After My Alpha Rejected His Wolfless Luna Before Everyone

At 9:41 on a Tuesday morning, I pulled a panel off the new stronghold wall, and my hand went into nothing.

I froze. The blueprints slid out from under my arm and hit the dirt.

Wolfsbane-reinforced steel has a gray-green core. It stings the nose, bitter as bad medicine. I smelled only rust and wet concrete. Behind the panel were thin iron rods, cheap and brittle, wired together like a bad joke.

I tore off another panel. Then another. Hollow. Hollow. Hollow.

For twenty-three years, I had balanced this pack's supply lines. I knew what every beam should cost and who should have signed for it. Three hundred wolves were supposed to sleep inside these walls. A roof like this one had killed my grandmother.

I found the requisition orders in the site office. Each one carried my Luna seal. Each one was forged. I never signed them. The only signature that was real belonged to my mate.

The tire tracks led east, into the woods.

The den sat in a clearing, all cedar beams and glass. Wards hummed in the doorframe. I laid my hand on the brass registry plate and felt the key set inside it. Vanilla. Rosewater. Lola Harper.

I walked in. Silk sheets lay across a bed big enough for four. Her perfume soaked the pillows.

And under it, thick in every cushion and every fold, was Wyatt.

Not a visit. A life. His scent had settled into this place like it lived here.

I stood in the doorway and went very still. Something in my chest bared its teeth.

I pried the registry plate off the frame. It came away with a crack. I folded the forged orders around it and walked back to the stronghold.

Wyatt stood on the foundation slab, surrounded by his warriors. Thirty wolves. Silas, our Gamma, stood at the edge of the circle. Lola was at Wyatt's flank, wearing his jacket. Her scent was layered over his skin like paint.

I held up the papers. "Your steel is in the eastern woods, Wyatt. In a bed."

A ripple went through the ranks.

He didn't deny it. That was the worst part. He just smiled, slow and bored.

"The walls are hollow," I said. "If rogues hit this place, the whole east wing comes down on the pups. You know what that means. You know what happened to my—"

"Enough."

The Alpha tone landed like a fist on my skull. Wolves around me dropped to their knees, one after another. My own knees buckled an inch. My ears rang. I tasted blood where I'd bitten my cheek.

I locked my legs and stayed up.

Wyatt's eyes flickered. Just once. Then they hardened.

"You've always been tiresome," he said. "Wolfless and *useful*. I kept you because it was easy." He lifted his chin, and his voice rang across the site. "I, Wyatt Knight, Alpha of Ironridge Pack, reject you, Elisa Bennett, as my mate and Luna."

The mark on my neck went cold first.

Then it went hollow, like a door closing in an empty room. Something warm slid down my collarbone. Blood.

No one breathed. Silas stared at the ground. Beside Wyatt, Lola smiled.

I did not beg. I did not kneel. I unhooked the ring of storehouse keys from my belt, the only set that opened the grain vaults and the medicine stores. I dropped it at his boots.

The clink was loud in the silence.

"Good luck reading my ledgers," I said.

He opened his mouth.

I turned and walked through the ranks. They parted for me. The evidence stayed pressed against my ribs, the forged orders and the brass plate with his signature and her scent. I didn't look back until I reached the tree line.

The abandoned cabin at the edge of our territory had a broken window and a table with one good leg. My hands shook so hard I dropped the first sheet. My vision swam. The dead mark throbbed, cold and empty.

I breathed through it. Then I spread every page across the floor and began to sort.

Orders by date. Invoices by supplier. Ward records by owner. It was the same work I had done for twenty-three years, only now it was a blade.

Something stirred under my ribs. Not grief. Older than grief. It pressed upward, slow and angry, from a place I hadn't known existed. My breath caught. I flattened my palm over the mark.

The pack link crackled in my skull. He hadn't cut me off from it yet.

"Listen up, Ironridge." Wyatt's voice, loud and pleased. "Saturday, full moon. Lola Harper will be your Luna. Every neighboring pack is invited to the Mate Ceremony."

Lola's laugh bubbled behind him. "Scrub the whole house, please. I can't stand the smell of that old jasmine."

Then Wyatt again, but off-beat, sharp. "Who keeps burning cedar in here?"

"No one, Alpha," an Omega whispered.

"Then why can I *smell* it?"

In the cabin, the thing in my chest slammed against my ribs, once, hard enough to leave me gasping.