After My Alpha Whipped Me for Exposing His Mistress

We came home two days after the attack.

Kashton walked beside me with a white bandage over his eye. He held my hand so tight his knuckles went pale. The pack house looked the same as always. Gray stone. Tall windows. The Blackridge crest above the door.

But it didn't smell the same.

The scent hit me on the stairs. Sweet and heavy, like crushed peaches left in the sun. My wolf, Nova, lifted her head inside me and growled low.

*Her,* Nova said. *She's in our den.*

I pushed open the door to the Luna wing.

My sitting room was full of someone else's things. Pink pillows on my sofa. A row of perfume bottles on my desk, right where my letters used to be. A pair of strappy heels kicked off by the fireplace.

And Callie Reed was curled up in my reading chair. She was wearing my robe. The blue silk one my mother gave me before I left the Lycan Court.

She looked up and smiled. Slow and soft.

"Oh, Luna," she said. "I didn't know you were back. Caden said it would be fine."

Kashton pressed against my leg. He didn't make a sound.

I didn't answer her. I turned and walked straight to Caden's office.

He was at his desk, going over border maps like nothing had happened. Like his son didn't have six stitches in his face. He didn't look up when I came in.

"Why is she in my rooms?" I asked.

"The guest suites are cold. She needs rest." He turned a page. "Callie is carrying my pup. You can use the east wing."

The east wing. The old servants' floor. Narrow rooms with thin walls and no fireplace.

"Caden." My voice stayed calm. I don't know how. "Your son is standing right here."

He finally lifted his eyes. They moved to Kashton for half a second.

"Kashton. Come here."

My boy didn't move. He hid his face in my skirt and gripped the fabric with both fists. He would not look at his father.

Something flickered across Caden's face. Then it was gone, and his jaw went hard.

"He's soft," Caden said. "You made him soft."

I picked up my son and left without another word.

---

By dinner, the whole pack knew.

I felt their eyes as I carried my boxes down the back hall. Some looked sorry. Most looked away. A few of the younger she-wolves whispered behind their hands and didn't bother to stop when I passed.

I didn't cry. I didn't argue. I unpacked our clothes, made Kashton's bed, and set his moon nightlight on the little table.

Then I went to work.

The next morning, I took Kashton to the healer's quarters to check his stitches. That was true. It just wasn't the whole truth.

While the healer's assistant changed his bandage, I stepped into the records room. I had helped set up this system three years ago. I paid for the new cabinets with a trade deal no one knew I'd made. I knew exactly which drawer held prenatal files.

Callie's folder was thin. But it was enough.

Blood type. Hers was B. Caden's was O. The pup's early blood work showed a marker that couldn't come from either of them.

The scent profile was worse. Healers can test a pregnant she-wolf's scent for the father's trace. Callie's sample carried no Blackridge line at all. No pack mark. Nothing registered.

A rogue.

And the dates. The healer had written the gestational age in neat little numbers. I counted back. Six weeks before the first night Caden ever took her to the lake cabin. Before he started coming home smelling of peaches.

My hands shook. Not from fear. From something sharper.

I copied every page on the small machine in the corner. I folded the copies into quarters and slid them inside the back cover of my journal, behind seven years of notes on treaties and banquets and lonely nights.

Then I put the folder back exactly where I found it.

"Mama?" Kashton was waiting at the door, his new bandage crooked. "Are we done?"

"Almost, little wolf." I took his hand. "Almost."

---

Callie was busy too.

I heard it first in the laundry room. Two she-wolves folding sheets, not knowing I was in the hall.

"She's barren, you know. Callie said so. One pup in seven years."

"And so jealous. Poor Callie can't even walk past her."

"The Alpha deserves a mate who gives him heirs."

I kept walking.

Callie played her part well. Every morning, right when Caden came down for coffee, she would rush from the table with her hand over her mouth. Every time. Like a clock. He'd follow her out, and she'd lean on him in the hall, pale and trembling and sweet.

She watched me. I saw it. If I wore gray, she wore bright red. If I spoke quietly at the table, she laughed loud enough to fill the room. When I planned the banquet seating by treaty ranks, she told Caden it was boring and begged for a dance floor instead.

He gave her one.

She was studying me. Trying to be everything I wasn't.

What she didn't know was that I had studied her too.

That night, Kashton fell asleep with his hand on my cheek. I checked his breathing once. Twice. Three times.

Then I opened my journal and touched the folded pages hidden in the back.

Two days until the banquet.

Let her have my robe. Let her have my chair.

She wouldn't have them for long.