My Alpha Named His Mistress's Baby His Heir, So I Took Our Wolf-less Daughter and Left

MARA'S POV

"Promise me again," I said.

Damon didn't look up from his phone. We were standing at the edge of the Moon Circle, where the stone ring glowed silver under the full moon and half of Greyhaven had gathered on the hillside to watch their children change.

"Mara, I promised you in the car."

"Then it won't kill you to say it twice."

He sighed and slipped the phone into his jacket. "Whether she shifts tonight or not, I won't let her think she failed. Happy?"

"Yes."

I wasn't, not really. But Elsie was waving at us from the line of seven-year-olds, her dark braid already coming loose, and I waved back so she wouldn't see my nerves.

Her wolf had always been quiet. The pack healer said some pups were late bloomers, that the wolf would come when it was ready. I'd been saying the same thing to Elsie every night for a month.

The elder called the first child forward. A boy dropped to his knees inside the circle, gasped, and then there was a small brown wolf shaking out its fur while the crowd cheered.

Another child went. Then another. Every single one of them shifted.

Then it was Elsie's turn.

She stepped into the circle in her little white ceremony dress and looked straight at Damon. He gave her a nod. I let myself breathe.

She closed her eyes and curled her hands into fists. Nothing happened.

"Again, sweetheart," the elder said gently. "Reach for her."

Elsie tried again. Her face went red with effort, and her shoulders trembled, but she stayed a girl.

The third time, she didn't even make it to the end. She opened her eyes too fast, panicked, and I heard it from somewhere behind me.

"Wolf-less."

"Poor thing. The Alpha's only kid, too."

"What happens to the line if she never shifts?"

My nails bit into my palms. Elsie spun around, searching the crowd, and found her father. She started toward him with her arms half out.

"Daddy—"

Damon didn't move toward her.

He moved toward the stage.

Serena was already climbing the steps. His Beta, the woman who'd sat at our dinner table every Sunday for three years, who'd brought Elsie a birthday cake shaped like a moon. She was wearing a pale blue dress I'd never seen, and she was smiling like she'd rehearsed it.

Damon put his hand on the small of her back and guided her to the center.

I knew. I think I knew before he opened his mouth.

"Greyhaven," he said, and the hillside went silent. "I have news I've waited too long to share. Serena is pregnant." He paused. "The child is mine."

A wave of noise rolled through the crowd. Someone actually gasped. Someone else laughed in shock.

I stood there with my hands still clenched and felt nothing at all. It was like the moment after you burn yourself, before the pain arrives.

He wasn't finished.

"A pack can't go without a secure heir," Damon went on, his Alpha voice carrying easily across the circle. "If Serena's child shifts as expected, that child will be formally named the next Alpha of Greyhaven."

Now the pain came.

It hit me so hard I swayed. Not because of Serena. Because Elsie was standing at the bottom of the stage steps with her arms still half raised, and she had heard every word.

She lowered them slowly.

Then she turned, looking up at her father, and said in a small voice that somehow carried farther than his had, "Daddy, is it because I don't have a wolf? Is that why I can't be your daughter anymore?"

I was across the circle before I realized I'd moved. I dropped to my knees in the dirt and pulled her against me, my hand over the back of her head.

"You are his daughter," I whispered into her hair. "You are, baby. Nothing changes that."

Damon came down the steps, frowning. Not at himself. At me.

"Don't confuse her," he said. "That's not what I said."

For seven years, I'd been the one who translated him. When he missed her recital, I said Daddy had pack business. When he forgot her birthday dinner, I said Daddy loved her and was just tired. I'd smoothed every sharp edge he left behind so she would never cut herself on it.

I looked up at him and didn't say a word to Elsie.

"You announced your mistress's baby," I said, "before you even comforted your daughter."

His jaw went tight. "Not here, Mara."

"Here is where you did it."

"Luna." Serena hurried down the steps behind him, one hand resting on her flat stomach like she wanted everyone to notice. Her eyes were wet. "Please. I never wanted to take Elsie's place. I swear I didn't. That was never—"

"Then get out of it," I said.

She stopped short.

The crowd had gone quiet again, the kind of quiet that meant every ear on the hill was turned toward us. Damon's face darkened.

"That's enough," he said. "You're making a scene."

"I'm making a scene?" I stood, lifting Elsie with me. She was too big to carry, really, but she wrapped her legs around my waist and didn't let go. "You just told the entire pack your seven-year-old is replaceable."

"I said nothing about Elsie."

"You didn't have to."

Serena reached for his arm. He let her take it.

That told me more than anything he'd said on the stage.

I turned my back on both of them and walked out of the Moon Circle with my daughter in my arms, past the whispers, past the families holding their newly shifted pups, past the elder who wouldn't meet my eyes.

The drive home took twenty minutes.

Elsie sat in the back seat in her dirt-streaked white dress and stared out the window. She didn't cry. She didn't ask for music. When I glanced at her in the rearview mirror, she was picking at a thread on her sleeve, pulling it longer and longer.

"You were so brave tonight," I said.

She didn't answer.

"Your wolf just needs more time. Lots of kids—"

"I know, Mommy."

She said it the way grown-ups say it when they want you to stop talking. I gripped the steering wheel and drove the rest of the way in silence.

The house was dark. Damon's car wasn't in the driveway, and I didn't expect it to be. I unlocked the door, flipped on the hall light, and knelt to help Elsie out of her shoes.

She let me untie the first one. Then she put her hand on my shoulder.

"Mommy?"

"Yeah, baby?"

She was looking at the family photo on the hall table, the one from last summer at the lake. Damon had his arm around me. Elsie was on his shoulders, laughing.

"Does he wish Serena's baby was his real kid?" she asked. "Instead of me?"