My Mate Gave My Paintings to His Mistress

I don't bake the tiramisu.

Instead, I sit in the dark kitchen, water pooling beneath my chair, staring at the ruined ingredients scattered across the floor where I dropped them. My wolf is still snarling, a low vibration in my chest that feels foreign after years of silence.

When the SUV pulls into the driveway hours later, I don't move. Don't rush to clean up. Don't paste on the smile that usually greets them home.

Henry walks in first, Caleb trailing behind, both of them dry and laughing about something. They stop when they see me.

"Stella." Henry's voice carries that edge of irritation he gets when I'm not performing correctly. "Why are you sitting in the dark? And what's all over the floor?"

"The ingredients," I say quietly. "For the tiramisu you demanded I make while you took our only vehicle to the Moon Festival."

The temperature in the room drops. Caleb shifts uncomfortably, but Henry's expression hardens.

"I told you we were doing border patrol."

"You lied." The words taste like freedom. "I saw you. At the festival. With Everly."

Henry's Alpha aura slams into me like a physical blow, crushing down on my shoulders until my bones creak. My wolf snarls louder, pushing back against the pressure, but she's weak from years of suppression.

"You're being paranoid," Henry says, his Alpha tone weaving through the words, trying to rewrite reality inside my head. "We stopped by the festival after patrol to check on pack morale. Everly was helping entertain Caleb. I was doing what's best for our son."

"In your coat," I whisper. "She was wearing your coat."

"It was cold." His aura intensifies, and I feel my wolf whimper despite her earlier fury. "You're imagining things, Stella. This jealousy is beneath you. Beneath a Luna."

Caleb won't meet my eyes. He just stands there, silent, letting his father gaslight me into questioning my own reality.

I want to scream. Want to show them what I saw, make them admit the truth. But Henry's aura is crushing the air from my lungs, and I'm so tired of fighting battles I can never win.

"Go to bed," Henry commands, his Alpha voice making it impossible to disobey. "We'll discuss your behavior in the morning."

My body moves before I can stop it, the Alpha command overriding my will. I climb the stairs like a puppet on strings, my wolf howling in rage at our helplessness.

I don't sleep. I lie in our bed—the one Henry hasn't shared with me in months—and stare at the ceiling until dawn breaks gray and cold through the windows.

When I finally rise, I need to see them. My paintings. The only pieces of myself I've managed to keep safe from this place, hidden away in the storage closet at the end of the hall where I've been secretly working for years. Every emotion I couldn't speak, every dream I'd sacrificed, every moment of beauty I'd managed to capture despite everything—it's all there, waiting.

My hands shake as I unlock the closet door.

Empty.

Completely, devastatingly empty.

The easel I'd hidden behind old boxes—gone. The canvases I'd stacked carefully against the wall—gone. My sketchbooks, my brushes, my paints, the portfolio I'd been building in secret—all of it, vanished.

I stand in the doorway of the empty closet, my wolf's snarl dying into something worse than silence. This is violation. This is theft. This is the final erasure of everything I am.

Footsteps on the stairs pull me from my shock. I stumble toward the sound, desperate for answers, and freeze when I hear Former Luna Murphy's voice drifting from the sitting room.

"Oh, the exhibition is tomorrow night," she's saying, her tone warm with approval I've never heard directed at me. "At the Silverfang Pack gallery, no less. Marcus Reed himself is curating. Can you imagine? Our Everly, recognized by such a prestigious critic."

Our Everly.

My stomach turns to ice.

"The paintings are extraordinary," Former Luna Murphy continues. "Such profound emotional depth. Such technical mastery. Henry was right to encourage her talent all these years."

I grip the doorframe, my knees threatening to buckle.

"She'll be the toast of the art world," Former Luna Murphy says. "Finally, a Luna this pack can be proud of."

The pieces fall into place with devastating clarity. Henry didn't just take my paintings. He gave them to Everly. My stepsister is hosting a solo exhibition of my work, claiming my art, my voice, my soul as her own.

And Henry—my fated mate, the man who was supposed to cherish and protect me—orchestrated the entire theft.

My wolf doesn't snarl this time.

She roars.