After My Mate Chose His Assistant Over Me

The storm hit Ironclaw just after nine.

I was in the upstairs study, sorting through the pack's quarterly reports, when the first crack of thunder rattled the windows. I didn't flinch. Twelve years as Luna of the Ironclaw Pack had taught me how to keep my hands steady through louder things than weather.

Then the lights died.

Not a flicker. Not a hum. Just — gone. The whole pack house dropped into black so thick I could feel it pressing on my eyes.

My lungs locked.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no —"

My knees gave out before my mind caught up. I slid down the wall, the carpet scratching through my dress, and pressed my back flat against the plaster like it could hold me together. My breath came in short, ragged pulls. I couldn't see my own hands. I couldn't see anything.

I was eight years old again, locked in a closet while my father shouted somewhere in the house, while my mother — Blake Morrison, the bravest woman I have ever known — pleaded with him through a closed door.

I clawed for the mind-link.

*Hudson.*

My mate's presence brushed the edge of my mind, distracted, distant.

*Hudson, the power. It's out. I can't —* I sucked in a breath that didn't reach the bottom of my chest. *Please. I need you.*

A pause. Then his voice, clipped:

*Katie's having a panic spiral. She's alone in the east wing. I have to go.*

I stared into the dark.

*Hudson.* My voice in the link cracked, small as a child's. *I'm on the floor. I can't breathe.*

*Blair, she's hyperventilating. You're an adult. You know how to ride this out.*

And then — the cleanest cut of all — the link closed.

I sat there a long time. The thunder rolled. The rain hammered the windows like it was looking for a way in. My wolf, who had not spoken in years, did not stir. She only watched, somewhere deep, the way a creature watches a fire it has decided not to outrun anymore.

I don't know how long I stayed pinned to that wall. Long enough for my legs to go numb. Long enough for the panic to crest, then dull into something quieter, something almost like exhaustion. I fumbled for my phone. The battery was at nine percent. The screen was the only light in the world.

That was when I saw it.

Katie Diaz had posted twenty minutes ago.

A photograph of her curled on a leather couch I recognized — Hudson's reading couch, in his private den — wrapped in his red-and-black flannel. The collar of it fell off one of her shoulders. Her hair was tousled, her smile soft. The caption was three words and a moon emoji.

*Safe with him. 🌙*

I looked at the picture for a long time.

I waited for the part of me that always defended him to step forward. The part that said *she's just an Omega assistant, she's scared, you're imagining things, your wolf has always been jealous.* I waited for the gaslight I had learned to swallow like medicine.

It didn't come.

Something inside me went very still instead. Like a wolf settling onto her haunches before a decision she will not take back.

I opened my messages. Found his name. My thumbs were steady.

*I want to dissolve the bond.*

I hit send. I set the phone face-down on the carpet beside me. I closed my eyes in the dark I had been so afraid of an hour ago, and I found that it was, after all, just dark.

---

Hudson came home at dawn.

I was at the kitchen island by then, hands folded around a cup of tea that had gone cold somewhere around four in the morning. The power had come back at five. I had not slept.

I smelled her before I saw him. Floral. Sweet. Foreign on his skin like a coat that didn't fit. He walked in still buttoning his cuff, hair damp, and the smell of Katie Diaz walked in with him the way a dog walks in tracking mud.

He stopped when he saw me.

"You're up."

"I'm up."

His eyes flicked to my phone, face-down on the counter. His jaw tightened.

"Blair." The Alpha tone bled into his voice, low and pressing. "That message last night was out of line."

I didn't answer.

"You were scared. I get it. The power went out. But you can't send something like that and expect me to —"

"Where did you sleep, Hudson."

He blinked. "What?"

"It's a question." My voice was level. My hands stayed folded. "Where did you sleep."

"In the east wing. Katie was —"

"In your flannel."

He went still. Just for half a second. Then the Alpha tone came down harder, the air in the kitchen thickening with it. "Don't start with this jealous nonsense. She was cold. She was having an attack. You don't understand what an Omega panic spiral looks like, Blair, you've never —"

"I was on the floor." I said it quietly. "I couldn't see my hands."

"You're being childish."

There it was. The word he reached for whenever I tried to name a thing. *Childish. Dramatic. Jealous.* Twelve years of vocabulary, lined up like cutlery in a drawer.

I didn't argue. I had spent a decade arguing. Arguing was a kind of hope, and I was finally fresh out of it.

I watched him talk himself in circles. About Katie's nerves. About my misreading. About how I should know better than to send a message like that, how I should trust him, how he was tired and didn't need this the morning of a council call. He used the Alpha tone three more times, pressing it down on me the way you press a lid on a pot.

My wolf, who had been silent for years, lifted her head inside me. Slowly. Like she was testing whether the room was safe to stand up in.

When he finished, he waited for my apology.

I took my cold tea to the sink and poured it out.

"Are we done here?" he said.

"Yes," I said. "I think we are."

He didn't hear what I meant. He never had.

---

I waited until he left for the council call.

Then I sat on the edge of our bed, phone in my hand, and opened a contact I had not touched in almost a year.

*Grant Matthews.*

Lycan Prince of Silvercrest. A man I had known since the academy, back when I was still bright enough to be seen. I told myself the mind-link request was about official territory business — a trade route, a courier schedule, anything plausible. I told myself I just needed to hear another voice that did not belong to Ironclaw.

His presence opened in my mind like a window in a stuffy room.

*Blair.* Just my name. The way he had always said it, with that particular care. *It's good to hear from you.*

I tried to begin with the cover story. I really did.

I got two words in before he said, very gently, *Your scent is dim again.*

I closed my eyes.

*I've tracked it for years,* he said. No pressure in it. No claim. Just truth, set down between us like a folded coat. *The offer I made — the transfer to Silvercrest — it has always been open. No conditions. No declarations. Just a door, Blair. If you want one.*

Three seconds passed. I counted them.

*I'll take it,* I said.

There was a small, careful pause on his end. Not surprise. Something steadier than that. Something that had been waiting.

*Then it's done,* he said. *Welcome home.*

I filed the paperwork within the hour.