After My Mate Tried Killing Me

The summons came the next morning.

A young Omega knocked twice on my door, eyes fixed on the floor. "The Alpha wants you in his study."

I pulled myself up. My chest wound had stopped bleeding, but the fabric stuck to the raw skin. Every step down the hall felt like walking on broken glass. I passed staff who used to bow to me. Now they looked away.

I knocked once and pushed the door open.

Duncan sat behind his desk, a cup of coffee steaming beside a stack of papers. He didn't look up. He let me stand there for a full minute before he finally leaned back in his leather chair and studied me like I was a stain he needed to scrub out.

"Sit," he said.

I sat.

My eyes moved before he spoke. The armchair by the window—Kylie's perfume soaked into the cushion, cloying and sweet, the kind of scent she drowned herself in to cover her weak wolf smell. On the corner of the desk, my old wildflower diffuser hummed quietly. Still running. Still filling the room with the scent he'd claimed to love. Only now Kylie's cheap perfume was layered on top of it, like someone had spray-painted graffiti over a painting.

He'd kept my diffuser going for five years. And he'd let her sit in it.

"Alivia." His voice dropped into that Alpha tone I used to melt for. Now it just made my skin crawl. "You need to understand something. You abandoned your post. Five years, gone. Off in the Wastes playing martyr while this pack ran itself."

I said nothing.

"I could have called you a rogue. Stripped your Luna title officially. No one would have blamed me." He leaned forward. "Instead, I'm giving you a chance to come back. That's mercy. You should be grateful."

Grateful.

The word sat in my mouth like ash. I looked at his healthy face, his clean hands, his crisp shirt. Five years I'd eaten roots and slept in caves for this man. Five years I'd carved my own body open to save him.

I kept my face still. I didn't blink.

He took my silence for submission. His shoulders relaxed. "Good girl. We'll do this properly. A Luna Ceremony. Formal. In three days. It will settle any questions about the pack's leadership."

A ceremony. With his mark on her neck.

"Kylie has been very helpful," he added, casual. "She picked out a gown for you."

I met his eyes then. Just for a second. I let him see nothing.

"Dismissed," he said.

I stood up and walked out.

---

The gown arrived that afternoon in a garment bag, delivered by a nervous Omega who wouldn't meet my eyes.

I laid it out on the guest bed.

It was pale silver, long, with lace along the sleeves. Pretty, if you didn't look closely. I looked closely.

The alteration tags were still pinned inside the waistband. Kylie's measurements, written in the seamstress's careful hand. Bust, waist, hips—all wrong for my frame. And when I lifted the fabric to my face, I caught it. Her perfume. Faint but there, soaked into the collar where it had touched her skin.

She had worn this. Tried it on. Decided it wasn't good enough for her.

And Duncan had sent it to me.

I sank onto the edge of the bed and pressed the dress against my knees. My hands shook. Not from grief. From something colder, older, sharper.

My wolf stirred for the first time since the bond broke. She was weak, thin as smoke, but her voice came through clear.

*Remember this.*

I folded the dress carefully. I did not cry.

---

The ceremony was held in the Silverfang great hall.

Every Alpha, Beta, and elder within a hundred miles filled the space. Candles burned in tall iron holders. The old Luna banner hung from the rafters—the one I'd embroidered myself the year I was mated.

I stood off to the side, near a pillar, in Kylie's discarded gown. The waist gaped. The hem dragged. Someone had tried to pin the bust, but the fabric still hung wrong on me. I looked like a child playing dress-up in her sister's clothes.

Which, I suppose, was the point.

Kylie stood at Duncan's right hand.

Her dress was new. Deep gold, custom-fitted, cut low enough to show off his mark on her throat. She glittered with jewelry—too much of it, gaudy pieces climbing up her ears and wrists. My Luna pendant sat on a chain against her collarbone. She kept touching it, like a child checking a prize.

Duncan spoke. I didn't hear the words. Something about renewal. Strength. Unity.

He did not look at me once.

Half the room did. I felt their eyes. Elder Rosalind from the East Ridge Pack—she'd known my mother—stared at me with her lips pressed thin. Marcus, standing behind Duncan, kept his gaze fixed on the floor. Two of the Silverfang elders exchanged a glance I couldn't read. Uneasy. Unsettled.

But no one spoke. No one moved.

I stood there in a dress that wasn't mine, in a body that had been used up and thrown away, and I let every second carve itself into my memory.

Duncan raised his glass toward Kylie. Her hand slipped into his.

My wolf pressed against my ribs, still weak, still bleeding somewhere deep inside me. But her voice was steady.

*Remember this. Remember every second. Every face. Every laugh. Every hand that touched hers instead of yours.*

I would.

I would remember all of it.

And when the time came, I would give it back to them, piece by piece, until there was nothing left of the empire they had built on my bones.

The candles flickered. The pack raised their glasses.

I did not raise mine.