After My Mate Saved His Mistress, I Burned My Old Pack

The news reached Silverfang territory like a whisper carried on storm winds. I was in the clinic, preparing Elara's maintenance serum, when Corvin appeared in the doorway, his usually stoic face alight with something that looked almost like satisfaction.

'They found the truth,' he said without preamble, his voice low enough that only I could hear. 'About Jade Carlson. About her father.'

My hands stilled over the herbs. 'What truth?'

'The Black Moon elders conducted a full investigation. They found her scent trail leading the rogues to your parents' territory. They found a hidden stash of fake wolfsbane in her quarters. And they found documents...' He paused, his eyes meeting mine. 'Documents proving her father orchestrated the attack that killed your parents.'

The mortar bowl nearly slipped from my grasp. Lyra, so quiet these past months, stirred inside me with a growl that vibrated through my chest. I pressed two fingers to my wrist, feeling my pulse quicken.

'When?' I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

'The announcement was made this morning. She's been stripped of all status and thrown into the dungeons. The Carlson name is finished in the Black Moon Pack.' Corvin's voice carried a note of savage justice that echoed my own feelings.

I turned back to my work, but my hands were shaking now. All those years. All that pain. All that betrayal. And now, the truth exposed to the light.

Later that evening, as I walked the moonlit path back to my quarters, I felt Westyn's presence before I saw him. He was waiting by the old oak tree, his silhouette solid and reassuring against the night sky.

'You've heard,' he said simply.

I nodded. 'I have.'

He stepped closer, his scent—pine and winter air—wrapping around me like a familiar blanket. 'How do you feel?'

I considered the question, searching for the right words. 'Relieved. Angry. Sad.' I looked up at him. 'Free.'

His hand found mine in the darkness, warm and steady. 'You always were, Winifred. Even when you thought you weren't.'

Back at Black Moon territory, Sage stood in the dungeons, his face ashen as the elders presented the evidence. I wasn't there to see it, but I could imagine him—his proud shoulders slumping, his eyes hollow with the weight of realization. The woman he had chosen over his mate, the debt he had honored above all else, had been built on lies.

According to Corvin's sources, Sage didn't speak during the entire proceedings. He simply stared at Jade as she raged and denied, her carefully constructed mask finally cracking under the weight of irrefutable proof.

When it was done, when Jade had been dragged away to serve her sentence, Sage returned to what remained of the clinic. The place where I had once worked, where he had once commanded, where we had once been everything to each other.

He tore through the investigation records with desperate hands, searching for something—anything—that might make sense of the wreckage of his life. And then he found it: a microscopic discrepancy in the ash composition from the urn. A trace element that shouldn't have been there. A clue so small most would have missed it.

But Sage knew my work. He knew my precision. And he knew, with sudden, terrible clarity, that I had faked my death.

I didn't know it then, standing in Silverfang territory with Westyn's hand warm in mine, but Sage was already gone from Black Moon Pack. He had left that very night, a lone wolf with nothing left to lose, tracking a trail months cold across state lines, following the faintest whisper of a scent he would never forget.

He was hunting for me.