After My Alpha Made His Pregnant Mistress Luna

I scrubbed the packhouse common room floor on my knees at six in the morning because Jasmine said the tiles looked dull. They didn't. I had mopped them myself two days ago. But I filled the bucket and I wrung the rag and I moved in slow, methodical lines across the stone while the pack filtered past me on their way to breakfast.

Nobody spoke to me. A few younger wolves whispered. One laughed. I kept my head down and counted tiles.

By eight I had finished the common room and the upstairs hall. Jasmine found me in the kitchen rinsing the bucket.

"The server room needs organizing," she said. She leaned against the doorframe with one hand on her belly, casual, like she was asking me to pass the salt. "Old Luna files. You know where everything is, don't you?"

I looked at her. "Yes."

"Good. Ian says you can access the archives. Just the administrative backlog. Nothing current." She smiled. "You're wolfless. It's not like you can do anything with pack data anyway."

I nodded. I dried my hands. I walked past her without meeting her eyes.

The server room was in the basement, two doors down from the storage cell where I slept now. I had set up the filing system myself three years ago. I knew every directory. Every password. Every backup protocol Ian thought was secure because he had never bothered to ask how any of it actually worked.

I sat down at the terminal. I opened the administrative archive folder. I did not touch a single file inside it.

Instead I opened the financial directory.

---

It took me forty minutes to find what I was looking for.

Ironridge Holdings LLC. A subsidiary buried three layers deep in the pack's corporate structure. The holding had one asset: a parcel of land on Ironridge's eastern border, seized six years ago from a neutral pack Ian claimed had defaulted on a treaty obligation. I remembered the seizure. I had written the justification memo myself, on Ian's instruction, while he was on campaign.

I pulled up the acquisition documentation. The capital transfer that funded the purchase had come from an account I personally managed—one Ian told me was for 'pack infrastructure investment.' The date matched. The amount matched. The routing number matched.

I photographed the screen with the old phone I kept in my pocket. The phone had no service, but the camera still worked. I took four pictures. I checked each one for clarity. Then I opened my own handwritten ledger—the one I had carried down from the Luna suite in a hollowed book—and cross-referenced the transaction against my notes.

Premeditated fraud. Misappropriation of Luna-managed funds. Seizure of neutral-pack land under false treaty claims.

Under pack law, any Alpha who used a Luna's financial authority without her documented consent could be charged with bond violation. If the seized land belonged to a neutral pack, the Lycan Council could intervene. If I could prove Ian knew the treaty claim was false, they would strip his title.

I closed the financial directory. I opened the communication logs.

---

I had flagged the anomaly two days ago while I was scrubbing the packhouse entryway. A data transmission I didn't recognize, sent from an internal device to an external encrypted channel. The transmission had repeated. Fourteen times over three months. Always at night. Always during patrol rotation windows.

I pulled up the metadata now and ran it against the pack's device registry. The sending device was listed under a false name—'Marcus Hale,' a wolf who had died four years ago in a rogue skirmish. Someone had kept his registry entry active. Someone had been using his credentials.

I cross-referenced the transmission timestamps against Jasmine's schedule. She had been in the packhouse, alone, during thirteen of the fourteen sends. The fourteenth, she had been in Ian's office. With Ian.

I opened the encrypted channel log. It took me six minutes to crack the rotation key—Ian had used the same base encryption for every sensitive file in the system, and I had set the system up. The log opened.

Patrol routes. Eastern perimeter positions. Guard rotation schedules. Defensive choke points.

Every piece of intelligence a rival pack would need to plan an incursion. Every piece of intelligence that would make Ironridge's eastern border—where the seized neutral-pack land sat—completely indefensible.

The receiving channel was registered to Shadowfang Pack.

I stared at the screen. My wolf pushed at my ribs, low and hot, and for the first time I let her.

Jasmine wasn't just Ian's chosen Luna. She was selling Ironridge's security to the pack that wanted our territory. She was setting Ian up for a territorial loss that would destroy his reputation and justify a Lycan Council investigation. And Ian, who had spent five years using my labor to clean up his messes, had no idea.

I copied the communication log to the portable drive I had brought down in my pocket. I copied the financial records. I copied the land seizure documentation. Then I cleared the access history, closed every directory, and returned the screen to the administrative archive folder Jasmine thought I was organizing.

I slid the drive into the hollow of my ledger. I stood. I walked back upstairs.

---

Dinner was at six. The pack filled the great hall the way they always did—loud, easy, the kind of noise that comes from people who believe they are safe.

I served. Jasmine had assigned me to the kitchen rotation, which meant I carried platters from the stoves to the long tables and refilled water pitchers when they ran low. I did not sit. I did not eat.

Jasmine sat at the head table beside Ian, her hand on his arm, her belly round and visible under the soft drape of her dress. She caught my eye as I set a dish in front of her.

"This is cold," she said.

It wasn't. Steam rose off the surface.

"Re-serve it," she said. She pushed the plate toward me. "The omega formerly known as Luna should know how to serve a proper meal."

A younger wolf two seats down laughed. Then another. The phrase caught. Someone at the far table repeated it—'the omega formerly known as Luna'—and the laughter spread.

Ian did not look up from his plate.

I picked up the dish. I carried it back to the kitchen. I set it on the counter. I walked to the terminal in the corner—the one the kitchen staff used for inventory orders—and I opened the communication log one more time.

Fourteen transmissions. Shadowfang Pack. Jasmine's device.

I heard the laughter from the great hall, bright and careless, and I heard Ian's voice underneath it, low and approving, saying Jasmine's name.

My wolf stirred. Not yet, I told her.

But soon.