After My Alpha Rejected Our Daughter for His Mistress

The contract required Sebastian to eat two meals a day with us. He treated every single one like a court deposition.

On our third morning, he sat at the head of the heavy mahogany table, an espresso cup in one hand and his smartphone in the other. His thumb scrolled relentlessly through pack logistics, his face drawn tight.

Paislee didn’t care. She was completely incandescent.

She had saved the seat directly to his right, placing a hand-drawn picture on his plate before he sat down. It was a crayon sketch of a black wolf with crooked legs and a girl with curly brown hair.

"Mud is the Gamma," Paislee announced, propping her stuffed rabbit against the sugar bowl. "The bear with the missing eye is Beta. I’m the Alpha."

Sebastian lowered his phone an inch. His green eyes, still shadowed with fatigue, flicked toward her. "You’re the Alpha?"

"Of course," she said, spooning oatmeal into her mouth with absolute seriousness. "I make the rules. Rule number one is nobody sleeps on the floor. Rule number two is you have to share the blue crayons."

A tiny, involuntary twitch touched the corner of Sebastian’s mouth. For half a second, the harsh lines around his eyes softened. He stared at her small, earnest face, his brows drawing together in quiet confusion.

Then, deep in his chest, something rumbled.

It wasn't a growl. It was a faint, bewildered whine—his inner wolf scratching at the surface, unsettled by a familiarity it couldn't map.

Sebastian blinked hard, as if snapping awake from a trance. His jaw hardened again. He set the paper aside, pushed his chair back, and stood up without finishing his coffee.

"I have boundary reports to review," he said curtly, not looking at either of us. He walked out, his heavy boots clicking sharply against the hardwood.

I sat across the table, my tea cooling between my palms. I didn't say a word. I simply cataloged the way his hands had tightened on the edge of the table before he fled. I felt nothing. No pity, no lingering ache. Just the cold, mechanical satisfaction of a clock ticking toward zero.

***

By mid-morning, the main house was quiet. Paislee was down in the gravel courtyard, cautiously watching two pack pups chase a rubber ball.

I stood by the window in our second-floor guest room, pulling the small tin of wolfsbane balm from my pocket. I unbuttoned my collar, letting the cool draft hit the jagged, raised silver tissue on my left shoulder.

I scooped a dab of the bitter, pungent salve onto my fingers.

*Can we stop using the balm now?*

I froze. My breath locked in my throat. The tin slipped half an inch in my palm before my reflexes caught it.

The voice hadn't come from the hallway. It had detonated directly behind my temples—deep, raspy, and soaked in seven years of pure, undiluted fury.

*I can barely breathe,* the voice snapped.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. My hands shook so hard the silver tin rattled.

*Selene.*

She wasn't a faint warmth anymore. She wasn't a dying ember. She was awake, crouched low in the dark hollow where my wolf used to live, baring her teeth at the poison I had fed her to keep us hidden.

I closed my eyes. I gripped the edges of the window frame until the wood groaned beneath my fingers. I forced my breathing into a slow, flat rhythm, refusing to let the panic swallow me.

*Not yet,* I answered silently, my thoughts cold as iron. *Sleep.*

A low, irritated snort echoed through my skull, but the voice faded. The heat in my chest didn't. It stayed there, burning hot and stubborn against my breastbone, daring me to choke it out again.

I rubbed the salve over my scar anyway. The bitter smell rose up, masking the faint pulse of life beneath my skin. I buttoned my shirt to the throat and went downstairs.

***

That afternoon, Sebastian fulfilled clause four of the contract: the public pack outing.

We drove out to the Ironveil riverbank where the pack gathered on crisp autumn weekends. The air smelled of cold water, pine needles, and wet earth. A dozen families were scattered across the gravel shore, their laughter carrying over the rush of the current.

Pack wolves shifted freely here, letting their beasts run along the shallow rapids. As we walked toward the water, hushed whispers rippled through the crowd. Eyes lingered on my worn boots and faded jacket, then darted to Paislee. A wolfless woman and an unregistered child. An embarrassment to the pack’s bloodline.

Sebastian stepped ahead of us onto the river stones. He pulled off his dark flannel shirt and dropped it on a boulder.

His bones cracked.

Within two seconds, the man was gone. In his place stood a massive, midnight-black wolf with shoulders reaching past my chest. Power rolled off his dark coat in suffocating waves, making the surrounding wolves bow their heads in instinctual submission.

Paislee stopped walking. Her jaw dropped. Her wide grey eyes drank in the sight of him, entirely devoid of fear.

"Look, Mama," she whispered, breathless. "He’s huge."

Before I could grab her jacket, she took three bold steps forward onto the wet stones.

Sebastian’s wolf turned his massive head toward her. His ears pinned forward, his gold-rimmed green eyes locking onto the tiny figure approaching him.

Paislee stretched her small, bare hand straight out.

Every wolf on the bank went dead silent. Approaching an Alpha wolf in full shift was suicide for an outsider.

Sebastian didn't snap. He didn't bare his fangs.

Without a single command from the man inside him, the beast lowered his enormous head. He bent down until his black snout hovered barely an inch from Paislee's fingers. He exhaled a warm cloud of steam, then pressed the wet leather of his nose directly into her open palm.

He took a deep, shuddering breath of her scent.

Then, the great Alpha wolf let out a sound that made my blood run cold.

A high, broken whine. It was an agonizing note of pure recognition, vibrating straight from his ribs into the freezing mountain air.

Paislee giggled, her fingers gently stroking his dark muzzle. "Good boy."

The wolf jerked back violently.

Sebastian forced the shift in a frantic, uncoordinated snap of bone and muscle. He tumbled backward onto the stones as a man, naked to the waist, his chest heaving as if he had run twenty miles through snow. His skin was pale, his eyes wild and bloodshot.

He dragged a shaking hand roughly through his dark hair, staring at Paislee like she was a ghost that had just pulled out his heart.

"Enough," he rasped, his voice raw. "We’re going back."

I stood twenty feet away on the cold gravel, my fingers digging hard into the brand beneath my sleeve.

Inside my chest, Selene surged forward. She didn't nudge me. She threw her full weight against my ribs, a snarling demand to be let loose, to rip the blindfold from his eyes and tear his throat out for what he had stolen from us.

*Down,* I commanded her, swallowing the metallic taste of blood where I bit my tongue.

I took two steps back into the shadow of the pines, turned my back on the river, and walked away.