My Mate Tried to Erase My Wolf While His Mistress Raised Our Son

The banquet hall glowed with candlelight and the low hum of pack conversation. I sat at the high table beside Elliot, my leg still wrapped beneath the formal dress Lena had helped me into that afternoon. The fabric was soft and forgiving, chosen to hide the brace without making it obvious I was still broken.

Elliot stood. The room quieted immediately.

"I want to thank everyone for their patience during Luna Serena's recovery," he said. His voice carried that warm, authoritative tone that made people lean in. "It's been a difficult few weeks. But tonight, we celebrate her strength."

Applause rippled through the hall. I smiled and inclined my head, the picture of grateful humility.

Elliot gestured, and Beta Marcus stepped forward carrying something large and elaborate—a floral wreath woven with white blossoms and trailing greenery. It was beautiful. The kind of thing that belonged in a formal ceremony.

"A visiting healer blessed this for you," Elliot said, turning to me. His hand found my shoulder, warm and possessive. "For healing. For strength."

He lifted the wreath and settled it carefully over my head, adjusting it so it rested like a crown. The pack erupted into applause again. Someone whistled. I heard a few of the younger wolves murmur appreciation.

I reached up and touched the blossoms. They were soft under my fingers. The scent was floral and green, layered with something faintly herbal underneath.

"Thank you," I whispered. I let my voice catch just slightly. "It's beautiful."

Elliot kissed my forehead. Through the bond I felt satisfaction, smooth and contained. He straightened and raised his glass.

"To Serena. To Shadowvale. To family."

The pack echoed the toast. I lifted my own glass and drank, the wreath heavy and present on my head.

And beneath my ribs, in the place where my wolf had been stirring for days—slowly, tentatively waking after a decade of silence—I felt something go quiet.

Not absent. Not gone. Just muffled, like someone had wrapped cloth around a bell.

I set down my glass carefully. I kept my face still. I filed the sensation away and turned my attention back to the room.

---

The banquet stretched for hours. Courses came and went. Pack members approached the high table to offer congratulations, to ask after my health, to tell me how glad they were I was recovering. I smiled at all of them. I thanked them. I kept the wreath on my head because removing it would have been an insult to the gift, to Elliot, to the healer who had supposedly blessed it.

And the entire time, my wolf grew quieter.

It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't a sudden severance. It was gradual—like watching a light dim in stages. The low growl that had been building in my chest for days faded to a whisper. Then to something I had to strain to hear. Then to nothing but a ringing absence.

I pressed my thumb against the mark on my neck. The bond was still there, warm and present. I could still feel Elliot beside me, his satisfaction radiating through the connection every time someone complimented the wreath.

But my wolf—the dormant, waking thing that had been my only weapon—was going silent again.

I excused myself halfway through dessert. I told Elliot I was tired, that my leg was aching. He kissed my hand and told me to rest. Through the bond I felt approval. Relief, even.

I made my way back to the Luna quarters slowly, the wreath still on my head. Lena met me at the door and helped me inside. She didn't say anything about the flowers. She just steadied me as I lowered myself onto the bed.

"Do you need anything, Luna?"

"No. Thank you, Lena."

She left. I sat very still, the wreath heavy on my head, and listened to the silence where my wolf should have been.

---

I woke at dawn with the wreath still on the bedside table where I'd set it before sleeping. The absence in my chest was louder now. Not painful, exactly. Just wrong. Like a limb I'd forgotten I had until it went numb.

I sat up slowly. My leg protested. I ignored it.

I picked up the wreath and turned it in my hands. The blossoms were pristine, professionally arranged. The greenery was fresh. I brought it close to my face and inhaled.

Floral. Herbal. And underneath, barely detectable unless you knew what you were looking for—bitter and faintly acrid.

Wolfsbane.

I'd run Shadowvale's supply logistics for five years. I knew every botanical on the territory's border inventory. I knew what wolfsbane smelled like when it was fresh. I knew how it was used—medicinally, in controlled doses, to suppress a wolf's presence during certain healing rituals.

I knew it didn't belong in a gift presented at a public banquet.

I stood. I crossed to the window and opened it. The morning air was cold and sharp. I held the wreath out over the sill and let it drop. It landed in the garden below, white blossoms scattering across the dark soil.

I closed the window. I washed my hands at the basin, scrubbing until my skin was red.

Then I sat down at the desk and opened the hidden drawer where I'd been keeping my records. The evidence I'd been gathering. The timeline I'd been constructing.

I added a new entry:

*Elliot has access to a healer skilled in botanical suppression. Elliot is willing to dose me publicly. The ritual is closer than anticipated.*

I set down the pen. I pressed both palms flat against the desk and felt the silence in my chest where my wolf should have been.

The wolfsbane would wear off. It always did. But the fact that he'd used it—the fact that he'd stood in front of the entire pack and placed it on my head like a crown while they applauded—told me everything I needed to know about his timeline.

He was moving faster.

I needed Jared's report. I needed the Council's attention. I needed my wolf to wake up again before whatever Elliot was planning reached its conclusion.

I closed my eyes and reached for the mind-link. The connection was harder to find now, muffled by the wolfsbane still working through my system. But I pushed through the static until I found Jared's thread.

*How much longer?*

The reply came back hours later, terse and final: *Two days. The file is nearly complete.*

Two days.

I looked down at my hands, still pressed flat against the desk. I thought about the wreath in the garden below. About the specialist healer Lena had mentioned. About the careful, calculated way Elliot had adjusted the flowers on my head while the pack watched.

Two days to hold everything together.

Two days before the weapon I didn't know I had became impossible to reach.

I exhaled slowly and began writing again.