After My Alpha Called Me His, I Planned Revenge

The penthouse fell silent around one a.m.

I waited another hour to be sure. Lying fully dressed on top of the untouched white comforter, I counted the seconds between each distant sound. A door closing somewhere below. The hum of the elevator shaft. The wind pressing against the floor-to-ceiling windows.

When I was certain Derek had gone to bed, I sat up and pulled my laptop from my bag.

The suite's Wi-Fi connected automatically. Of course it did. Derek wanted me comfortable. Wanted me settled. Wanted me to feel like this place could be home.

I opened the network diagnostic and started mapping the building's infrastructure.

The security was good. Better than I'd expected. Layered encryption, segmented access points, professional-grade firewalls. This wasn't the kind of setup you got from a local IT contractor. Someone had invested serious money into keeping the network locked down.

Good. That meant there was something worth protecting.

I navigated through the shared server pathways, moving slowly, leaving no digital fingerprints. I wasn't looking for the vault yet. I was looking for the cracks. The places where convenience had won out over caution. The backup drives. The automatic syncs. The folders someone had marked as low-priority because they'd forgotten what they contained.

It took three hours to find the first one.

A financial subfolder buried six layers deep in what looked like archived tax documents. The encryption was standard AES-256, which meant I'd need time and processing power to crack it. But the folder name caught my attention: "Clearwater Holdings—Q3 Reconciliation."

I'd never heard of Clearwater Holdings.

I copied the folder path into a text file and closed the connection. My eyes burned. My shoulders ached from holding still for so long. But my hands were steady as I shut the laptop and set it aside.

One thread. That's all I needed to start.

I lay back down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. My fingers moved without permission, running through scales against the comforter. C major. D minor. E minor. The muscle memory was still there, even if I couldn't hear the notes anymore.

I forced my hands to stop and rolled onto my side.

Sleep didn't come. It never did anymore. But I closed my eyes and counted backward from a thousand, and somewhere around three hundred, the sky outside started to turn gray.

---

Derek invited me to dinner two days later.

Not just the two of us. A small pack gathering, he'd said. Low-key. Just a few of his inner circle.

I knew what that meant. He wanted to show me off. Wanted to see how I'd fit into his world. Wanted to watch his wolves accept me as his.

I dressed carefully. A simple navy dress that didn't cling, didn't flash, didn't demand attention. Low heels. Hair pulled back in a loose twist. I looked soft. Approachable. Grateful to be included.

I looked like someone who had no idea what she was doing.

The dinner was held in a private room off the main pack house. When I arrived, Derek was already there, standing near the head of the table talking to Nathaniel. He looked up when I walked in, and something in his expression shifted. Softened.

"Dahlia." He crossed the room in three strides and took my hand. His thumb brushed across my knuckles. "You look beautiful."

I smiled and let him keep my hand. "Thank you for inviting me."

He led me to the table and pulled out the chair to his right. I sat and immediately angled myself so my left ear faced the center of the table. It was automatic now. Position myself. Read the room. Compensate.

Nathaniel took the seat across from me. He nodded once, polite but distant. His eyes tracked my movements with the kind of attention that made my spine straighten.

The others filtered in over the next ten minutes. I recognized some from the old days. Marcus Webb, the Gamma. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a scar cutting through his left eyebrow. He'd always been Derek's enforcer, the one who carried out orders without asking questions.

A woman I didn't know sat beside Nathaniel. Mid-thirties, blonde, with sharp cheekbones and sharper eyes. She introduced herself as Vanessa Cole, the pack's financial advisor.

I filed the name away.

Dinner started with small talk. Pack business. Territory updates. A rogue sighting near the southern border that had been handled quietly. I listened more than I spoke, letting the conversation flow around me while I absorbed every detail.

Vanessa mentioned a property acquisition in passing. Something about expanding the pack's commercial holdings.

"We're finalizing the Clearwater deal next month," she said, reaching for her wine glass. "The numbers finally cleared legal."

My fingers stilled on my fork.

Clearwater.

I kept my expression neutral and cut into my salmon. Across the table, Nathaniel's gaze flicked to me, then away.

Derek leaned closer, his hand settling on the back of my chair. "You're quiet."

I looked up at him and smiled softly. "Just taking it all in. It's been a long time since I sat at a pack table."

His expression darkened for half a second. Guilt, maybe. Or memory. Then it smoothed over, and he squeezed my shoulder gently. "You belong here."

I wanted to laugh. Or scream. Instead, I nodded and turned my attention back to my plate.

The conversation shifted to lighter topics. Marcus told a story about a training mishap that had two younger wolves shifting mid-sparring match and destroying half the gym. Vanessa complained about permit delays on a construction project. Nathaniel said almost nothing, but every time I glanced up, he was watching me.

Not with hostility. Not exactly.

With the kind of look that said he was trying to figure out a puzzle that didn't fit.

When dessert arrived, Derek's phone buzzed. He glanced at it, frowned, and pushed back from the table. "I need to take this. I'll be right back."

He pressed a kiss to the top of my head before he left. The kind of casual possessive gesture that made the others at the table exchange glances.

I focused on my coffee and let the silence settle.

Vanessa broke it first. "So, Dahlia. What do you do?"

I met her eyes. "Right now? Not much. I'm still figuring things out."

"You were a musician, weren't you?" Her tone was light. Conversational. But there was a edge underneath. "I remember hearing about you years ago. Some kind of prodigy."

I smiled and stirred my coffee. "That was a long time ago."

"What happened?"

Nathaniel's fork clinked against his plate. Marcus shifted in his seat.

I kept smiling. "Life happened."

Vanessa tilted her head, studying me. Then she nodded and turned to Marcus. "Speaking of life, did you ever track down that contractor who ghosted us on the warehouse build?"

The conversation moved on.

But Nathaniel's eyes stayed on me for another three seconds before he looked away.

When Derek returned, he was tense. Whatever the call had been, it hadn't been good. He stayed standing, one hand on the back of his chair. "I need to cut this short. Something came up."

The others stood immediately. I rose more slowly, smoothing my dress.

Derek walked me to the door. In the hallway, away from the others, he caught my wrist gently. "I'm sorry. I wanted tonight to go longer."

"It's fine," I said quietly. "Thank you for including me."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he pulled me closer and pressed his forehead to mine. "You're not a guest, Dahlia. You're home."

I closed my eyes and let him believe it.

When I got back to the suite, I opened my laptop and added a new line to my notes.

*Clearwater Holdings—Vanessa Cole—property acquisition—legal clearance next month.*

One thread had just become two.