After My Mate Took My Stepsister as His Luna

The banquet ended the way all of my father's performances ended — with applause, handshakes, and lies wrapped in champagne toasts.

I lasted through every single one of them.

I smiled when I needed to smile. I nodded at the right moments. I kept my thumb pressed into my wrist so hard I was sure the skin would bruise by morning. And I drank. More than I should have.

The wolfsbane-laced wine was a mistake. I knew it the moment the third glass hit my bloodstream. Wolfsbane in small doses dulled the wolf senses — it was a party trick, something the older wolves added to banquet wine so the room didn't reek of a hundred competing scents. But for me, tonight, it did something worse. It dulled the wall I had built between myself and my wolf. And she was already clawing at the edges after seeing him.

I made it out the side door of the pack house without stumbling. Barely. The night air hit my face like cold water. I sucked it in and blinked hard. The parking lot stretched out in front of me, rows of dark, expensive cars gleaming under the floodlights.

My ride. I needed my ride.

I had arranged for a pack driver — a quiet Omega named Tess who owed me nothing and asked no questions. She was supposed to be in a black SUV near the east exit. I scanned the lot. There. A black SUV, parked at the far end, engine off, windows tinted dark.

I walked toward it. My heels clicked unevenly on the asphalt. The wolfsbane made the ground tilt slightly under my feet, and I grabbed the door handle to steady myself. It was unlocked. I pulled it open and climbed into the passenger seat.

The leather was warm. The seat was adjusted for someone much taller than Tess.

And then the scent hit me.

Dark cedar. Woodsmoke. So concentrated in the enclosed space that it wrapped around me like a fist.

My wolf surged forward so hard my vision blurred. My fingers curled into the leather seat. Every nerve in my body lit up at once — not with alarm, but with something far more dangerous. Recognition. Want. Home.

This was not Tess's car.

I should have gotten out. I knew that. My hand was still on the door handle. All I had to do was push it open and walk away. But the wolfsbane had loosened something inside me that I had kept locked for three years, and his scent was everywhere — in the leather, in the air vents, soaked into the headrest like he had driven this car a thousand times. My body refused to move.

I leaned back into the seat. I closed my eyes. And I breathed him in.

Just for a second, I told myself. Just one second where I didn't have to pretend.

The driver's door opened.

My eyes snapped open. Lucas stood there, one hand on the door frame, his body filling the entire space. The floodlight behind him turned him into a silhouette — broad shoulders, sharp jaw, the faint outline of the collar that always sat high on his neck.

He didn't move. He didn't speak.

His eyes found me in the dark interior of the car, and I watched something crack across his face. It was fast. A fracture in the ice that lasted less than a heartbeat before the mask sealed over it again.

"Wrong car," he said. His voice was low. Flat.

I should have apologized. I should have mumbled an excuse and gotten out. That was the smart thing. The safe thing.

But the wolfsbane was in my blood, and his scent was in my lungs, and my wolf was howling so loud I could barely hear my own thoughts.

"Lucas," I whispered.

He flinched. It was small — just a tightening of his fingers on the door frame — but I saw it.

He climbed into the driver's seat and pulled the door shut. The interior went dark. The silence was so thick I could hear my own heartbeat.

He didn't start the engine. He didn't look at me. He sat perfectly still, both hands on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead at the concrete wall of the parking structure.

I could feel my jasmine scent filling the small space. I couldn't control it. The wolfsbane had stripped away every defense I had, and my wolf was pouring everything she had toward him — three years of grief and longing and the desperate, animal need to be close to the one person the Moon Goddess had made for us.

His knuckles went white on the steering wheel.

"Get out of my car, Ariya." His voice was quiet. Controlled. But there was something underneath it — a vibration, like a wire pulled too tight.

I didn't get out.

Instead, I leaned closer. Not much. Just enough that my shoulder almost touched his arm. I could feel the heat radiating off his body through the sleeve of his suit jacket.

"Does it still pull?" I asked. My voice came out barely above a breath. Broken and small and nothing like the composed woman who had stared down her father two hours ago. "The bond. Do you still feel it?"

The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had ever heard.

Lucas's jaw clenched so hard I could see the muscle jump beneath his skin. His chest rose once — a deep, slow inhale — and I knew he was breathing me in. I knew it because I had watched him do the same thing three years ago, the first night we met, when my jasmine scent hit him across a crowded campus quad and his whole body went still.

He closed his eyes.

For one agonizing, suspended moment, I thought he was going to answer me. I thought the wall was going to come down. I thought—

His eyes opened. Dead. Cold. The same glacial look he had given me across the banquet hall.

He didn't say a word to me. His gaze went distant — the unfocused look of a wolf using a mind-link — and then he opened his door, stepped out, and walked away into the dark parking lot without looking back.

Thirty seconds later, the driver's door opened again. A tall, broad-shouldered man with close-cropped hair and an unreadable face slid into the seat Lucas had just left.

"Silas," he said, by way of introduction. "Beta of Black Moon. I'm taking you home."

He started the engine. He didn't ask for my address. He already knew it.

I turned my face toward the window so he wouldn't see the tears.

---

The cabin was dark when we pulled up. It sat on the far edge of Silverfang territory — a small, weathered rental with a sagging porch and a single light over the door that I had forgotten to leave on. Silas stopped the SUV but didn't cut the engine.

I reached for the door handle. My fingers were shaking.

"He didn't sleep for two years."

I froze. Silas was staring straight ahead, his voice flat and professional, like he was delivering a field report.

"After the rejection," he continued. "His aura was so weak the rogues started circling our border. He built that pack on four hours of sleep and pure stubbornness." A pause. "Just thought you should know."

I opened the door and stepped out. I didn't trust myself to speak.

The SUV pulled away. The red taillights shrank down the dirt road and disappeared.

I sat down on the porch steps. The wood was cold and damp. The night pressed in around me — crickets, wind through the pines, the distant howl of a patrol wolf somewhere on the ridge.

The taste of wolfsbane sat bitter on my tongue. The humiliation sat heavier.

I had begged. I had actually begged. I had crawled into his car like a desperate, lovesick girl and asked him if the bond still pulled, and he had responded by sending his Beta to dispose of me like a problem.

My wolf curled into a tight ball inside my chest and howled. One name. Over and over. The name she had been whispering for three years in the dark, no matter how many times I told her to stop.

*Lucas. Lucas. Lucas.*

I pressed my thumb into my wrist until the ache drowned her out.

After a long time, I went inside. The cabin was cold. I didn't turn on the lights. I sat on the edge of the narrow bed and reached into the lining of my jacket. My fingers found the worn photograph by touch — the soft, frayed edges I had memorized years ago.

My mother's face looked up at me in the dark. I couldn't see the details, but I didn't need to. I knew every line. The gentle eyes. The quiet strength in her jaw. The Luna who should have led this pack.

I held the photograph against my chest for a long moment. Then I tucked it back into the lining, carefully, the way I always did.

I had work to do. Evidence to organize. Elders to win over. A father to bring down.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, took a breath, and reached for the folder I had hidden under the mattress.