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Chapter 1
Zephyr, Present Day
Hewascheatingon her.
Zephyr was a hundred percent—alright maybe not a hundred, she tended to overexaggerate things in her own head, maybe ninety percent—sure that opening the door in the seedy little dungeon hole he'd led her to, for a fight of all things, would reveal him with some bimbo. Or maybe she wouldn't be a bimbo. Maybe she would be some incredibly nice but naive girl who fell for his handsome looks and witty charm without realizing he was in a relationship with a curvaceous hairstylist. A curvaceous hairstylist he'd told numerous times that she needed to lose some of the curves and she'd be 'so fucking sexy, babe'. The curvaceous hairstylist, aka she, aka Zephyr de la Vega, aka the biggest idiot on the planet to ever imagine there could be a future with him when she wasn’t in love. But god, she’d been tired of being single at twenty-eight with everyone telling her she should be with someone.
And though she didn’t love him, she was in a relationship and she had her pride, which was exactly why she stood outside the door, dread, anger, and certainty pooling in the pit of her stomach.
You're sexy, you're beautiful, you're a goddess,she kept chanting, her belief in her own words slightly lesser compared to the morning when she'd woken up with a good life, in a mostly-okay relationship with the perfect guy. The perfect guy who, she was sure, was railing someone behind the door.
"Oh, yes," a feminine wail from inside made the wince on her face tighten, her hand gripping the dirty-looking handle that made her want to scrub it clean.
"And now, the finisher is in the cage!"
The crowd roared from the arena beyond the dingy corridor she was in. It smelled like something had died in there, and something probably had. She couldn't be sure. Her boyfriend had traveled to the industrial district for this shady fight, and she'd followed him, only to be lost in the crowd with two scary-looking bouncer-type dudes who'd looked at her suspiciously. She hadn't been surprised at that though. In her colorful floral dress reminiscent of spring, she was as out of place in the dungeon-hole as an elephant at an airport. Wait, did elephants even go to airports? How did they transfer them overseas in case of emergencies though? Maybe they—
Focus, Zee.
She took a deep breath, halting the internal rambling. She did that a lot, ramble that was. Word vomit was a common affliction where she was concerned, especially when her nerves were taut. And they were very, very taut as she stood in the corridor she'd found her boyfriend walking into. Because if she found what she knew she was going to find, she’d be single again. Moreover, it would strain things with her parents because her mother already considered him a son-in-law, though her father was pretty ‘meh’ about him.
Gritting her teeth, calling on her nerves to calm down, she tugged on the handle, only to open the door a few inches to see a man's bare ass pumping into a woman against the dirty wall. The fact that she was more concerned about the woman's hygiene than the fact that she recognized that butt was a bit revelationary.
So this was what being cheated upon felt like.
Huh.
Kind of anti-climactic, if she was being honest.
Zephyr had always wondered in the back of her mind, seeing it in movies or reading it in books, the cliché of the woman finding her lover's infidelity or the bride being jilted at the altar, and she'd always wondered if the tears had been because of the hurt, the humiliation, the anger, or the loss of that idea of perfection. Maybe it was all of them. She couldn't exactly pinpoint.
Weirdly, as she watched the very nice ass pump away, she only felt a sense of 'I told you so' within herself. Had a part of her always known he was scum underneath the pretty? Had she written it off as her own insecurities rearing their head? Perhaps. And though surprisingly she wasn't as hurt as she'd thought she would be, she was pissed, getting more so with each oblivious pump. And being pissed was not a good look on her, especially because she did irrational shit in the heat of the moment.
She locked her jaw, trying to contain her anger, but with each thrust, she remembered each little way he'd made her feel inadequate, made her feel just a bit less. Every 'don't eat that', every targeted comment about thigh gaps being sexy while jokingly telling her she'd never get one, every exasperated sigh about her quirky hair colors whenever she changed them. She'd been with him for over two years, and looking back all she saw was a bunch of gaslighting and good, old dickery. And the fact that she'd always prided herself on being a good lover, his penis falling in another woman's vagina was a hit to that belief, more than she wanted to admit.
She wanted to feel adequate. She wanted to feel beautiful. She wanted to feel desirable.
The last man who’d made her feel all those things—
Don’t think about him.
She wanted to feel anything but what she was feeling as she watched the man she'd been thinking of settling down with. And she wanted to make him feel like shit. Yeah, she was petty like that. God, she was an idiot. But at least she was an idiot who'd dodged a bullet.
Stepping back from the door, Zephyr looked at the dirty handle, unsure what she was going to do exactly.
"Alpha! Alpha! Alpha!"
The chanting of the crowd drew her attention, suddenly making her heart stop, taking her entire focus away from the scene toward the arena.
Alpha?
Did they say Alpha?
No, it couldn’t be.
She looked at the door leading to the arena, her heart pounding. It was an unusual name, and she’d only known of one man who’d used it. He’d been a fighter too, but it couldn’t be him. That was almost a decade ago…
Unnerved, her cheating boyfriend forgotten by the stronger memory elicited by that name, she followed the noise of the spectators and exited the foul-smelling corridor to a slightly better-smelling sort-of open space. It smelled like places that had never seen the sunlight did—slightly dank, slightly musty, slightly sweaty. It wasn't a place for a girl like her, one from a nice family, dressed in a bright floral dress, with hair she'd dyed pink recently because her mother was certain something good was going to happen to her soon.
