The Knotty Problem with Alphas (Mistberry Cove #2)

Prologue

CLAIRE

The lipstick is called Unbothered.

Which is hilarious, because my hands are shaking so badly that I’ve just drawn a crimson line from the corner of my mouth to somewhere near my left nostril, and I have never been less unbothered in my entire twenty-five years of existence.

I wipe it off with the back of my wrist, take a breath, and try again like a woman who’s about to go on live television and talk about her cookbook without sweating through her top or forgetting how sentences work.

The car is coming soon to pick me up at eight. I’ve been ready since seven because that’s what I do when I’m nervous. Then I stand in front of the mirror and convince myself I’m about to ruin everything, which is a fantastic use of the extra hour.

Black pants, tapered at the ankle. An off-the-shoulder top in deep purple that I bought specifically for today because it says I’m a professional author who has her life together and not I’m a woman who ate cereal over the sink at midnight and watched three episodes of a baking competition she’s already seen twice.

My hair is blown out, curled at the ends, pinned on one side.

My glasses are off, contacts in, and the world has that slightly too-sharp quality it always gets when I’m not wearing frames.

I press my lips together, and the color holds.

“Today is going to be incredible,” I whisper to myself.

My chest tightens, not painful, not yet, just that familiar pressure behind my sternum that tells me the day hasn’t started and my body has already decided it’s a threat. I press two fingers to the base of my throat and count. Four in. Hold. Four out.

The bathroom tiles are cold under my bare feet. I haven’t put my heels on yet because if I put them on too early, my ankles will start to ache and then I’ll be thinking about that instead of the interview, and my brain can only hold so many catastrophes at once.

“Louis?” I call out toward the hallway, turning to check my profile in the mirror, tugging the hem of my top down where it’s ridden up. I walk out of the bathroom and into the living room. “Did you move my bag? The one with the book copies? I left it by the—”

I stop.

The room is wrong.

Not wrong in a way anyone else would notice.

The couch is the same, as is the coffee table with my stack of Post-it notes and the half-drunk glass of water from last night, and morning light is cutting in through the blinds.

But there’s a suitcase by the front door.

A black hard-shell, the expensive one Louis uses for client shoots.

Standing upright with the handle extended, ready to roll.

Louis is sitting on the arm of the couch, dressed not for the studio but in jeans and the button-down shirt I pressed for him last night and hung on the bedroom door.

His hair—short, brown, and slightly messy on top—swept off his forehead the way it falls when he’s freshly showered.

He flicks the front piece out of his eyes with two fingers, that gesture I used to find attractive and now realize I’ve watched a thousand times without ever once seeing him clearly. The man is beautiful.

His keys are in his hand. Not on the hook by the door, but held loosely, casually.

“What’s with the suitcase?” I ask, and my voice comes out shaky. The adrenaline that was supposed to be for the interview has nowhere to go, so it splits itself between my chest and my stomach and sits there, heavy.

He stares at me with no smile or his usual warmth. Just this flat calm I’ve never seen before, and I realize with a sickening lurch that he’s been sitting here waiting for me. “Claire, doll.” He says my name the way a doctor says it before bad news. “I need to be honest with you.”

“About what?” My knees soften.

“I’ve been trying to convince myself I could make this work with you.

That if I just gave it more time, or tried harder, I’d feel what I’m supposed to feel.

” He pauses. Wets his lips. “But we’ve been together for a year, and I can’t keep pretending.

You’re not my true Omega match. I think I’ve known that for a while, and it’s not fair to either of us to keep lying. ”

The room tilts around me. “What do you mean?” The words come out fast.

“I deserve to find my real match, Claire. I owe myself that. And honestly? I think you deserve to be with someone who doesn’t have to try so hard to make it feel right.”

“You’re doing this now?” My voice cracks, and I hate that. “You couldn’t have mentioned this last night when we sat on this couch and talked about you joining me at the studio?”

“I didn’t want to throw you off before the—”

“Before the what, Louis? The live television interview I have in less than an hour? This is your idea of not throwing me off? Oh my God!”

He sighs as if I’m being difficult. “I knew you’d react like this.”

“Like a person finding out her fiancé is leaving her in the morning with a packed suitcase?” My voice is rising, and I feel my pulse in my teeth. “When did you even pack? When I was asleep?”

