Chapter 2
The steady whooshing sound of the plane stretched in the silence. For the first time since Brianna had left, she was alone with her thoughts.
And that was dangerous.
Because the moment she stopped finding gazing at the endless clouds interesting, Tristian came rushing back into her mind.
Their contract marriage hadn’t fallen apart overnight.
It had been dying slowly, piece by piece, while she’d kept convincing herself it was still worth saving.
It started with her father’s investment in Tristan’s Pack’s company.
Helion Corporation had been little more than just an ambitious business plan when her father poured millions of his money into it.
Her father believed in Tristian’s vision and trusted him completely, treating him more like a son.
To be honest, she had placed all her trust on Tristan too.
And that was probably her biggest mistake.
Because as Helion grew, so did Tristan’s influence. Money poured in, his name became known beyond the Dark Howl Pack, and the power he possessed as the Alpha only seemed to feed his ego.
Or maybe it simply revealed the man he’d always been.
In his place of the man Brianna had fallen in love with was an Alpha who had everything he wanted and apparently no longer desired a wolfless Omega beside him.
Tristan became more distant. He stopped coming home at reasonable hours. When he eventually did, the scent of alcohol would often cling to him.
Sometimes, it came with the scent of another woman.
Heartbroken, she had asked him about it once.
He’d simply laughed it off, making her feel like she was overreacting and making a big deal out of nothing.
Then came the little things she began noticing afterward.
Tristian’s phone suddenly had a new password.
He started taking calls outside the house.
He’d turn his screen away whenever she walked into the room.
And one evening, she found a woman’s hair brush in his car, lying on the passenger-side floor.
It wasn’t hers.
With hurt written across her face, she held the brush between two fingers when she confronted him.
“One of my clients probably dropped it by accident.” He had told her dismissively.
A female client brushing her hair in his car?
It was absurd and she hadn’t believed him. But she decided to give him the benefit of doubt and let it go.
Then there were his meals.
She would prepare them for him, and whenever he didn’t refuse them, he ate without the usual praise he would always give her cooking.
Sometimes, he would even grow irritated when she reached for him in bed, making excuses whenever she wanted intimacy.
She remembered questioning him one of those nights.
Without even looking at her, he blamed his mood on exhaustion. He had too much work at the office and too many pack affairs to deal with.
Lies. One lie after another.
They kept piling up until Brianna could no longer tell where the truth ended and the deception began.
Eventually, Tristan also seemed to grow tired of pretending.
There was one morning she could never forget.
He hadn’t gone to the office like she assumed.
Brianna had gone out grocery shopping when she saw her mate dropping another woman off at the gym.
He came home after midnight that night, his clothes disheveled, exhaustion written across his face, and fresh dark hickeys visible along his neck.
She wanted to throw a tantrum.
She wanted to demand the truth and force him to look her in the eyes while he admitted what he had done.
Instead, she swallowed the pain, held the pieces of her broken heart together, and said nothing.
The next morning, she hired a well-known private bloodhound from the Wild Thorn Pack.
It didn’t take long.
A few weeks later, the report landed in her hands.
And suddenly, every little clue she had collected over the past year fell into place.
Tristan had been seeing Riley.
There were hotel receipts showing they had gone away together.
Recordings of them entering their secret meeting places.
Deleted call logs.
Text threads.
And then came the financial records.
Money had been moved through accounts Brianna had never heard of. The pack’s company funds were disappearing into offshore accounts.
Riley had entered Tristan’s life about a year ago, always smiling, always playing the harmless young she-wolf who supposedly adored her boss like an older brother.
Everyone else might have bought the act.
Brianna never did.
Just when she thought the list of their betrayals was finally over, the Bloodhound uncovered something worse.
And it was that Riley was pregnant with Tristan’s child.
When the bloodhound relayed the news, he apparently believed the pregnancy would finally force Brianna out of the marriage once and for all.
Instead, it gave her exactly what she had been searching for.
Which was a reason to finally stop being patient.
It might have seemed like her father had acted on a whim, but he hadn’t simply given Tristan money and helped uplift his pack. He had also taught Brianna how to protect what was hers.
He had changed the way she saw things, making her understand that no matter how much she loved her mate, she should always have a backup plan in case the unexpected happened.
Her father was an elder and a member of the pack council. He was also a businessman, the founder of Helion corporation and its chairman.
He had more experience than she did and had lived long enough to witness the marriages of countless pack members.
So, without hesitation, Brianna had followed his advice.
She had made arrangements of her own and secured forty percent of Helion Corporation’s shares.
The house Tristan and she lived in was legally hers too, with the deed signed in her name.
So when she learned about his attempts to move assets into offshore corporate accounts, she didn’t panic.
She simply kept copies of every piece of evidence.
Tristan thought he had all the power because she was nothing more than a wolfless Omega.
But he was completely wrong. Brianna wasn’t a pushover.
She had simply spent years allowing him to underestimate her because she had been blinded by love and the beautiful memories they had shared before he changed.
But that was over now.
She was going to make him regret every single thing he had done.
The plane began to descend down into The Night Blood pack.
She looked down at the city appearing beneath the clouds and her jaw set with determination.
Tristan had spent all this time believing he could do whatever he wanted because he was the Alpha and walk away untouched.
He had no idea what was coming.
And his new chick, Riley. The photo she had sent her was just her lighting the match. Unbeknownst to her, Brianna had already laid down the explosives.
When Brianna stepped off the plane, crisp fresh relieving air swept across her face.
She stopped for a moment and breathed it in.
She was free.
And for the first time in months, she actually broke into a happy little dance, twirling and hopping around in her sundress.