After My Mate Branded His Mistress Luna

The locksmith never made it past Rocco in the hall, but Sutton didn’t need tools to break into my life.

She used my mind.

Just before five that afternoon, a sudden psychic shock pierced my temple. The vision hit with brutal clarity, forced down the shared mental link before I could throw up a wall.

It was my bedroom.

Sutton was stretched out across my cream-colored silk sheets, her dark hair fanned over my pillows. Sunlight caught the glistening crimson puncture wound on the side of her neck—Lorenzo’s fresh bite mark, raw and wet. Draped between her bare collarbones was the heirloom Luna pendant, heavy platinum set with a raw sapphire, a piece Lorenzo had promised to fasten around my neck the day we took the pack vows.

Along with the image came the scent: cloying jasmine tangled with Lorenzo’s dark pine musk, and through our cracked mate bond, I felt the phantom heat of their skin together like grease smeared over my chest.

My stomach heaved.

Deep behind my ribs, my wolf didn't whimper. She rose. Her presence was cold, ancient, and vast as an ocean trench.

*Let her wear stolen silver,* my wolf’s voice resonated in the dark of my skull, a low, sustained vibration of pure fury. *A thief only dresses in what she cannot earn.*

At dusk, rain battered the tall windows of the pack house. I stood by the heavy front doors when the handle turned.

Lorenzo stepped into the foyer, shaking water from his dark hair. The smell of jasmine rolled off his wool coat so thick it made my throat burn. He looked at me, his amber eyes mocking, waiting for a scream, a sob, or a broken question.

I didn't blink. I blocked the hallway with my body.

"You don't sleep here," I said, my voice dead calm.

Lorenzo paused, a slow, condescending smirk tugging at his lips. "This is my house, Reina."

"It's the Luna’s residence," I replied evenly. "Until the council ratifies your paperwork, my name is on the deed and the pack charter. Step outside."

For two seconds, his Alpha authority flared against the air, heavy and suffocating. I held my ground, meeting his gaze until his jaw tightened. He let out a dry, dismissive laugh.

"Enjoy the empty rooms," he murmured.

He turned on his heel and stepped backward into the downpour.

Through the cracked bond, I felt the exact moment his wolf turned away from me and settled comfortably toward Sutton's apartment across the grounds.

I turned the heavy deadbolt. Then my knees gave out. I slid down the smooth wood of the door until I hit the floorboards, pulling my knees to my chest in the dark, and I didn't move until dawn washed the foyer in gray light.

***

Lorenzo did not try the door again. Instead, he started the erasure.

At the six o'clock pack run the following morning, the courtyard was thick with mist and the breath of two hundred wolves. I stood near the granite steps where the Luna always stood.

When Lorenzo climbed the platform, he didn't look at me once. He rested his hand casually on Sutton’s hip. She wore a tailored black running jacket, smiling with the rehearsed warmth of someone auditioning for a role she had already been measured for.

"Going forward," Lorenzo announced, his voice carrying over the silent ranks, "pack logistics and domestic coordination will route through Sutton Kelly. Treat her word as the acting coordinating she-wolf of Shadowvale."

A ripple went through the crowd.

Wolves who had sat at my kitchen table, warriors whose broken ribs I had bound with herbal poultices while Lorenzo slept, suddenly found the gravel fascinating. One by one, their gazes dropped to the ground. Nobody protested. Nobody dared cross an Alpha whose wolf had returned to full strength.

Near the back of the pavilion, Beta Rocco stood motionless. While the others avoided my eyes, Rocco pulled a small black leather notebook from his pocket. With flat, methodical strokes of a pen, he wrote down the date, the time, and the exact words spoken. A silent record of an unlawful breach of pack bylaws.

***

I didn't cede the ground.

That afternoon, sixty pack warriors gathered in the mud of the southern training yard for combat drills. I walked down the gravel path in my leather combat boots and stood behind the weapon racks. My mate mark ached, throbbing with a dull, nauseating heat, but my spine remained straight.

Sutton stood on the sheltered observation deck above, holding a digital tablet she clearly didn't know how to use.

Lorenzo noticed me immediately. His eyes narrowed.

When the brutal two-hour drill finally ended, the warriors formed ranks, steam rolling off their bruised shoulders into the cold air. Lorenzo walked to the front of the formation.

He didn't just dismiss them. He raised his chin, his gaze deliberately drifting past my head as if the space I occupied were completely empty.

"Solid work today," Lorenzo called out. Then, pushing his Alpha tone into the words—a low, commanding bar of pressure that forced every wolf to straighten their posture—he added, "We owe the efficiency of these new rotations entirely to Sutton's coordination. Dismissed."

Sixty warriors turned and saluted the deck where Sutton stood beaming.

Through the link, the cruelty hit me like cold iron. It wasn't accidental neglect. It was a calculated, rhythmic effort to suffocate my existence until I packed my bags and vanished.

Inside my chest, the ancient presence roared. The silver-white wolf surged against the cage of my ribs, her power rising like a tidal wave that made the ground beneath my boots feel fragile.

*Use the tone back,* she demanded, her voice rattling my teeth. *You have it. Crush his throat.*

*Not yet,* I told her, my nails digging into the meat of my palms until skin broke. *Not out here in the mud. When I take him down, there won't be a piece left to bury.*

I turned and walked away from the training field, keeping my face smooth as glass. But as I passed Rocco at the gate, my right hand was shaking so hard I had to bury it inside my coat pocket.