My Mate Chose His Mistress

I woke up at five-fourteen the next morning, which was exactly the time I always woke up, because heartbreak doesn't change your circadian rhythm. People think it does. It doesn't. You just lie there in the dark for a while before you get up and make coffee.

Barnaby was already awake, his chin resting on the edge of the bed, his tail doing that slow, hopeful sweep across the floor that meant he'd been waiting patiently for at least twenty minutes. I reached down and scratched behind his ears.

"Good boy," I said. "You're the only man in this house who's ever been on time for me."

He thumped his tail harder.

I pulled on a sweater and padded downstairs to the kitchen. The pack house was dead quiet — the kind of quiet that only happens after a catastrophe, when everyone is either sleeping off the shock or lying awake replaying it. Last night's dishes were still in the sink. Someone had left a half-empty bottle of bourbon on the counter. The venison platter sat untouched on the stove, covered in foil, exactly where I'd left it.

I didn't touch any of it. I made coffee, fed Barnaby his kibble, and sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop.

The file was called LARSON_ASSET_REVIEW_V9.xlsx.

Nine versions. Three years of quiet, meticulous work. Every territorial holding Ironvale claimed. Every revenue stream. Every debt, every contract, every alliance agreement with a financial clause. I had copies of things Emmett didn't even know existed — land surveys from before his father's time, mineral rights on the northern ridge that the pack council had forgotten about, a dormant timber lease that was worth more than the pack house itself.

I opened the rejection demand draft beside it. Fourteen pages. Every clause anchored to pack law precedent. I'd studied the Lycan Court's rulings on wronged-mate asset division going back forty years. There was a provision — Section 12.4 of the Inter-Pack Mate Bond Statutes — that granted a rejected Luna up to fifty percent of shared territorial assets if the rejection was initiated by the Alpha under circumstances of documented infidelity or bond neglect.

Documented.

I had three years of documentation. Timestamped entries. Financial records showing Daisy's access to pack accounts. Screenshots from the encrypted phone. The betting pool ledger, which technically wasn't admissible, but painted a picture no elder could ignore: the entire pack had known. Everyone had known. And Emmett had done it anyway.

I scrolled through the asset column one more time. Cross-referenced the wronged-Luna provision against the territorial map. Checked the numbers. Checked them again.

Forty-seven percent of Ironvale's holdings. That was the conservative estimate. If I pushed — and I intended to push — I could get fifty-one. The timber lease alone would fund Nighthollow's eastern expansion for two years.

I saved the file. Closed the laptop. Drank my coffee.

Barnaby finished his kibble and came to sit at my feet, pressing his warm weight against my shins. I reached down and let my hand rest on his head. His fur was soft and slightly damp from where he'd stuck his nose in his water bowl.

"Forty-seven percent," I told him. "Minimum."

He looked up at me with those big amber eyes that held absolutely no judgment and infinite faith, and I felt something loosen in my chest. Not much. Just enough to breathe a little easier.

I pulled out the encrypted phone and checked the betting pool.

The overnight activity had been significant. The Thanksgiving scandal had moved the odds dramatically — the cluster around "before New Year's" had surged, and three pack members had placed new bets between midnight and two a.m. Total pool since midnight: eleven hundred and forty-two dollars. My cut, as the anonymous house, was fifteen percent.

One hundred seventy-one dollars and thirty cents. For doing nothing but being publicly humiliated in my own home on a national holiday.

I poured myself a second cup of coffee.

---

The summons came at noon.

Not a formal summons — Emmett didn't do formal when he could do blunt. A text from the Beta's line to all pack members: assembly in the great hall, one o'clock, mandatory attendance. No context. No explanation. Just the weight of an Alpha who expected obedience and had never been given a reason to expect anything else.

I showered. Put on a clean white blouse and dark jeans. Pulled my hair back. No jewelry, no effort, nothing that suggested I had spent even a moment thinking about how I looked. That was deliberate. Everything was deliberate.

Barnaby watched me from the bedroom doorway, his head tilted.

"Stay here," I said. "This won't take long."

The great hall was already full when I arrived. Pack members lined the walls and filled the rows of chairs that someone had set up overnight. The energy was wrong — tight and electric, the way a room feels when everyone knows something is about to happen and no one knows exactly what shape it will take. I could smell the anxiety. Sharp, metallic, layered under cologne and coffee.

I took a position near the back, by the door. Close enough to hear. Close enough to leave.

Emmett stood at the front of the hall. He looked like he hadn't slept. His jaw was set in that hard line he used when he was performing authority rather than feeling it. His eyes swept the room once, fast, and didn't land on me.

Daisy stood beside him.

She was wearing white. I almost laughed. White, like a bride. Like a Luna-in-waiting. Her hand rested on her stomach — low, deliberate, positioned exactly where a woman places her hand when she wants you to notice something.

Oh, I thought. Oh, you ambitious little fraud.

She stepped forward. Emmett didn't stop her.

"I know last night was confusing for a lot of you," Daisy began. Her voice was warm and slightly trembling — that practiced vulnerability she deployed like a weapon. "And I owe this pack the truth."

She paused. Let the silence build. She was good at this, I had to give her that.

"I'm carrying Alpha Emmett's pup."

The room didn't gasp. It was worse than a gasp. It was a collective intake of breath that never fully released — a hundred wolves holding air in their lungs, waiting.

Daisy's hand pressed tighter against her stomach. "My wolf recognized his scent before the mating ceremony three years ago. Before the bond with Avery was ever marked. I stayed silent because I respected the process. But I can't stay silent anymore." Her eyes glistened. Perfect timing. "Not when I'm carrying his child."

A Luna challenge. That's what this was. Under pack law, a she-wolf who could prove prior scent recognition and carried the Alpha's pup had grounds to challenge the sitting Luna for the title. It was ancient, rarely invoked, and almost impossible to fabricate convincingly.

Almost.

I looked at Emmett. He stood behind Daisy with his arms crossed and his chin lifted. He did not deny it. He did not look at me. He did not say a single word.

Three years. Three years of meals cooked and doors waited by and a bond left rotting on the vine, and he couldn't even look at me while his mistress claimed my title with a lie and a hand on her belly.

The hall was watching me. I could feel it — dozens of eyes sliding toward the back of the room, waiting for the Luna to crumble. Waiting for the tears, the challenge, the howl of a she-wolf whose bond had just been publicly gutted.

I took out my encrypted phone. Held it low, by my hip. Pressed record.

Daisy was still talking. Something about fate and the Moon Goddess's true design. Emmett was nodding.

I let the recording run for another thirty seconds. Then I slipped the phone back into my pocket, turned around, and walked out of the great hall.

Barnaby was waiting exactly where I'd left him, tail wagging, completely unaware that the woman kneeling to hug him had just watched her entire fraudulent marriage get detonated in public and felt nothing but the quiet click of another lock turning open.

"Good news," I whispered into his fur. "We're almost done here."