After My Alpha Saved His Mistress Instead of Me

The council chamber smelled like old wood and pack authority. I stood in the center of the room, hands at my sides, while Cleo sat at the witness table with her arm carefully positioned so everyone could see the scratch.

It was a clean line. Too clean. Self-inflicted scratches always looked like that—deliberate, controlled, not the jagged mess of an actual struggle.

Cameron sat at the head of the council table. He had not looked at me once since I entered the room.

"Luna Astrid attacked me in the east corridor yesterday evening," Cleo said. Her voice trembled just enough. "I don't know what I did to provoke her. I tried to apologize, but she—she just grabbed my arm and—"

She stopped, pressing her fingers to her mouth like the memory was too much.

Two she-wolves from the Powell bloodline sat beside her, nodding along. "We saw it," one of them said. "Luna Astrid seemed...unstable."

I said nothing. There was no point. The scratch existed. The witnesses existed. The story was already written.

Cameron's jaw tightened. He gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles white. "Astrid," he said finally. "Do you have anything to say?"

I met his eyes. Pine and thunder. My wolf did not stir.

"No, Alpha."

His expression flickered—something I could not name passed across his face and vanished. He looked away.

"Confine her to the detention cells," he said. "Pending investigation."

Two guards stepped forward. I did not resist. I walked between them down the stone stairs, through the narrow corridor that smelled like damp earth and old fear, into the cell at the end.

The door locked behind me with a sound like finality.

I sat on the stone bench and waited.

---

They came on the second night.

Four she-wolves, all younger than me, all wearing the particular kind of cruelty that comes from knowing no one will stop you. I recognized two of them from Cleo's social circle. The other two I had never seen before.

The guard at the end of the hall turned his back.

The first blow came from behind—a shove that sent me into the wall hard enough to rattle my teeth. I caught myself and turned, but the second she-wolf was already moving, her fist connecting with my ribs.

I did not fight back. Fighting would give them an excuse to escalate. Fighting would mean Cameron could call it mutual violence and justify whatever came next.

So I curled against the wall and covered my head and let them take what they wanted.

A hand fisted in my hair, yanking my head back. Someone's nails raked down my arm, tearing fabric and skin. A boot caught my shin. Another blow to my ribs, then my back, then my shoulder.

I did not scream. I did not call through the mind-link. I had learned, over three years, that Cameron only heard what he wanted to hear.

My wolf stayed silent. Somewhere deep inside, she had gone to a place I could not follow.

Eventually they stopped. One of them spat on the floor near my head. "That's what happens when you forget your place, Luna."

They left. The guard returned to his post. The cell door stayed locked.

I lay on the stone floor and counted my breaths. In. Out. In. Out. My lip was split. My left eye was swelling shut. My ribs screamed every time I inhaled.

I did not cry.

I stayed there through the night, watching the thin line of moonlight move across the floor, and for the first time in three years, I let myself think clearly about the one thing I had been avoiding:

I was going to leave Silverfang.

Not in seven weeks. Not when the contract ended. The moment I could walk, the moment I could move without breaking, I was going to vanish.

The map in my mind sharpened. The eastern service gate. The herb groves past the training grounds. The Omega night nurse in the healer's ward who had once told me, very quietly, that she thought I deserved better.

I ran my thumb along the rough moonstone in my pocket—the one I had carried every day since Morrison's banishment—and felt its faint pulse beneath my fingers.

Seven weeks was too long to wait.

---

Cameron came for me on the third morning.

I heard his footsteps before I saw him—heavy, controlled, moving with the particular authority of an Alpha who has made a decision and will not be questioned. The cell door opened.

He stood in the threshold, backlit by the corridor lamps, and for a long moment he just stared.

I was still on the floor. I had tried to stand an hour ago and my ribs had informed me, very clearly, that standing was not currently possible. My face was a mess. I could feel the swelling, the crusted blood at my lip, the bruise spreading across my cheekbone.

Cameron's wolf surged. I felt it through the bond—a visceral, roaring fury that nearly forced his shift. His eyes flashed gold. His hands clenched into fists.

Then he clamped it down. Buried it. His expression went flat.

"Get up," he said.

I pushed myself upright. Slowly. Every movement cost me. I did not ask for help.

He watched me struggle to my feet and said nothing.

We walked to the pack vehicle in silence. He opened the passenger door. I climbed in, moving carefully so my ribs would not scream louder than they already were.

The drive back to the pack house took twenty minutes.

Cameron did not speak to me. Not once. Instead, I felt the mind-link open—not to me, but past me, around me, to someone else. To Cleo.

I could not hear the words, but I could sense the shape of it. Comfort. Reassurance. The particular warmth of his attention flowing toward her while I sat beside him, bleeding.

I turned my head and looked out the window. Watched the trees pass. Counted the miles.

My wolf did not stir. She had gone somewhere I could not reach her, and I was grateful for it.

When we reached the pack house, Cameron finally spoke.

"Cleo suggested you've probably learned your lesson," he said. His tone was flat. "Don't make me regret bringing you back."

I nodded once. I did not trust my voice.

I walked into the pack house alone. Up the stairs. Into my workshop. I locked the door behind me and sat at my cutting table.

My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the wood until they stopped.

Then I pulled out a blank sheet of paper and began to write.

Patrol schedules. Guard rotations. The names of every Omega who had ever looked at me with something other than fear. The location of the wild sage grove past the western border, the one whose scent could mask a wolf's trail for miles.

I wrote until my hand cramped. Until the sun set. Until the pack house went quiet around me.

Seven weeks was too long.

But I would honor the contract. I would finish what I had agreed to finish. And then I would walk out of Silverfang territory and never look back.

I ran my thumb along the rough moonstone one more time, feeling its heartbeat pulse against my skin.

Seventy-three days had become a countdown I could survive.

Fifty-one days, I corrected myself.

Fifty-one days, and I would be free.