The instant the admission slipped past my lips, my heart tore in two, just like hers. Alison didn't cry or scream; she just lay there. She lay there while the sound of the ticking clock counted the seconds, the minutes, the hours. She stared at the ceiling, and I stared at her still, expressionless face until she asked the obvious.

"Is there someone else?"

"No." The second answer came as easily to me as the last.

"Has there been someone else?"

"No. Never."

"Then -" Her voice cracked, "- why?"

I clenched my jaw in case I blurted out the truth. I couldn't make another slip-up. My silence earned me her gaze, and when she turned her head, tears rolled over her nose and soaked into the pillow beneath her head.

"Is it because my body's changed because of the kids? The stretch marks? Do I feel different... down there?"

"No, none of that. You're beautiful. I love you." That was all true. My wife was a stunningly beautiful woman, and I could easily admit that, but she just wasn't the kind of beautiful that made my blood run hot.

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"Nate, I don't understand."

"It's -" I was about to say something so cliche it made me cringe. "It's not you, it's me."

"What d-"

The landing light flicked on, illuminating the crack beneath our bedroom door. Lottie's footsteps trudged sleepily down the landing to the bathroom. The light switch flicked on. The door opened and shut, the lock latched, and then the faint sound of trickling. 'Flush', a gust of water. Then, all the sounds in reverse until the house was quiet and my eldest daughter was back in bed.

In the meantime, Alison had been thinking over what I'd meant, and when I found her eyes again in the darkness, I could see that something had dawned on her.

We didn't talk it over. There was nothing I could say that would make anything better. Alison slipped out of our martial bed, went downstairs to make herself some tea, and never returned.

The following day, we carried on as usual; 'for the sake of the kids,'. That was what we did right up until the world changed, and our home was no longer safe. Mortals were hunting Lycan, so as Pack Alpha, I put out some feelers within the wider community to find us a new home. An old friend put me in touch with Warren Howard, and though it wasn't easy putting the lives of my family in the hands of a vampire, my first meeting with him put my mind at rest - he wasn't like any vampire I'd ever met before, he was different.

My pack and I moved to the Compound. In one fell swoop, I'd torn the heart and the roots right out from under my family and broke my loving home of sixteen years.