I Never Loved You Anyway Chapter 01
After her mate died, my older sister, Genevieve Alston, put in an application for a new werebeast mate.
By a twist of fate, she matched with Micah Ellison—the twin brother of my mate, Logan Ellison.
When the news broke, Logan didn’t sleep a wink that night.
For once, neither did I.
In the early hours of the morning, I heard him finally slip outside and call Micah.
“Mike, you know I love Genevieve.”
“Just help me out this once.
“Roxanne’s dopy—she’ll never realize it’s you.”
“She mixed us up before, remember?”
“I can pretend to be you for a few days. Genevieve will never know.”
“Swap with me for a week.”
“That’s all I’m asking. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life regretting that I never got the chance to be with Genevieve.”
Finally, Micah agreed.
Fine. You cheated on me.
So I will win my loved one back.
My dear husband.
I Never Loved You Anyway.
…
When the call ended, Logan didn’t come back inside right away.
Perhaps to calm himself, he stood out in the courtyard for a while, quietly smoking a menthol.
After finishing it, he slipped back into the bedroom and eased himself onto the edge of the mattress.
I kept my eyes shut tight and my breathing level, pretending to be fast asleep.
As usual, he just watched me in silence.
His soft, fluffy wolf tail instinctively draped over my foot where it peeked out from beneath the blanket, while his cool fingertips gently smoothed the tangled strands of hair at my temples.
This soft, affectionate version of Logan only appeared when I was asleep.
For most of our bonding, he’d been distant.
He never refused my requests, but the way he looked at me was always cold, as though I were merely a substitute.
And I knew exactly why.
The person he truly loved was my twin sister, Genevieve.
And with my eyes closed, I resembled her the most.
“Roxanne,” he whispered.
His fingertips paused on my brow.
Then he leaned closer to my ear, his voice soft but resolute, as though making a solemn vow.
“I’ll never betray you.
“I just… love her too much.”
Just the thought of seeing her again made his tail wag unconsciously.
Feeling the soft brush of it against my foot, I clenched my fists beneath the blanket, struggling to steady my racing heart.
Logan’s face was inches from mine.
“Roxanne,” he murmured, “when you can’t be with your first love… that longing just stays with you forever.
“But I don’t want it to control me anymore.
“I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you.
“And because of that, I need to see Genevieve just one more time.”
He needed to do it as her mate.
Sometimes, people needed to hold something in their hands before they could finally let it go.
I totally got that.
Our bonding was the fallout of a seriously unfortunate mix-up.
Years ago, Logan mistook me for Genevieve, who’d supposedly saved his life.
When he filled out his mate application, he wrote down my name by mistake.
As for me, the moment I saw the photograph the Matching Center sent, I agreed without hesitation and never bothered to double-check.
We didn’t meet in person until the day we registered our bonding. The second our eyes met, he looked completely stunned and confused.
We signed the paperwork that September, right in the thick of the late summer heat.
The afternoon sunlight blazed behind him.
But his wolf tail, which had been wagging excitedly only moments earlier, gradually slowed before falling still against the floor.
The anticipation in his eyes vanished the instant he realized who I was.
“You…”
Logan’s grip tightened around the bonding application until his knuckles turned white. He started to say something, caught himself, and just stared at me for a long, heavy minute.
Yet even after we completed the registration, he never asked the question that was clearly weighing on his mind.
“Why is it you?”
