After My Mate Let His Mistress Slash My Throat

The tablet screen flickered, shifting to another recorded feed timestamped just thirty minutes earlier.

The setting was a cold interrogation room in Shadowvale’s basement. Brinley Ashford sat clamped to a metal chair, her gold silk dress torn at the collar. The moment Caelan stepped into the frame, her entire posture shrank.

She turned on the helpless-victim act instantly. Her amber eyes flooded with tears, and her lower lip quivered.

"Prince Caelan, please," Brinley whispered, her voice breathy, small, and fragile. "You have to believe me. Remington... he terrified me. I was just a refugee fleeing rogue attacks in the south. I didn't know what was in those tonics. Corin told me they were vitamins for Juliana. I swear on the Moon Goddess, I only did what the Alpha told me to do—"

Caelan didn't sit down. He stood across the steel table, watching her with dead, unblinking eyes. He didn't interrupt. He simply checked his watch, letting her run the performance for exactly thirty seconds.

Then, he leaned forward and slammed Corin’s black, coded journals onto the metal table.

The sharp *crack* echoed through the speakers.

Brinley flinched violently, her breath catching in her throat. She looked down at the notebooks, seeing her own handwriting, her own signatures on the southern black-market receipts.

Her delicate, trembling mask shattered into pieces.

"You're lying!" she shrieked, her voice suddenly shrill and harsh. She lunged against her restraints, her knuckles white. "Corin made that up to save his own neck! You can't pin this on me!"

Caelan’s voice was barely above a whisper, but it made the hairs on my arms stand up. "Tell me about the border attack six years ago, Brinley. Or I let my guards take your fingers one by one."

Brinley’s eyes darted wildly. Cornered, terrified, and stripped of her charm, she broke.

"It wasn't my idea!" she sobbed, tears smearing her mascara into ugly black tracks down her cheeks. "It was Remington’s father! The old Alpha planned it all! They heard rumors about a wolfless girl on the Oregon border with an intoxicating scent—blood that felt too heavy, too strange. The old man knew she had royal blood in her veins before she did!"

A cold spike of ice drove straight through my ribs. I stared at the screen, my breath stopping.

"They paid the rogues," Brinley cried, rocking back and forth in the chair. "Alpha Hale hired them to attack her! It was a setup! He sent Remington in at the exact right second to kill them and play the savior. They wanted her indebted to the Hale name. They wanted to leash her before any royal scout picked up her trail! Remington’s entire rescue was a staged hunt!"

The audio cut out as Caelan tapped the screen, closing the file.

The room went dead silent.

Six years.

I had given six years of my life to a man because I thought he saved me. I had carried his memory like a sacred shield. When his claws had pulled me from that rogue’s jaws in the Oregon brush, I had looked at his face and thought the heavens had sent me an angel.

It was a trap. From the very first breath, every sweet word, every promise, every floor I scrubbed to earn his favor—it was all designed by the family who had bought the wolves that hunted me.

Outside my door, heavy footsteps paced the corridor. Caelan delivered the full dossier to King Emerson in the war room down the hall—Corin’s journals, Brinley’s taped confession, and the six-year timeline of the Hale family's treason.

Even through the thick walls, I felt the sickening drop in the air.

Emerson’s aura flared like a sudden explosion of heat, so heavy and absolute that the stone beneath my bed trembled. Royal prerogative was invoked. Emerson wasn't just bringing charges; he was summoning the Lycan Council tribunal to convene directly on Shadowvale soil. They were going to strip the pack bare.

The palace eventually fell into a tense, suffocating quiet. Exhaustion pulled me under, dragging me into a deep, dreamless sleep.

***

When I opened my eyes again, the room was empty.

Pale moonlight spilled through the tall glass windows, painting the plush silk sheets and carved moonstone pillars in silver. It was quiet. So quiet that for a second, I thought I was still dreaming. There was no sound of yelling warriors, no clattering pans in the Shadowvale kitchen, no freezing draft whistling through the floorboards of the pack house basement.

Then, a voice spoke.

It wasn't outside. It was inside my own skull.

*I am here, little one.*

The voice was deep, feminine, and ancient, ringing like a silver bell struck in a silent cathedral. It carried a fierce, protective warmth that made my entire chest ache.

I gasped, pressing a hand to my sternum. "Who..."

*I am your wolf. I am Sarya,* she answered softly, her presence unfurling like massive silver wings behind my ribs. *I am sorry. I fought so hard to reach you, but the poison... the wolfsbane was a wall of iron between us. For twenty-two years, I was locked in the dark while they made you bleed.*

A second heartbeat thumped inside my chest—strong, rhythmic, and undeniably mine.

*You are not an Omega,* Sarya growled, a low, rumbling fury vibrating through my bones. *You are royal Lycan. Born of the Moon Goddess’s first bloodline. They caged a beast and called it broken.*

A burning wave of heat washed through my veins, but beneath it came a sickening, gutting clarity.

Tears finally spilled over my eyelashes, hot and fast.

I looked down at my scarred, calloused hands. Every harsh word I had swallowed, every kick from a ranked warrior, every night I had gone to bed hungry thinking I had to earn Remington's love because I was flawed—it was all a lie.

Not just Remington’s lie.

It was mine. I had believed I was worthless, and I had let them break me for it.

*No more,* Sarya whispered in my mind, her violet eyes burning behind my own. *They took your blood. Now, we take their crown.*