My Alpha Gave My Mating Gift to His Mistress

I walked into my private chamber and stopped at the threshold.

The walls were covered in schematics. Months of work. Lunar charts annotated in my precise, architectural handwriting. Energy flow diagrams. Moon-cycle timestamps. Every surface mapped with the invisible architecture that had made Ironvale untouchable.

I had drawn these by moonlight. Channeled energy until my wolf could barely stand. Worked through dinners, through pack gatherings, through every moment I should have been living instead of building.

For him.

I crossed the room and reached for the nearest schematic.

My hands were steady. That surprised me. I had expected them to shake. But they didn't.

I pulled the schematic from the wall. The pins came free easily. I rolled it tight, secured it with a cord, and placed it in the case beneath my cot.

Then I reached for the next one.

I worked methodically. No rush. No hesitation. Each diagram came down, was rolled, was stored. The bond hummed with Elijah's distant contentment—he was in a meeting somewhere, probably with another Alpha, probably discussing expansion plans that would require wards I would no longer channel.

I felt nothing toward that hum. It was just noise now.

The last working diagram was the territorial extension I'd been developing for the eastern border. Weeks of solitary channeling. My wolf had been exhausted for days. I'd skipped meals. Ignored every invitation. Told myself it mattered.

I tore it from the wall.

The chamber was bare.

I stood in the center of the empty room and waited for something—grief, rage, doubt. But there was only silence. The kind that comes after a long noise finally stops.

I would not channel another ward for Elijah Hicks.

My wolf stirred. Not with protest. With relief.

I knelt beside my cot and pulled out the wooden chest I kept beneath it. Inside were my original schematics—the foundational drawings from the earliest phase of the ward project, before Ironvale's current administrative structure existed.

I hadn't looked at these in over a year.

I spread them across the floor. The handwriting was mine—smaller than my current style, less confident, but unmistakably mine. Dense annotations in the margins. Calculations. Moon-cycle energy logs timestamped in my wolf's unique signature.

I opened the pack's official ward filings on my tablet and laid them beside the originals.

Every filed version was a derivative of my work.

The core structure was identical. The energy flow patterns. The lunar calibration points. But my annotations were gone. My energy timestamps—stripped. My name—nowhere.

I cross-referenced the timestamps. The official filings were dated weeks after my originals. Someone had taken my foundational drawings, removed every trace of my authorship, and submitted them under Ironvale's name.

Not someone.

Elijah.

I read through the filings three times. My wolf was perfectly still. She wasn't surprised. She had known. I was the one who hadn't let myself see it.

I closed the tablet and gathered the original schematics. I placed them carefully back in the chest, then locked it.

The evidence was there. It had always been there.

I just hadn't been ready to use it.

Later that night, I sat at my desk with the pack treasury ledger open in front of me.

I wasn't looking for the moonstone. I was reviewing a routine quarterly expense report. But my eyes caught on a line item I didn't recognize.

*Ceremonial pack expenses: Moonstone requisition, commissioned work.*

I stared at it.

My mating moonstone. The sacred material I had contributed to the treasury when Elijah marked me. The gift that was supposed to symbolize our bond.

I clicked on the transaction details.

The moonstone had been requisitioned six weeks ago. There was a downstream commission entry—traced to a jeweler in the northern territories. The description was brief: *Custom collar, lunar-glow inlay.*

I read the entry three times.

Then I opened my personal ledger and copied every line. Every timestamp. Every requisition number. Every detail.

The jeweled collar on Savannah's throat at the banquet. The soft lunar glow I had recognized but hadn't let myself name.

It was mine.

My mating gift. Taken from the treasury. Commissioned into an accessory for the woman Elijah had chosen to stand where I should have been.

The betrayal wasn't just emotional. It was transactional. Documented. Traceable.

I closed the ledger and sat in the dark.

The bond hummed with Elijah's satisfaction. Warm. Steady. Content.

I felt nothing.

My wolf stirred. Not with rage. With something colder. Clearer.

*We are done here,* she said.

I nodded.

I was.