He just shrugs. “Been slowly packing over a few days.”

A car horn bleats from outside. One short, impatient tap.

I turn toward the window. A silver hatchback idles in front of our townhouse, engine running, and there’s a woman in the driver’s seat.

Not an Uber driver or some bored stranger doing a favor.

She sits too comfortably for that, angled toward our place, one knee turned in his direction, glossy brown hair spilling over her shoulder, her smile soft.

She’s young and pretty, with a mouth that curves like she’s used to being adored, as if she’s never had to beg anyone to look at her twice.

She’s waiting for him.

“Who’s that?”

Louis doesn’t answer immediately, which betrays the truth.

“You already moved on.” It’s not a question. My throat is closing. “How long?”

“It’s not what you think—”

“Don’t.” The word comes out sharp enough to surprise us both. “There’s literally a woman parked outside our home waiting to collect you and your pre-packed suitcase. How long, Louis?”

He stands. Smooths the front of his T-shirt with both palms, a gesture so unbothered that I want to throw something at his head.

“A couple of months.”

The floor drops out. Which means every time he told me he was working late with a new client, every time he said the shoot ran over, every time he rolled away from me in bed and said he was just tired, he was already gone.

I was sharing a bed with a ghost who smelled like cologne and lies, and I didn’t notice because I was too busy being grateful that someone wanted me at all.

My chest squeezes, and the room seems to close in around me as if I’ve spent too long not paying attention, too sure of what was mine, while someone slipped inside and stole everything.

Ripped it away quietly. Cruelly. And now I’m standing here with the wreckage in my hands, trying to understand how this happened.

How I didn’t notice the door was already open.

“I need the ring back, Claire,” he states, breaking through my thoughts.

I stare at him through blurry eyes, and I’m unsure what I’m supposed to feel right now. “What?”

“The engagement ring.” He holds out his hand. Palm up, fingers open. “It wouldn’t be fair to keep it. Not when we both know what this was.”

A proposal I cried happy tears through. Three heats he held me through, promised me he’d be there every time, and he told me I was his. What this was. Past tense and already boxed up and zipped shut, standing by the door.

I yank at the ring on my finger. It takes two tries because my hands are shaking, and he watches me struggle without reaching to help. I drop it into his palm. He closes his fingers around it, then slides it into his pocket without glancing at it.

He walks away and picks up the suitcase.

“I hope you nail the interview today,” he says from the doorway, and the smile he gives me is the worst part. Gentle. Pitying. “You always do better when you’re not in your head so much.”

Then he’s through the door. I watch through the window as he crosses the lawn, opens the trunk of the car, swings the suitcase in.

He walks around to the passenger’s side, then gets in.

The brunette leans toward him and says something.

He laughs, short and easy, and then the car pulls away from the curb.

He doesn’t turn around. Not once. Not to check if I’m watching or to see if I’m still standing.

He left me the way you leave a parking space.

My knees buckle, and I catch myself on the windowsill.

The tears come fast, blurring the room, turning the morning light into a smear of gold.

My stomach cramps so hard I double over, one hand pressed to my abdomen, the other gripping the sill while the floor tilts and my breath comes in short, shallow gasps that don’t reach my lungs.

He promised me a future and told me I was his. He photographed the food for every page of my cookbook, spent hours getting the light right on my grandmother’s chowder recipe, and he did all of that with one foot already out the door.

I press my forehead against the cold glass. Am I going to be sick? I might be sick. My stomach churns and my skin is clammy.

My phone buzzes on the kitchen counter, and I move to check it, some idiotic part of me thinking it’s Louis, admitting he’s made a stupid mistake.

Except, it’s my driver, and I cry. Five minutes away, Ms. Darling.

I can’t do this interview. I absolutely can’t do this.

But I canceled twice before because my chest got tight and my vision blurred, and I told Katie, my agent and bestie, that I wasn’t ready.

She understood both times, but the producer’s patience has a limit, and this is it.

If I don’t show up this morning, the spot goes to someone else and it doesn’t come back.

I rush to the bathroom. My reflection in the mirror is a disaster. Mascara tracked down both cheeks. Lipstick bitten off. Eyes red, swollen, a face that belongs to a woman who’s been crying, which is accurate but unhelpful.