After My Mate Let His Mistress Slash My Throat

The mark on my neck turned to acid at eight sharp when Remington Hale reached past my outstretched hand and grabbed someone else.

I stood at the edge of the stone platform in the thin white dress I had sewn myself. For two years, I had scrubbed the grease from the pack house kitchens and bandaged warriors’ split knuckles until my skin was raw, waiting for this night. The mate bond had hummed beneath my skin like a quiet, steady flame ever since he claimed me on the Oregon border.

Now, his fingers curled around Brinley Ashford’s wrist.

She wore gold silk that reeked of cheap patchouli and sweet rot. She smiled at me, her amber eyes glittering with venom, and stepped onto the raised altar where I was supposed to stand. Three hundred wolves watched in dead silence.

"I, Remington Hale, Alpha of the Shadowvale Pack," Remington’s voice cut through the freezing air, loud and hard, "reject you, Juliana, as my mate and Luna."

The bond didn't just break. It detonated.

A silver blade seemed to twist directly behind my ribs, ripping through muscle, bone, and soul. The warmth in my neck died instantly, replaced by a void so cold and hollow it felt like a door slamming shut in an empty tomb. I gasped, blood rushing to my throat, and doubled over.

"**Kneel,**" Remington barked.

His Alpha tone hit me like a sledgehammer. The supernatural weight forced my knees down, slamming my bare kneecaps into the jagged frost of the stone. I ground my teeth together, refusing to let out another scream, but the pressure pinned me to the dirt.

Brinley stepped forward, pulling a silver-tipped ceremonial dagger from her belt.

"A rejected stray doesn't get to keep his mark," she whispered, leaning down.

Before I could draw breath, the silver blade sliced horizontally across the side of my neck.

Fire tore through my flesh. Silver burned against my blood, sizzling as it opened the bite mark Remington had given me six months ago. Hot, dark crimson poured down my collarbone, soaking the front of my white dress and pooling onto the snow.

Remington pulled Brinley back against his chest, tucking her under his arm. He didn't even look at the blood.

"Stop the theatrics, Juliana," Remington sneered, addressing the crowd. "You're wolfless. You don't feel a true bond. You’re only faking the pain to make this pack pity you." He turned his back on me. "Marcus. Drag her out. Dump her past the southern boundary line."

Gamma Marcus Thorne stepped up with two hulking warriors. He sneered down at me, grabbing my bleeding shoulder with a grip meant to bruise. "On your feet, garbage."

They hauled me backward across the ice. My blood trailed through the white snow like a scarlet ribbon.

I didn't beg. I didn't say his name.

Instead, deep beneath the agony, something ancient cracked.

It started as a spark where the silver had cut me, then surged through my veins like boiling liquid glass. For twenty-two years, my chest had been quiet. Now, a roar answered the pain—a voice so deafening and terrifying that the ground beneath us shuddered.

*No more,* the voice snarled.

A blinding dome of silver light exploded from my ribs.

The blast threw Marcus and the two warriors ten feet back through the air. They crashed against the trees with sickening thuds.

The heat stripped the frost from the clearing in a second. My bones didn't just shift; they shattered and rebuilt themselves with the force of an avalanche. My spine arched, my height expanding as pure silver fur erupted across my skin.

I rose. And rose.

When the light snapped shut, I was no longer looking up at anyone.

I stood nearly three meters tall at the shoulder, a colossal, silver-white Lycan beast with violet eyes that burned like twin stars.

The raw pressure of my aura exploded outward like a shockwave.

It wasn't an Alpha tone. It was sovereign authority.

The air vanished from the clearing. All three hundred Shadowvale wolves dropped simultaneously, their foreheads slamming into the frozen mud under the sheer, suffocating gravity of my presence.

Remington fell hardest. His knees cracked against the stone altar. His Alpha aura shattered like cheap glass, and for the first time in his life, his inner wolf whimpered inside his mind—a terrified, pathetic sound of absolute submission. Brinley lay beside him, clawing at her throat, unable to draw air.

A low growl rolled from my chest, vibrating the pine trees to their roots. I took one step forward, my massive paws leaving steaming prints in the snow.

Before I could crush Remington underfoot, roaring engines tore through the dark woods.

Blinding xenon headlights washed over the clearing. Six armored black SUVs smashed through the tree line, plowing through the heavy brush and forming a barricade around the pack grounds. Doors slammed open in unison. Royal Lycan guards, cloaked in black tactical gear and carrying heavy battle-blades, fanned out in absolute silence.

The rear door of the center vehicle pushed open.

A man stepped out into the freezing air. He had silver-streaked dark hair, broad shoulders wrapped in an imperial charcoal coat, and an aura so lethal it choked what little breath the pack had left.

King Emerson Creed.

He didn't look at Remington. He didn't look at the kneeling pack.

He inhaled once.

The scent of winter jasmine caught the wind. The King froze, his dark eyes instantly flooding with molten gold, blood calling fiercely to blood across the clearing.

Standing over three hundred trembling wolves, the most feared Lycan on the continent locked eyes with mine and whispered:

"My daughter."