My Alpha’s Scent Was My Dead Mate’s

The healing herbs came in a velvet pouch the color of old blood.

Miles set it on the desk between us with the careful precision of someone handling a transaction. Not a gift. Not an apology. A payment.

"Moonpetal root," he said, his voice carrying that Alpha resonance that made my wolf want to bare her throat even though I didn't have a wolf to bare. "Silverleaf extract. Starwillow bark. All rare. All valuable." He pushed a second pouch across the desk—this one clinking with the unmistakable sound of pack currency. "This should more than cover any... inconvenience you experienced while harboring a rogue on pack lands."

I stared at the pouches. At his hands—hands I'd bandaged, hands that had touched my face with a gentleness that made me believe in second chances. They looked the same. Everything about him looked the same except for the eyes, and the eyes were everything.

"Inconvenience," I repeated softly.

Celeste's perfectly manicured fingers tightened on the back of his chair. She was watching me the way you'd watch a stray dog that had wandered too close to the dinner table—wary, faintly disgusted, waiting to see if it would need to be kicked.

Miles's expression didn't change. "You provided shelter and basic medical care to an injured wolf. The pack appreciates your... discretion in this matter." He leaned back slightly, and the Alpha aura rolling off him intensified just enough to make my lungs constrict. "However, I trust you understand that this incident is not to be discussed. With anyone. My momentary lapse in judgment—" He said it like the words tasted bad. "—is pack business. Not Omega gossip."

I pressed my fingers to the inside of my wrist. Hard. The pain helped.

"Of course, Alpha," I said. My voice came out steady. I was proud of that. "Will that be all?"

Celeste smiled. "Actually, there is one more thing." She moved around the desk with the fluid grace of someone who'd never had to make herself small, never had to calculate how much space she was allowed to take up. "The formal pack dinner is tomorrow night. I'll need the grand hall prepared to proper standards." Her eyes met mine, and there was nothing honey-sweet about them now. "I trust an Omega understands what proper standards mean?"

I looked at Miles. Waited for him to say something, anything. To remember that three days ago he'd smiled at me in the pre-dawn light and asked for five more minutes like it was a gift he was offering.

He said nothing at all.

"I understand, Luna candidate," I said, and took the pouches because refusing them would have required an explanation I didn't have the strength to give. The velvet was soft against my palm. Expensive. Wrong.

I left before either of them could dismiss me.

The pack kitchens were empty at midday, everyone either on patrol or handling their assigned duties. I stood at the long wooden counter, staring at the pouches I'd dropped there like they were evidence of a crime I couldn't name. The Moonpetal root alone was worth more than I made in six months. Silverleaf extract was the kind of thing Alphas gave to their Lunas as mate gifts.

Compensation.

"Kylee."

I didn't jump. Jack Murphy moved too quietly for jumping—you either heard him coming or you didn't, and I never did.

He stood in the doorway, still in his training gear, face carefully neutral in that way that meant he'd already assessed the situation and made seventeen calculations I'd never see. Retired Gamma. Elite warrior. The only wolf in this pack who'd ever looked at me like I was something other than my rank.

"Rough morning?" he asked quietly.

I laughed. It came out wrong, sharp and brittle. "The Alpha heir has returned to his proper place in the hierarchy. I should be celebrating."

Jack moved into the kitchen, closing the door behind him with a soft click. "Alphas," he said, and something in his tone made me look up. "They're all the same, in the end. Arrogant. Entitled. They take what they want and call it their right." He picked up the velvet pouch, weighed it in his palm. "And when they're done, they pay you off like you were a service they purchased."

My throat closed. I pressed my fingers harder against my wrist.

"You're better off without him," Jack continued, setting the pouch down with a gentleness that felt like understanding. "Without any of them. The hierarchy is just cruelty dressed up in ceremony."

I wanted to argue. Wanted to defend Miles, the Miles I'd known, the one who'd asked instead of demanded. But that Miles was gone. Maybe he'd never existed. Maybe I'd just projected Francis's ghost onto a blank slate and called it healing.

"I need to make tea," I said, because I needed something to do with my hands that wasn't pressing bruises into my wrist. "The calming blend. The one I forage from the north border."

"I'll keep you company," Jack offered.

So I brewed the tea—crushing the dried leaves between my palms, measuring the proportions I'd memorized years ago, letting the familiar ritual smooth the jagged edges of the morning. Jack stood near the window, not crowding me, just present. Steady.

The tea steeped. Steam rose. I wrapped my hands around the cup and let the heat ground me.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

Jack turned from the window. "For what?"

"For not looking at me like I'm broken."

Something flickered across his face—too fast for me to read, gone before I could name it. "You're not broken, Kylee," he said. "You're just finally seeing clearly."

I drank my tea and tried to believe him.

The grand hall's floors were marble. Real marble, imported from somewhere expensive and far away, the kind of stone that showed every scuff mark and grain of dirt. I'd been scrubbing them for two hours, on my hands and knees with a brush and bucket, while the ranked wolves gathered for the formal pack dinner.

Celeste had given the order personally. In front of Miles. In front of the Beta and Gamma and every Delta warrior who'd bothered to show up early.

"I want it spotless," she'd said, smiling that smile that didn't reach her eyes. "An Omega should take pride in her work, don't you think?"

Nobody had argued. Nobody had even looked uncomfortable.

So here I was, scrubbing marble while the pack filed in above me, their shoes tracking in dirt I'd just cleaned, their conversations washing over me like I was furniture. My shoulder ached from the fall three days ago. My knees were raw. My hands were starting to crack from the cleaning solution.

I kept scrubbing.

Someone's shoe stopped inches from my brush. Expensive leather. Custom-made. I didn't need to look up to know whose.

"Kylee."

Miles's voice. Alpha tone stripped away, just my name, quiet and strained.

I kept scrubbing.

"Kylee, you don't have to—"

"The Luna candidate wants the floors spotless," I said, not looking up. "I'm just following orders. Isn't that what Omegas do?"

Silence. Heavy and wrong.

Then Celeste's voice, bright and carrying: "Miles, darling, leave her to her work. We have guests to greet."

The expensive shoes moved away.

I scrubbed until the marble gleamed, until my reflection stared back at me from the stone—pale and hollow and exactly as invisible as I was supposed to be. Around me, the pack dinner began. Laughter. Conversation. The clink of crystal and silver.

Nobody looked down.

Nobody saw me at all.