The Alpha Who Came Too Late

I gave him everything. He gave it all to someone else. For eighteen years I was his mate in name only. I cooked his meals. I ran his house. I raised our daughter alone while he poured his heart into another woman and her son. He never touched our daughter with love. Not once. He missed her birth for a party. He drove past her every single Friday while she waited on the steps for him. She died waiting for a father who never came.
I buried her alone. Then I took off my ring, laid it on her grave, and walked away. I thought that was the end of my story. I didn't know it was only the beginning of his nightmare. Because the truth he never saw coming was this: I was his true mate all along. Not her. Me. Eighteen years, and he spent every one of them blind, while a curse fed his heart to the wrong woman. Now he knows. Now he's broken.
Now he wants me back. But I'm not the same woman he left to grieve alone. Another Alpha found me when I had nothing left. He didn't ask questions. He didn't ask for anything. He just stayed. And slowly, he is teaching me what it feels like to be loved the right way. So when my mate finally comes crawling back, begging, kneeling, swearing he'll spend his whole life making it right-I have one question for him.
Where were you?