The Third Time My Alpha Accused Me Of Cheating I Left Chapter 09
All that playing hard to get. All that feigned dignity and restraint—making me think I’d need another eight hundred rounds of pursuit.
And the whole time?
She’d just been waiting for the right chaos to drug me and crawl into my bed.
From that day forward, I was certain she was calculating. Manipulative.
Certain that every rejection had been nothing more than a game of cat and mouse.
It wasn’t until I discovered Naomi’s true feelings toward me that certain long-ignored details suddenly resurfaced.
That night…
The glass of wine I’d drunk.
It was Naomi who’d handed it to me.
My breath stopped dead.
The woman who’d actually wanted to climb into my bed—it was her.
Not Esme.
Esme hadn’t known a thing.
She’d ended up in that room by pure misfortune.
And she’d taken the fall for everything Naomi had done.
And I… I’d never once bothered to look into it properly.
Then Esme got pregnant.
At the time, all I felt was that I’d been played.
So for four years, I kept her at arm’s length.
Again and again, I dismissed her explanations as excuses. Dismissed her tears as performance.
My hands hung at my sides, clenching tighter and tighter.
From the very beginning—I’d hated the wrong person.
For four entire years.
…
Three years later, I brought Asher to a birthday gala hosted by Hollowmoon Pack.
Asher had grown so much taller. He wore a fitted little suit.
He wasn’t the loud, imperious child he’d been before. If anything, he’d become far quieter.
I was making small talk when my peripheral vision caught a figure in the corner of the banquet hall.
A woman in a deep emerald gown, cradling a toddler—maybe two years old—in her arms. She was looking down, wiping the child’s mouth.
The blood rushed to my head in an instant—Esme.
I’d searched for her for three full years.
Police reports, newspaper ads, private investigators—she’d vanished from the face of the earth.
But now—she was standing less than ten steps away, holding another child in her arms, smiling with a peace I’d never seen before.
Asher saw her too.
“Mommy!”
He tore away from me and threw himself at Esme’s legs.
Esme looked down.
When she saw Asher clinging to her, the smile on her face faded, bit by bit.
“Mommy! You’re finally back! I missed you so much!”
Asher gazed up at her, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“I had a fever and you didn’t come see me! Kids at school call me the boy with no mom! I—”
“Let go.”
Esme’s voice was perfectly calm.
Asher went still.
But his arms remained locked around her legs.
“I said let go. You’re scaring my baby.”
Esme stepped back, pulling the toddler in her arms even closer.
The little boy blinked up at Asher with wide, curious eyes.
“Mommy, who’s that?”
Mommy.
Hearing that word, my body went rigid too.
Asher was completely stunned.
He stared at the child in Esme’s arms, eyes wide.
“Mommy… why are you holding another baby?”
His voice cracked.
“You said I was your only child! You promised!”
Esme looked at him.
Then smiled—a brief, detached smile—as if she were regarding a stranger who had nothing to do with her.
“Oh. So you’re a child nobody’s mother wants.”
Her tone was light. Airy.
“That’s really sad for you.”
Asher’s tears came flooding out.
He stood frozen in place.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I strode forward.
“How can you say something like that?”
I stared at her.
“He’s your flesh and blood!”
Esme finally raised her head and looked at me.
Three years.
The first time I’d seen her this close in three years.
And her gaze landed on my face without the faintest shift.
“I have only one child.”
She lowered her head and kissed the toddler’s forehead.
Then turned to walk away.