Under Ethan’s impatience, I started hearing something else.
Something soft. Something that ached for her.
Then, after a few weeks, I walked in on the two of them in his bed.
Clara dropped to her knees on the floor, crying. “Jade, I’m sorry, the Alpha heir was drunk, he thought I was you… I never meant any of it, I swear.”
My parents had taught me that a future Luna needed to be generous.
They hadn’t taught me what to do when the wolf I’d been generous to turned into a thorn in my throat.
I forced my lips into a smile.
Two words came out of my mouth.
“It’s fine.”
They tore my heart open on the way out.
That night Ethan held me a long, long time.
None of it warmed the cold blowing through me.
“Clara was an accident. When I become the Pack Alpha, I’ll give her a low-ranking contract mate title and be done with it. But my real mate, the she-wolf I live and die beside, is only ever going to be you.”
I nodded.
Ethan loved me. That was enough.
Life didn’t seem to change much.
Only now there was a Clara between us.
Until a month ago.
Father’s letter came. My mother had taken sick. She was bedridden.
Like every other time, I went to Ethan and asked for a pass-out slip.
But this time, he frowned lightly.
“You should have told me sooner. I already gave the slot to Clara.”
Even as his promised Luna, I still needed his signed permission to be added to the group leaving the main territory.
Only a specified number of wolves could leave at once. Numbers didn’t stretch.
I came late. He gave it to her. Fair enough.
But my second time asking, I went to him three full days in advance.
He gave the slot to Clara again. “She wants to visit the wolves who fed her when she was rogue. They agreed on it. I can’t let her break her word to them.”
Anger rose in me.
Under it, something worse.
Something small, but painful.
“Her matter is important. Mine isn’t? I came to you first. Why do I have to give way? That’s not fair.”
Ethan’s voice dropped cold. “I already sent a healer to the Whitmore house. Why are you fighting her over this. Insisting on going out yourself. Jealous acts have a time and place.”
“Now, get out.”
That was the first time Ethan sent me away.
Staring at his closed door, I suddenly understood something.
When he loved me, my temper was allowed by him.
When he didn’t, I was just throwing a tantrum.