After My Mate Chose His Mistress Over Me

I wake to white ceiling tiles and the smell of antiseptic. My body screams with pain, every muscle protesting as I try to move. The hospital. I'm in the pack hospital.

Memory comes in fragments. The storage room. Rex's glazed eyes. Piper's voice through the intercom. The wolfsbane making everything hazy and wrong.

I touch my neck, searching for the mate mark, needing that connection to Raylan. It's there, but cold. So cold.

The door explodes inward. Raylan fills the doorway, his eyes glowing red, his Alpha aura so thick it makes the air vibrate. I've never seen him like this—pure rage, barely contained.

"Who?" His voice is barely human. "Who touched you?"

I'm shaking so hard my teeth chatter. "Rex. Rex Mendez."

The roar that tears from his throat shakes the building. Windows rattle. Somewhere down the hall, someone screams. He's gone before I can say another word, and I hear his footsteps pounding toward the holding cells.

Relief floods through me. He'll kill Rex. He has to. Pack law is clear—assault on a Luna means immediate execution. No trial. No mercy.

I close my eyes and wait for justice.

An hour passes. Maybe two. When the door opens again, Raylan's rage has transformed into something worse. Something cold.

Piper follows him in, her eyes red and puffy, mascara streaking her cheeks. She's crying. Actually crying.

"Phoebe." Raylan's voice is measured now. Controlled. "We need to discuss the situation."

Situation. He called it a situation.

"Rex won't be executed," he continues, and the words don't make sense. Can't make sense.

"What?"

"He's mentally unfit to stand trial. Killing him would cause political unrest with the Mendez family. They're Gamma blood. We can't—"

"He assaulted me." My voice cracks. "He—"

Piper steps forward, wringing her hands. "He didn't mean it, Luna. He's confused. He doesn't understand these things. And your scent—" She pauses, dabbing at her eyes. "You must have provoked him somehow. He's never done anything like this before."

I stare at her. At Raylan. Waiting for him to defend me. To tell her she's insane.

He says nothing.

"Raylan." I reach for him, but he steps back. "You can't be serious. Pack law—"

"I am Alpha." His voice drops into that commanding tone that makes wolves submit. "I decide pack law."

"You're my mate."

"And I'm making the decision that's best for the pack." He won't meet my eyes. "Rex will be confined. Monitored. But execution would tear this pack apart."

Piper touches his arm. He doesn't pull away.

I spend the next week in a fog. They keep me in the hospital for observation, but I barely notice the nurses coming and going. Sera is silent in my mind, retreating so deep I can't reach her.

When Marcus Thorne enters my room with the ultrasound machine, I already know. My body feels different. Wrong.

His hands shake as he runs the scanner over my abdomen. The monitor flickers to life, and there it is—a tiny cluster of cells that shouldn't exist.

"I'm sorry, Luna." Marcus's voice is barely a whisper. "You're pregnant."

Raylan stands in the corner. I didn't even hear him come in. He moves to the monitor, staring at the screen with an expression I can't read.

"How far along?" he asks.

"About a week," Marcus says.

Raylan's jaw clenches. Then something shifts in his eyes. Something calculating.

"Change the records," he says.

Marcus blinks. "Alpha?"

"The conception date. Make it match my last heat with Phoebe. Three weeks ago."

"But that's—"

"An order." Raylan's Alpha tone fills the room, and Marcus flinches.

I find my voice. "No."

Raylan turns to me. "This child will be the heir. Our heir. No one needs to know the truth."

"It's not yours."

"It will be." He moves closer, and I smell his scent—cedar and rain, but tainted now with something bitter. "We'll raise it as ours. The pack will never know their Luna was defiled by a Rogue."

Defiled. The word hits like a slap.

"This is about your reputation," I whisper. "Not mine. Yours."

"This is about the pack." But his eyes tell a different story. "You'll keep this child, Phoebe. You'll carry it to term. And we'll present it as the Alpha heir."

"And if I refuse?"

His expression hardens. "You won't."

Marcus looks between us, his face pale. "Alpha, perhaps we should—"

"Leave us," Raylan says.

Marcus practically runs from the room.

I touch my stomach, feeling the foreign presence growing inside me. Rex's child. The product of violence and betrayal.

"I won't do this," I say.

Raylan leans down, his face inches from mine. "You will. Because you're my Luna, and you'll do what's best for this pack."

The mate mark on my neck burns like ice.