After My Alpha Chose His Fake Luna

Three men grabbed me at 3:12 in the morning. I woke to hands yanking me off the Blackridge guest cot, and the cold stone floor hit my knees before my eyes were even open. The sleeping shift they'd let me borrow shredded at the shoulder as they dragged me down the hall. I had no shoes. No wolf. No idea what I'd done.

"Wha—" I tried to say, but one of them shoved my head down and I took a mouthful of my own hair.

They wore Silvercrest colors. Their auras pressed down on me like a second weight. I knew the way they moved. These weren't guest wolves. These were hired muscle, the kind you buy when you need a thing done quiet and fast.

"Estella Carter," a voice rang out. Sweet. Familiar. "You'll stand where I can see you."

The hall swallowed me whole. Dozens of wolves filled the benches. Every allied pack was here for the summit, and now every single one of them was staring at me, half-naked and bruised, in the center of the stone floor. The torches flickered. The air smelled of sweat and burning oil and—over it all—the perfume I'd come to hate.

Alessandra Wheeler stood at the center in full Luna regalia. A crown of silver flowers in her hair. A white gown that cost more than my whole life in Ironveil. She looked at me like I was something she'd scraped off her shoe.

"This is the woman," she said, and her voice trembled like she was about to cry. It was a polished tremor. Rehearsed. "The one who has been crawling into my mate's bed, into his mind, into his duties, trying to poison the alliance between our packs. She would destroy everything we've built. She feeds on this pack's blood like a leech."

"That's not true," I said. My voice cracked. I hated that it cracked. "I've never—"

"Lies," a man said from the front row. A second wolf stood. "I saw her leave the Alpha's quarters three nights ago."

A third. "She slipped him potions to cloud his judgment."

A fourth. "She begged him to reject the Luna."

Four strangers. All wearing the same practiced sorrow. All speaking the same perfect script.

"Where is Barrett?" I asked. Louder this time. "Let him say it to my face. He knows the truth."

Alessandra's smile did not move. "He's not coming for you, Estella."

But I felt him. Through the packed mind-link of the pack, I felt his presence like a second heartbeat—close. Behind the wall. In the adjoining chamber. I could smell him through the stone. Him, and no one else. He was standing right there.

"Barrett," I screamed down the link. "Barrett, they're lying. You know they're lying. You know me—I've kept this pack alive for five years, I've bled for you—Barrett, please, just tell them, just come out and—"

Through the crack in the door I saw him. One eye. His hand on the handle. He looked at me, at Alessandra, at the four lying wolves, at the assembled packs.

And he closed the door.

I heard the lock click. It was the quietest sound I've ever heard. It went straight through my chest.

"Barrett."

His voice came through the wall. Deep. Resonant. The Alpha tone hit me like a fist in the gut, folding me in half.

"I, Barrett, Alpha of Ironveil, sever your bond to this pack. You are no longer mine to protect."

The bond tore out of me. Not broke. Ripped. Like a thousand roots being pulled out of my chest at once. The mark on my shoulder went cold first, then empty, and I felt the space where the pack used to be open up like a door closing in an empty room. Every mind-link I'd ever known flickered in my skull and went out.

I fell to the stone floor. I couldn't breathe. My body screamed, and I hate that I let him hear it, but the pain was too big for silence.

Then the heels stopped in front of my face. Alessandra's. "Brand her," she said softly. "She's a rogue now. The law says she must be marked."

"No," I said. I got my hands under me. "No—you don't have that authority—"

A pair of boots landed beside my head. I knew them. I'd fought beside these boots for years.

Declan. Gamma Declan Vance. My friend. The wolf I'd trained to block with his left arm because his right was weak.

"I'm sorry," he said. His face was completely blank.

"Declan, listen to me—"

He pinned my arm to the floor with his knee. The silver brand came out of the fire behind him, glowing white-hot, and someone held it out to him on a long iron handle. I saw my own reflection in it, warped and screaming.

"Don't—please, Declan, you know me—"

He pressed it to my wrist.

The world went white. The smell of my own flesh burning filled the whole hall. I heard a sound I didn't recognize, and it took me a second to realize it was me, screaming until my voice gave out. The Ironveil sigil twisted into the rogue mark, melted into the skin, searing itself into the bone. Twenty-three years of life, and this was what it came to.

No one moved. Every wolf in the hall watched. Alessandra smiled her polished smile.

And then Declan grabbed my arms and hauled me to my feet, and two wolves took me by the shoulders and dragged me across the stone, down the steps, out the heavy doors, and into the dark beyond the boundary line. They threw me. I hit the grass, rolled, and lay there in the cold wet dirt of neutral territory, the brand still smoking on my wrist.

I pressed it against my chest. I tried to reach for the pack. For Brea, the healer I'd trained. For Rowan, the warrior I'd mentored from a boy. For Declan. For any of them.

One link snapped. Brea. Then a second. Then two more together. Each one a small, distinct death in my head, a door closing in a room that was already empty. They were cutting me off one by one. My packmates, the wolves I'd bled for, choosing the new Luna over the name I'd given them.

By the time the sun came up, the silence in my head was total.

I lay under a fallen oak in the neutral woods, the rogue mark throbbing, and stared at the sky and thought of the one person left in the world who wasn't part of this. The one soul outside pack politics I'd ever told the truth to. Nixon. My childhood friend from the human town, the boy I'd pulled out of the woods in the rain when he was dying.

I didn't even know if his number still worked.

I reached into my pocket and found my phone, cracked from the fall but alive. The screen lit up. And in the gray dawn light, beneath the smell of my own burned skin, I found his name and pressed call.