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

MARA'S POV

By the end of that week, Serena had stopped pretending she was only visiting.

She came Monday for dinner and stayed until midnight. Tuesday she slept in the guest suite off the main hall. By Thursday her toothbrush was in the downstairs bathroom and her prenatal vitamins were lined up on my kitchen windowsill like they'd always lived there.

Friday morning, she came to breakfast with shadows under her eyes.

"I barely slept," she told Damon, not me. "The young wolves were running the tree line again. Every time one of them shifted near the guest wing, my wolf woke up and paced. The healer says I'm more sensitive now. It's normal with a strong pup."

Damon nodded like she'd given him a council report.

I didn't think about it again until I got home from the pack school at two-thirty and found the east wing door propped open with a box.

Ruth, our housekeeper, was coming out of the hallway carrying a stack of folded clothes. Small clothes. A purple hoodie with a wolf paw on the pocket sat on top.

Elsie's hoodie.

"Ruth," I said. "What are you doing?"

She stopped, and her face did something apologetic and miserable at the same time. "Alpha's orders, Luna. He said you'd been told."

"I haven't been told anything."

"Mara." Damon came out of Elsie's doorway with his sleeves rolled up, like he'd been helping. "Good, you're back. I was going to call you."

"Why are Elsie's clothes in the hallway?"

"Serena can't keep sleeping in the guest wing. You heard her this morning." He said it calmly, already certain I'd agree. "The east wing is the quietest part of the house, and it's closest to our room. The Alpha scent is strongest there. That's what she needs right now."

"Then put her in the other east room."

"It's full of council archives. It would take a week to clear." He shrugged. "Elsie's seven. She's old enough to move to the children's wing. Plenty of pack kids her age sleep farther from their parents than that. It'll be good for her."

I looked at him for a long moment.

"No," I said.

He blinked. "No?"

"No. She's not moving. Serena can sleep in the guest wing, or a hotel in town, or her own house, which I know she has, because I helped her pick out the curtains."

"It's already decided."

"It's not decided. I just told you no."

"Mara, I'm not asking." His voice dropped into that lower register, the one meant to end conversations. "Ruth, keep going."

Ruth didn't move. She looked at me.

That small hesitation felt like the only kind thing anyone had done in a week. But before I could say anything else, the front door opened and I heard sneakers squeak on the hall floor.

"Mommy? Why's my door open?"

Elsie came around the corner with her backpack still on. She stopped.

Two boxes sat outside her room. The top one wasn't taped shut, and I could see what was inside. Her moon lamp, the one that turned the ceiling silver at night. Her stuffed wolf, Biscuit, with the ear she'd chewed flat when she was teething. Her stack of chapter books, the dragon series she'd read three times.

She walked over and looked down into the box. She didn't touch anything.

I waited for her to cry. I almost wanted her to. Crying I knew how to fix.

Instead she looked up at her father with that same quiet face she'd worn in the car after the ceremony.

"The baby's not even born yet," she said. "Does it already need my room?"

Damon's mouth opened, and nothing came out.

For one second, maybe two, I saw it land on him. His eyes moved from her face to the box to the hoodie in Ruth's arms, and something in his jaw loosened like he'd been caught. He looked, for the first time in a week, like a father who'd done something wrong.

"Sweetheart, that's not..." He crouched down to her level. "It's just a room. You'll get a bigger one."

"I like this one."

"Oh, Elsie." Serena appeared at the end of the hall in socks and one of Damon's old pack sweatshirts. She pressed a hand to her chest. "Honey, no. I didn't know they were moving your things. Damon, please, don't do this for me. I can stay somewhere else. Really. I'd never want her upset."

Damon stood up slowly. He looked at Serena with something like relief.

"You don't have to—"

"No, I mean it." She gave a small, brave smile. Then she touched her stomach. "It's just that the doctor said steady Alpha scent is really important for pregnant she-wolves. Especially in the first trimester. But I'll manage. I'll be fine."

There it was.

I watched my husband hear it. I watched his shoulders square, and his eyes leave his daughter's face, and his expression settle back into the Alpha who made hard decisions for the good of the pack.

"You won't manage," he told Serena. "Not if it puts the pup at risk." He turned to Elsie, gentler. "The children's wing is nice, sweetheart. I'll have them paint it any color you want."

Elsie didn't answer him. She just reached up and took my hand.

Something in me went very still.

I'd been ready to fight him. I'd had the words lined up, about what he owed her, about what kind of man moves a child out of her bed for his mistress's comfort. But standing there with Elsie's small fingers in mine, I understood there was nothing left to win. Even if I made him keep her in that room, she'd sleep every night ten feet from Serena, listening to her father walk past her door to someone else.

"Ruth," I said. "Stop, please. Put the hoodie down."

Ruth set it on top of the box.

Damon let out a breath. "Thank you. I knew you'd—"

I walked past him into Elsie's room.

Half her shelves were already empty. Her bed was stripped. I picked up the canvas duffel from her closet floor, the one we used for sleepovers at her grandmother's, and unzipped it.

Then I started packing.

Not everything. Just what mattered. Her school uniform and three pairs of leggings. Her toothbrush from the little bathroom. The photo of her and me at the lake, the one without Damon in it. I went out to the hall, took Biscuit and the moon lamp and the dragon books out of the box, and brought them back in.

"Mara." Damon stood in the doorway. "What are you doing?"

"Packing."

"I can see that. For what?"

I zipped the bag halfway and looked at him.

"She doesn't need another room here," I said. "She's leaving with me."

He actually laughed, short and tired. "Okay. Fine. Take her to your mother's for a few days. Let everyone cool off. We'll talk Sunday."

I didn't answer. I finished zipping the bag and handed it to Elsie, who held it against her chest with both arms.

Then I raised my left wrist.

The Luna access bracelet was thin silver, engraved with the Greyhaven crest. It opened the pack vaults, the council hall, the gates. He'd fastened it on me the night of our mating ceremony, and I hadn't taken it off since. My fingers found the clasp easily.

Damon's laugh stopped.

I stepped forward, took his hand, turned it palm up, and set the bracelet in it.

"Your heir has his mother," I said. "Your pack has its Alpha."

I looked down at Elsie, then back at him.

"My daughter has me."

He stared at the bracelet. When he looked up, the tired, reasonable expression was gone. His face had gone pale and hard at the same time, and his eyes flickered gold at the edges, his wolf pushing up through the surface.

"You're not serious."

"I'm completely serious."

He closed his fist around the silver so tightly his knuckles went white.

"You can't leave me before the Full Moon," he said, and his voice wasn't steady anymore. "Mara. You can't."

I took Elsie's hand and walked past him into the hall.

"Watch me."