After My Alpha Mate Found Out I Was Lycan

The crash came at 2:47 in the morning.

I jolted awake before my mind could name the sound—something heavy hitting stone, the wet crack of impact that you feel in your teeth. The mate bond flared hot against my neck, not pleasure but alarm, Miller's adrenaline spiking through the link like a live wire. I was already moving, bare feet on cold floor, nightgown tangled around my knees as I ran.

The third-floor landing was chaos. Miller's enforcers stood at the balcony railing, hands still extended, chests heaving. One of them—Garrett, the senior Delta—turned as I skidded to a stop, and the look on his face told me everything before I could see past them to the courtyard below.

Theo.

My brother lay on the stone courtyard three floors down, limbs bent at angles that made my stomach lurch. Blood pooled dark beneath his head. He wasn't moving.

Inside my chest, my wolf slammed against the suppressed silence where she should be—a muffled, furious impact that produced no shift, no sound, nothing but the echo of rage in a space that felt like it had been sealed shut. I opened my mouth. No howl came.

"Kaia." Miller's voice came from behind me, flat and cold. "Go back to our quarters."

I didn't turn. I stared at Theo's body and felt my hands curl into fists at my sides. The enforcers shifted, glancing at each other, then at Miller. Waiting.

"Now," Miller said, and the Alpha tone dropped into his voice like a stone into deep water.

I still didn't move.

Footsteps. Then Miller's Beta, Darian, was beside me, hand closing around my upper arm with the kind of grip that left bruises. He pulled me toward the stairs, and I let him because fighting would waste time I didn't have. Below, pack members were spilling into the courtyard, voices rising in alarm. Someone shouted for the Healer.

Darian dragged me down two flights and out into the night air. The stone was cold beneath my feet. Theo's blood looked black under the courtyard lights. His chest rose once—shallow, rattling—and my knees almost buckled with relief so sharp it felt like a blade.

He was alive.

"Everyone, quiet." Miller's voice cut through the noise. He stood on the third-floor balcony above us, hands braced on the railing, his Alpha aura pressing down on the assembled pack like a physical weight. Wolves who had been moving toward Theo stopped. Heads turned upward.

Miller looked down at me.

The mate bond flared again, hotter this time, and I felt his intention a half-second before he spoke—the way the muscle along his jaw tightened, the way his eyes locked onto mine with the focus of a man about to give an order he knew I couldn't refuse.

"Kaia," he said, voice carrying across the courtyard. "Tell them what happened."

The mark on my neck seared white-hot.

I tried to close my mouth. I couldn't. The Alpha tone command slid through the mate bond like a key turning in a lock, bypassing every thought, every choice, every shred of will I had. My lips parted.

"It was an accident," I heard myself say.

The words came out steady. Clear. My own voice, speaking sentences my mind hadn't formed. "Theo lost his balance on the third-floor balcony. He fell."

The pack went still.

I stood there, bare feet on cold stone, Theo's blood three feet from my toes, and felt the command release its grip. My mouth closed. The mark on my neck throbbed, a dull ache now instead of the searing burn.

Miller nodded once, satisfied. "Get him to the Healer's table," he ordered. "Now."

Two Deltas moved forward with a stretcher. They lifted Theo carefully, his head lolling, and carried him toward the pack house's medical wing. I watched them go and pressed my thumb against the mark on my neck, hard enough that the pressure grounded me.

I didn't look at Miller.

The pack dispersed slowly, murmuring, glancing back at the bloodstain on the courtyard stone. Darian released my arm and stepped back, waiting for Miller's next order. Above, Miller turned and disappeared into the pack house, his enforcers following.

I stood alone in the courtyard and stared at the third-floor balcony.

Theo had gone up there tonight with something in his hand—a folder, sealed with the Gamma's mark. I'd seen him in the hallway earlier, jaw set, eyes hard with the kind of determination that meant he'd found something he couldn't ignore. He'd told me he was handling it. He'd told me not to worry.

And now he was on the Healer's table with his skull cracked open, and I had just told the entire pack it was an accident.

The mate bond pulsed faintly, Miller's satisfaction threading through the link like smoke.

I pressed my thumb harder against the mark until the pain sharpened into clarity.

Inside the suppressed silence where my wolf should be, something stirred—muffled, poisoned, but not dead.

I turned and walked back into the pack house.

Miller was waiting in the third-floor hallway, arms crossed, watching me approach. Rose stood two steps behind him, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder. She smiled when she saw me—small, deliberate, the smile of someone who had already won.

I stopped three feet away and met Miller's eyes.

"Theo stays on the Healer's table," I said quietly. "You keep him alive."

Miller's expression didn't change. "As long as you stay obedient."

The mark on my neck throbbed once, a reminder.

I nodded.

Rose's smile widened.

I turned and walked to our quarters, closed the door, and stood in the dark for a long time.

Then I opened my hand and looked at the small dried sprig my mother had pressed into my palm three weeks ago, the morning she left. Wolfsbane. I'd kept it without knowing why.

Now I knew.

I closed my fingers around it and began to count.