My Alpha Let His Mistress Kill Our Unborn Child

The medical wing smelled like antiseptic and lies.

I sat on the examination table, my hand extended palm-up while Dr. Helena worked in silence. The overhead light was too bright, making the blood look garish against my pale skin. Each stitch pulled through flesh with a soft tug that I felt distantly, like it was happening to someone else's body.

Maybe it was.

Maybe the real Gabriella had died months ago, and I was just the hollow shell left behind, going through the motions of being Luna.

"This will scar," Dr. Helena said quietly. Her hands were steady, professional. But I caught the tightness around her eyes, the way she wouldn't quite meet my gaze. "The claws went deep."

"It's fine."

"Gabriella—"

"Luna Gabriella," I corrected, my voice flat.

She paused mid-stitch. Then nodded, understanding the distance I was creating. The walls I was building between myself and every wolf in this pack who had watched me bleed and done nothing.

"Luna Gabriella," she amended carefully. "I need to ask... is the stress becoming too much? After everything that happened five months ago, your body needs—"

"The Luna has no pain," I interrupted. The words came out mechanical, rehearsed. Because I'd been saying them to myself for months now, trying to make them true through sheer repetition.

Dr. Helena's hands stilled. "That's not—"

"Please finish the stitches."

She did. Seven neat sutures across my palm, each one a reminder that my own mate had drawn my blood to protect another woman. When she tied off the final knot and reached for the bandage, I pulled my hand back.

"No bandage."

"You need to keep it clean—"

"No bandage," I repeated. "Let them see it."

Let them all see what their Alpha had done. Let the visiting wolves carry the story back to their packs: Bruno of the Blood Claw Pack, who once endured the Gauntlet for his mate, now struck her down for a mistress.

Dr. Helena's expression crumpled with something that looked like pity. I hated it. I stood, smoothing down my burgundy gown with my uninjured hand.

"Thank you for your service, Doctor."

I left before she could offer any more condolences I didn't want to hear.

The guest room was cold and impersonal. I'd been sleeping here for six weeks now, ever since the night I'd woken to find Bruno's side of the bed empty and his scent mixed with Kayleigh's floral perfume clinging to his skin when he'd finally returned at dawn.

I didn't bother turning on the lights. Just kicked off my heels and sank onto the edge of the bed, my phone clutched in my uninjured hand.

It buzzed. A notification from that group chat I'd been trying to ignore.

Scorned Lunas Support Network.

I opened it, some masochistic part of me needing to see how pathetic I'd become. How common.

The messages scrolled past in a blur of desperate advice:

*"Tip #52: Learn to cook his favorite meals exactly how his mother made them."*

*"Tip #53: Never question where he's been. Jealousy only drives them further away."*

*"Tip #54: Dye your hair to match his mistress. Sometimes they just need the fantasy."*

I stared at that last one until the words blurred. Dye my hair. Change myself. Become someone else entirely, just to win back scraps of affection from a mate who had forgotten how to love me.

Nausea rolled through my stomach in waves.

My thumb hovered over the leave group button. But I couldn't seem to press it. Couldn't seem to do anything except sit there in the dark, bleeding and broken, reading advice on how to beg for love that should have been freely given.

The phone slipped from my fingers onto the bed.

I needed to get out of this room. Out of this suffocating space that smelled like failure and resignation.

My feet carried me down the hallway before I'd consciously decided to move. Past the grand staircase. Past the portraits of previous Alphas and their Lunas, all looking regal and united. Past the life I'd thought I was building.

I stopped outside the master bedroom. Our bedroom. His bedroom now.

The door was unlocked. Of course it was. Bruno had nothing to hide anymore. His infidelity was pack knowledge, sanctioned by his silence and my acceptance.

I pushed it open.

The room looked exactly as I'd left it this morning. The bed we'd once shared, now made with military precision by staff who pitied me. The balcony where I'd stood and watched him arrive with her. The vanity where I'd applied scent blocker to make myself disappear.

I went to my jewelry box—the carved wooden one Bruno had given me after the mating ceremony. My fingers found the hidden compartment at the bottom.

The pressed flower lay inside, fragile and faded. A moonflower from the night he'd claimed me. The night he'd stood before the Lycan Council and declared that no trial, no law, no force in existence would keep him from making me his Luna.

I held it up to the light. It crumbled slightly at the edges, pieces of petal falling away like ash.

Just like us.

I looked at it for a long moment, remembering the man who had fought for me. The Alpha who had transformed himself from monster to mate, who had endured agony and humiliation, who had whispered promises against my skin in the dark.

That man was dead.

The wolf who had struck me tonight, who had cradled his mistress while I bled—that was who Bruno really was. Who he'd always been, perhaps, beneath the temporary madness of a fresh mate bond.

I walked to the trash can beside the vanity.

Dropped the flower inside.

Watched it settle among the discarded cotton pads and empty product bottles, just another piece of garbage.

Something inside my chest cracked. Not my heart—that had broken months ago. Something deeper. The foundation of hope I'd been clinging to, the belief that love could be enough, that devotion could bridge any gap, that sacrifice would eventually be rewarded.

All of it, dust.

I turned and walked out of the master bedroom for the last time.

Behind me, in the trash, a pressed moonflower slowly turned to dust.