It was our mating ceremony, and Alpha Joseph had promised to mark and marry me, but he called in the afternoon to say he had an unexpected engagement and would be late.
I believed him and was still looking forward to it when he got back. Little did I know, his "engagement" was to accompany his childhood sweetheart, Nelly, one of the pack warriors, to set off fireworks.
How ironic.
In the video, Alpha Joseph's handsome face, usually aloof and cold, was filled with laughter, and his eyes were full of tenderness as he looked at her.
This was a soft smile I had never received.
Before this, I thought he was just naturally not a smiling person, incapable of expressing affection.
I laughed at myself, unwrapped the cake, and ate it in silence.
The greasy, sweet taste spread in my mouth, but suddenly, it felt pointless. I took my phone and called Alpha Joseph.
He answered quickly, and his voice was as cold as ever. "What's up?"
As he spoke, I could clearly hear the sound of fireworks in the background.
After a two-second silence, I swallowed the cake in my mouth and asked calmly, "Where are you?"
"At the office. What's the matter?" He seemed to have moved away from the riverside, as the sound of fireworks was gone.
His voice was still calm, showing no signs of the panic one would expect when lying.
I glanced at the video on my tablet and felt even more disinterested.
"Let's break up. I don't want you as my mate anymore."
"You're making a fuss again."
I sneered, "Go to the group chat. There's a video waiting for you there."
With that, I hung up the phone.
Since I had proposed the breakup, I shouldn't stay at his place any longer.
I looked at the untouched dishes on the table and told the caterers to pack them up. No wonder nobody was here for the so-called ceremony. They probably knew he wasn't coming.
Alpha Joseph had told me he wanted the ceremony to be private, with only his friends in attendance. I was foolish to believe that a whole Alpha of the pack would choose to mark his mate and marry her in private.
I quickly packed my belongings and took a taxi back to my small apartment, which I hadn't visited in a long time.
After I lost my parents, I lived alone in the apartment within the pack.
After getting together with Joseph, he always said that our homes were too far apart, so he asked me to move in with him.
Actually, the distance between these two houses was just the distance between him and me. We looked close, but our hearts seemed to be separated by an ocean.
Back in my long-lost small house, I tidied up, washed up, and went to bed.
The next day, I found only a few messages on my phone.
[What's the matter with you now?]
[Come back when you've calmed down. Don't be too willful.]
It seemed he came home last night and found out I had moved out.
I didn't reply to his messages and just went about my own business.
This wasn't the first time something like this had happened.
Nelly would call him whenever something was wrong. She would even ask him to accompany her when she was awakened by thunder at midnight and couldn't sleep.
I had questioned him, quarreled, and argued with him.
But he said, "People with a dirty heart see everything as dirty."
Every time he abandoned me to go to Nelly, he would send me roses afterward to appease me. And I would continue to immerse myself in this relationship as if nothing had happened.
But I was tired this time. This time, it was different.