After My Mate Claimed Another Luna

The mental link clicked open at five in the morning, buzzing softly against my temple.

*Margot.* It was Caden's voice, quiet and clipped.

I set down my coffee cup on the motel nightstand. *Go ahead, Caden.*

*Laylah made a move an hour ago,* he reported. *She called three Omega healers into your old office. She ordered them to pull two crates of silver-leaf extract and restock the restricted wolfsbane vault. She told them it was an official order ‘under the Luna’s authority.’*

I tapped my fingers against the edge of the leather folder. Laylah hadn't even been mated at the altar yet, but she was already playing dress-up with my rank.

*Did they comply?* I asked.

*One of the younger Omegas got nervous and came to my quarters instead,* Caden said. *I logged the conversation, told her the order was invalid, and sent her back to the clinic. The vault remains locked. Laylah has no idea I intercepted it.*

She was getting reckless. Using my title to touch restricted pack poisons wasn't just insolence—it was a direct violation of pack governance laws.

I opened my dossier, uncapped my pen, and wrote the entry in the margin beneath her name: *Unauthorized assumption of Luna authority; attempted tampering with restricted vault stores.*

*Good work,* I mind-linked back, my thoughts calm and cool. *Document everything. Continue.*

*Understood.*

The link closed. I shut the file with a clean snap. Laylah was digging her own grave with both hands, and she didn't even realize the dirt was already piling over her head.

***

By afternoon, Warren made his own play.

He was terrified of what might happen if I returned from the supposed summit before his new reality was set in stone. He pushed the Mate Ceremony up, locking in a date just twelve days away.

Formal ivory cards were dispatched by courier to every major pack in the region. Caden forwarded a digital scan of the invitation to my phone. In gold lettering at the bottom, Warren had printed his little cover story:

*The former Luna has stepped down from her duties to pursue full-time healing work, clearing the path for the Moon Goddess’s true choice.*

Garrett and his circle of senior warriors spent the entire day making sure the message stuck. They walked the training grounds, telling anyone who would listen that I had finally accepted reality. They claimed my pride had broken, that I had chosen quiet retirement over public defeat.

Warren even sent a personalized runner to the northern peaks, delivering an invitation to elder Alpha Aldric Thorne.

Aldric had trained Warren as a pup. He was Warren's mentor, the man who had stood before the regional assembly years ago and vouched for his honor. Warren lived for that old man's approval. He needed Aldric in the front row to legitimize his new Luna and rubber-stamp his betrayal.

What Warren didn't know was that Aldric had received a package from me forty-eight hours ago.

Inside that package was a verified copy of the Luna Accord, along with three separate border reports showing recent rogue crossings along our joint ridges. Aldric had spent sixty years protecting his lands from Bloodmaw raiders. When I asked him to attend the ceremony as an impartial witness to a blood pact, he didn't ask questions.

He had replied with four words: *I will be there.*

Warren was inviting the very man who would watch him burn.

***

The capital of the Lycan Council rose like a fortress of dark stone and frosted glass against the gray sky.

I walked through the brass-trimmed double doors with my leather case in hand. My boots clicked evenly against the polished marble floor. Two guards at the entry took one look at my posture, sensed the dormant Alpha blood under my skin, and stepped back without asking for an escort badge.

I wasn't here to beg for an audience. I was an ancestral sovereign presenting pack treason.

The inner council hall was vast and freezing. Towering arches reached up toward vaulted stone ceilings, and high windows let in pale, sharp daylight.

Standing beside the long mahogany dais was Dominic Ashford.

The Lycan Prince was tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in a dark, tailored charcoal suit that barely concealed the lethal power coiled beneath his frame. His presence alone commanded the room—a heavy, suffocating pressure that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Then he turned.

The moment his dark eyes locked onto mine, the air between us seemed to combust.

A sharp, electric shock ripped through the space. Dominic froze mid-breath. His nostrils flared as my scent hit him across the stone tiles: wild honeysuckle and silver birch.

Deep inside his chest, I heard a low, involuntary vibration—the raw, thunderous snarl of a Lycan wolf awakening. His pupils dilated until his eyes were almost completely black.

*Mate.*

The word didn't need to be spoken. It vibrated off the walls. His scent exploded into the chamber—dark pine and the sharp, violent bite of a thunderstorm. The sheer weight of his Lycan aura crashed outward, making the two council guards by the door stagger back a step.

Every she-wolf he had ever met dropped her gaze and bared her neck before his royal blood.

Dominic took a single, predatory step toward me.

I lifted my left hand, palm outward, stopping him dead in his tracks.

I didn't lower my chin. I didn't look down. I met his burning gaze with flat, unblinking slate-gray eyes.

"Business first, Prince," I said.

My voice was quiet, but it cut through the electric tension like a surgeon’s blade.

Dominic went completely still. It wasn't the stillness of shock; it was the terrifying, focused stillness of an apex predator measuring an impossible challenge. His Council enforcers went rigid, expecting him to snap.

I didn't flinch. I just stood my ground and waited him out.

Three long seconds passed.

Dominic’s jaw flexed. Slowly, the black edge in his eyes receded, replaced by a dark, intense curiosity I had never seen in a royal wolf. The suffocating aura pulled back beneath his skin.

He clasped his hands behind his back and inclined his head a fraction of an inch.

For the first time in his life, the Lycan Prince yielded to someone else's terms.

"State your petition, Luna Ashveil," Dominic said, his deep voice scraping across the stone.

I unclasped the brass locks on my case, pulled out the thick stack of treason logs, and laid them flat on the Council table.

"Let's talk about Warren Cole," I said.