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

MARA'S POV

Damon came home at seven the next morning, smelling like the pack office and someone else's lavender soap.

I was at the stove making pancakes Elsie probably wouldn't eat. I didn't turn around when he walked into the kitchen. I heard him set his keys on the counter, heard him pull out a chair and not sit in it.

"We need to talk about last night," he said.

"Go ahead."

"Can you look at me, Mara?"

I flipped a pancake. It was too dark on one side. I flipped it back anyway and turned off the burner.

When I faced him, he looked tired, but not sorry. Damon had a specific face for pack meetings, the one where his jaw set and his voice dropped half a register. He was wearing it now in our kitchen.

"I handled the announcement badly," he said. "I'll admit that. And what happened with Serena was wrong. I'm not going to stand here and pretend it wasn't."

"Okay."

He waited, like I was supposed to say something else. When I didn't, he went on.

"But she's pregnant. That's a fact now, and I can't..." He stopped and rubbed his forehead. "The pack needs stability. If Elsie doesn't shift, the elders will start talking about challengers within five years. Maybe sooner. Naming an heir was a pack decision, not a personal one."

"A pack decision," I said.

"Yes."

"You decided it in bed with your Beta, Damon. Don't dress it up."

His nostrils flared, but he kept his voice even. "I'm trying to fix this."

"Then fix it."

"That's what I'm doing." He finally sat down and folded his hands on the table. "I'm not asking you to step down. I don't want a new Luna. The families trust you. The council trusts you. Nothing about your position changes."

I stared at him. He said it like a gift.

"And while Serena's pregnant," he continued, "I'd like you to help her. Walk her through the traditions. The naming rites, the pup-blessing, how we prepare an heir's first year. She didn't grow up in a ruling family. If her child is going to be raised as Alpha, she'll need to know how it's done in Greyhaven."

For a second the kitchen was completely silent except for the hum of the fridge.

"Let me make sure I heard you right," I said. "You want your wife to teach your pregnant mistress how to raise the baby replacing our daughter?"

Something moved across his face. I watched him hear it. I watched him realize exactly how it sounded out loud.

Then I watched him decide it didn't matter.

"Elsie's situation and our marriage are two separate things," he said.

"No. They're not."

"Mara—"

"She wouldn't go to training this morning."

He frowned. "What?"

"The Alpha training field. Every Saturday since she was four, she's begged to go. She lines up her sneakers by the door Friday night." My voice stayed level, which surprised me. "This morning she put them back in the closet. I asked her why, and she said she didn't want the other kids to call her wolf-less again."

Damon looked toward the hallway, toward her closed bedroom door.

"She'll get over it," he said, but quieter.

"She asked me last night if you wished Serena's baby was your real kid. Instead of her." I picked up the plate of pancakes and set it on the counter between us. "So don't tell me they're separate. You made them the same thing the second you walked up those steps."

He didn't answer. His phone buzzed on the table. He glanced at the screen, and I saw the name before he turned it face down.

He left twenty minutes later.

---

Serena showed up at four that afternoon.

I opened the door, and she was standing on the porch in a cream sweater with a canvas tote bag over her shoulder, looking pale and apologetic.

"Luna," she said softly. "I'm so sorry to just drop by. Damon said it would be all right."

"Did he."

"The healer thinks my wolf is unsettled. Early pregnancy, with a high-ranking pup, sometimes the mother's wolf gets restless." She touched her stomach. "Being near the father's Alpha scent helps. Just for a few hours."

Behind me, I heard the creak of Elsie's door opening an inch.

"Damon's not home," I said.

"He's on his way." She smiled a little. "He said I could wait inside."

I could have shut the door in her face. I thought about it. Then I thought about the pack families who'd hear about it by dinner, and about Elsie listening from her room, and I stepped aside.

Damon got home at five-thirty. He found Serena on the living room couch with her shoes off, and he didn't ask what she was doing there. He just sat down in the armchair across from her and loosened his tie.

By nine, she was still there.

By ten, I came downstairs for water and found her in my kitchen, standing at the counter with the tin of chamomile and valerian I mixed for Damon every night. The one I blended myself. The one he said was the only thing that quieted his wolf after a council meeting.

She was spooning it into my blue mug.

"Oh," she said, and had the decency to look startled. "Damon said this helps him settle. I thought it might help me, too. I hope that's okay."

I looked past her into the living room. Damon was on the couch now, not the armchair, his phone in his hand. He'd heard. He didn't look up.

"Keep the mug," I said.

I filled my water glass and went back upstairs.

---

It took me less than an hour to move.

Two drawers of clothes. My pillow. My robe. The book on my nightstand and the charger beside it. I carried everything down the hall to the guest room, the one with the narrow bed and the window that stuck, and I opened that window as far as it would go.

Then I stripped the sheets off our bed and put fresh ones on, so there would be nothing left of me in that room. Not even on the linen.

I heard Serena's car finally pull out of the driveway a little after eleven. A few minutes later, Damon's footsteps came up the stairs.

They stopped at our bedroom door. Then nothing, for a long moment.

Then they came down the hall, fast.

He didn't knock. He opened the guest room door and stood there with the hallway light behind him.

"What is this?"

I was sitting up in bed with my book. "It's a bedroom."

"Our bedroom is down the hall."

"Your bedroom is down the hall."

He stepped inside, and I saw his nostrils move as he breathed in, the way his wolf did when it was searching for something. His face tightened.

"You changed the sheets."

"They needed changing."

"I can't smell you in there." He said it almost angrily, like I'd stolen something from him. "Not at all. Do you know what that does to a wolf, Mara? Walking into his own room and it's empty?"

I closed my book and set it on the blanket.

"Come back to bed," he said. "This is ridiculous. We'll talk in the morning."

"We talked this morning."

"Mara."

There was Alpha in it now, the low weight he used on stubborn pack members. Seven years ago, it would've worked. I would've gotten up, gathered my pillow, and followed him just to make the tension stop.

I looked at him instead.

"You have someone else who needs your scent now," I said.

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

I waited for him to argue, to shout, to say something cruel enough that I could shout back. Some part of me wanted that. A fight would have meant there was still something here worth fighting over.

But I didn't raise my voice, and I didn't cry, and I didn't ask him to choose. I just reached over and turned off the lamp.

In the dark, I heard him stand there.

He was breathing slowly, carefully, like a man trying to find his footing on ice. When he finally spoke, it wasn't to me so much as to the room.

"You're not even going to yell at me."

I didn't answer.

After a long time, the door closed. His footsteps went back down the hall, slower now, and stopped outside our old room without going in.

He'd finally noticed.

I wasn't fighting him.

I was leaving him, one drawer at a time.