My Mate Pretended He Was Not the Alpha

"My daughter was born with silver poisoning in her blood—passed down from me—which made it hard for her to sense her wolf, and even harder for her to shift. I worked tirelessly, taking on every job I could, to earn enough money to find a cure for her.One night during a late shift, I saw her.My daughter, dressed like a princess in an elegant, Silverlight-woven gown, sat at a table in a high-end restaurant. With her was my mate—supposedly bedridden and paralyzed—wearing a tailored haute couture suit.Across the table sat the famous she-wolf of our pack, the daughter of a respected elder.They had ordered a lavish dinner, the bill totaling over $500,000.After the meal, I overheard my mate ask our daughter, “You remember how to tell the story, right?”She nodded and replied, “Yes. I’ll tell Mom we were working as werewolf junk collectors all night, collecting waste paper crates, and in the end, we only earned enough to buy half a loaf of bread.”My mate smiled, pleased with the answer. The she-wolf then gifted my daughter an entire collection of newly released moonstone jewelry.Before they left, my mate tipped each waitress $5,000.I stood frozen, tears falling as the truth shattered my heart: my mate—and even my beloved daughter—had been lying to me.Even in dormancy, my wolf mourned.A colleague saw me crying and asked what was wrong.I forced a smile and said, “I’m just happy. I got $5,000 tonight. It would’ve been even better… if it hadn’t come from my mate, the one who’s supposed to be paralyzed and lying in bed.”No one knew what I had sacrificed to be his mate.I waited for an apology. But it never came.So I made my decision. I called my father—the one who had been waiting all these years for me to return as his heir.When I disappeared from their lives, just as they had always secretly wished...That’s when they finally began searching for me across the world."