After My Mate Marked His Mistress Publicly

At five in the morning, the pack house smelled like cold ash and damp pine.

I walked down the third-floor corridor to deliver my reassignment papers. After severing the bond at the banquet, I had no business sleeping anywhere near the Alpha wing. I had packed my single duffel bag and requested a transfer to the empty caretaker’s cottage out by the northern treeline.

As I reached the corner, I stopped.

Beta Colt stood guard outside Judson Sanders’s private study, his broad shoulders pressed against the wood paneling. When he saw me, his eyes flickered with guilt, but he didn't move. The heavy mahogany door beside him wasn't latched; it sat open an inch, allowing the former Alpha’s voice to slice cleanly into the hall.

Judson didn't sound angry. He sounded like a bank manager reading an overdue bill.

"The Ironcrest alliance will not wait on your bruised ego, Brady," Judson said. "Sadie Johnston is of age. Her father controls three supply corridors we need before the mountain passes freeze."

Through the crack, I saw Brady sitting rigid in the high-backed leather chair. The morning shadows hid his face, but his fingers were clamped over the carved armrests so hard his knuckles showed white through his skin.

"The banquet was three hours ago, Father," Brady ground out, his voice raw.

"And your aura is already reading fifteen percent below baseline," Judson replied, not missing a beat. I heard the quiet rustle of paper—a diagnostic report from the pack clinic. "Colt saw it. The elders felt it. A weakened Alpha invites border challenges. You will fix it."

"I don't need Sadie Johnston."

"You don't have a choice," Judson said, cold and final. "If you refuse to schedule the formal mating ceremony before the season turns, I will invoke the elder blood-right and sign the treaty over your head. Pack stability comes first. You are dismissed."

Brady didn't speak. He rose from the chair, his jaw set like iron, and Judson didn't even look up from his desk to watch him go.

I backed into the stairwell before the door opened, slipping quietly down the stairs.

***

By noon, Brady made his countermove.

Instead of hiding his shame, he doubled down. He personally carried Lilith Guzman’s leather suitcases up the grand staircase and set them inside the Luna’s suite—the very rooms I had never been permitted to enter. It was a loud, desperate declaration to the pack: *I am in control. The bond didn't matter.*

Lilith understood the game immediately. She didn't waste an hour.

With Brady brooding in his office, she marched straight down to the pack kitchens, trailing the heavy scent of amber and musk. I was at the utility counter near the back, filling my thermos with hot water, when she swept past the prep line with Mrs. Gable, the head cook.

"The Alpha wants the warrior nutrition streamlined," Lilith said, her voice dripping with polished authority. She carried a small, ornate wooden box under her arm, secured with a brass padlock. "These are imported dried herbs for stamina. I’ll keep them right here, behind the individual ration bins."

"Of course, Miss Guzman," Mrs. Gable said, bowing her head slightly.

Lilith slid the box onto the top dry-goods shelf, right above the shelf where the daily training rations were weighed and bagged. The label on the side read *Mountain Sage*.

It wasn't sage. I knew the faint, metallic sting beneath the sweet dried leaf. It was diluted wolfsbane.

Lilith turned, her dark eyes locking onto mine across the stainless steel prep tables. She didn't look flustered. She looked pleased with herself. She had calculated the dosage down to the gram: enough to paralyze my wolf’s ability to surface, enough to make me look weak and pathetic in front of the pack, but not enough to cause the kind of violent convulsions that would bring a pack healer running.

She wanted to erase me from the inside out. I kept my face blank, capped my thermos, and walked away.

***

Three days later, the trap snapped shut.

The frost was thick on the mud of the southern training grounds. Breath puffed like white smoke from thirty pack fighters lining the perimeter. Every member under twenty-five was required to run the mandatory combat drills, regardless of status.

My stomach burned. I had eaten my allotted training meal an hour ago. Now, my limbs felt like they had been wrapped in wet, frozen wool. My pulse hammered in my ears, sluggish and thick. Deep in my ribs, I called out to my wolf.

Nothing answered. Just a flat, hollow ache.

"Riley!"

Gamma Keller stepped to the center of the muddy ring. He had always been Judson’s man, and now he looked at me like I was grease on his boot.

"Front and center," Keller barked. "Timed shift and perimeter breach. Go."

Whispers rippled through the gathered fighters. A few yards away, Lilith stood beside Colt on the viewing platform, a fur-lined coat pulled tight around her throat. She watched me with the calm anticipation of someone waiting for a play to start.

I stepped onto the marked line. I closed my eyes and reached for the spark beneath my collarbone, demanding the shift.

Pain flared through my veins—a sharp, sickening burn. My bones began to heat, ready to reshape, but the wolfsbane caught them like a vice. The shift stalled halfway. My knees buckled. I crashed hard into the frozen mud, gasping for air as my body violently rejected the change, slamming me back into human flesh.

Laughter broke out along the ranks.

"Get up," Keller sneered, stepping over me. "Do it again. Or are you too delicate now that you don't have the Alpha's table to feed from?"

I swallowed the metallic taste of blood from biting my tongue. I pushed myself up, wiping the wet grit from my palms, and forced the energy again.

Nothing. Just cold, empty silence where my wolf should have roared.

Keller shook his head in disgust. He pulled a clipboard from under his arm and clicked a pen. Right across my name, in thick red ink, he slashed a heavy capital **W**.

*Wolfless.*

"Pathetic," Keller said loudly, making sure the platform heard. "Complete the ten-mile ruck in human form. No water until you finish."

I didn't argue. I didn't drop my chin. I strapped on the forty-pound pack and started down the gravel path, putting one foot in front of the other through the biting wind.

When I reached the bend where the pines blocked the training yard from view, I slowed my pace. My hands were shaking from the poison, but my mind was ice.

I reached inside my jacket and pulled out a small, sterile glass vial and a pocket knife. From my coat pocket, I pulled the half-eaten oat cake from my morning ration. Using the blade, I scraped the gray, powdery residue from the center of the grain directly into the glass, tapping it until it settled at the bottom.

I snapped the rubber stopper shut, checking my watch.

*Forty-five minutes from ingestion to muscle failure.*

I tucked the vial deep into my inner lining, right against my ribs. Let them call me weak. Let Lilith smile. Every day she poured poison into my food, she was simply handing me another nail for her own coffin.