My Mate Tried to Bury Me Alive After Rejecting Me

At 8:14 on a Friday night, the silver around Cannon Adams’s throat burned my eyes before the heat of the bonfire even touched my skin.

I stopped dead at the edge of the clearing.

The moonstone-inlaid relics my mother left me—the only pieces of my bloodline I had kept locked in our personal vault for ten years—were gone. In their place, melted down and beaten into a thick, crude collar, the sacred silver gleamed against the throat of a rogue drifter.

Beside him stood Faith Weaver. My mother-in-law rested one manicured hand on Cannon’s leather jacket, her face flushed with excitement.

I crossed the circle of grass in six strides. The chatter around the bonfire died.

"Faith," I said, my voice cutting through the pop of pine wood. "Where did you get that silver?"

Faith turned slowly. She fingered her heavy gold necklace, smiling with sweet, practiced pity. "Naomi, dear. Don't start your hysterics in front of the pack. Cannon is our guest. He needed a token of Ironveil hospitality, and that junk had been sitting in the basement collecting dust."

"That was my mother’s," I said, stepping closer. "Take it off him. Now."

"Enough, Naomi."

Gage Alvarez stepped out from the shadow of the pavilion. My husband. The Alpha of the Ironveil Pack. He didn't look at the collar. He didn't look at Cannon. His dark eyes locked onto mine, completely devoid of warmth. He adjusted the cuff of his jacket—a tell I had memorized eight years ago. He was about to lie, or he was about to strike.

"You don't issue orders here," Gage said. His voice was steady, pitched so every warrior and elder around the flames could hear. "You never have."

"Gage, she stole from our vault—"

"I, Gage, Alpha of the Ironveil Pack," he cut in, projecting each word into the night, "reject you, Naomi, as my mate and Luna."

The world shrank to a pinpoint.

The mate mark on the right side of my neck went instantly numb. The heat drained away, replaced by a hollow, sickening frost, like an iron gate slamming shut on an empty room. A jagged bolt of pain tore through my collarbone. My breath hitched. My knees struck the frozen turf.

Inside my chest, something that had slept through ten years of silence suddenly tore awake.

My inner wolf didn't whimper. She screamed—a raw, furious shriek of pure rage that rattled my teeth and shook my ribs from the inside out.

I clamped my jaws shut. I refused to cry. I dug my fingers into the cold dirt, pushed against the ground, and forced myself back onto my feet.

"Dad!"

A small, firm voice broke the silence.

Twelve-year-old Kaiden stepped out from the front row of the crowd. My son. The boy I had nursed through fevers, whose clothes I had washed by hand, whose lessons I had supervised every single night.

He didn't run to me. He walked straight past me, his shoulders back and his chin high, and took his place at Gage's right side.

"I choose my father," Kaiden said.

He threw his chin up and pushed out his chest, using an Alpha tone. It was a juvenile, cracked imitation of Gage's voice, but the intent was razor-sharp. "The pack needs a real Luna. Not an unawakened Omega who hoards scrap metal."

The words landed like lead weights. I looked into his eyes, searching for fear, confusion, anything human. There was nothing. Just the cold, shallow arrogance his father had spent years feeding him.

My wolf snarled in my head, pacing behind my ribs.

"Tribunal," Faith called out instantly, stepping toward the elders. "Now. We have matters of pack treason to settle."

They didn't wait until morning. Within forty minutes, the council hall was packed.

Faith laid out a stack of forged ledgers on the oak table. She claimed I had siphoned emergency grain supplies and sold border patrol schedules to rogue networks. Three Delta warriors who owed Gage money swore they saw me at the eastern perimeter fence with an unauthorized radio.

It was a show trial. Every vote had been counted days ago.

I didn't waste my breath pleading with men who wouldn't meet my eyes. Instead, while Gage stood over the table signing the declaration that stripped my title, I slipped my hands into my jacket pockets. Under the fabric, I found the ceramic master security fob for Ironveil’s external supply accounts—the private purchasing network only my thumbprint could clear.

I wedged it between two heavy silver dollars and snapped the circuit board in half.

The light died in my pocket. Ironveil’s automated supply lines from the human cities were cut.

"Strip her," Gage commanded, not looking up from the parchment. "Confine her to the sub-cellar until she signs the Luna Accord waiver."

Two Deltas grabbed my arms and hauled me backward out of the hall.

They dragged me down the stone stairs beneath the pack house. The air grew damp, thick with the sour, chemical reek of crushed wolfsbane. They had painted the yellow stalks along the baseboards; the fumes hit my throat like acid, burning my windpipe.

They threw me onto the cold concrete floor.

"Sleep it off, traitor," one guard spat, and slammed the heavy iron door. The deadbolt slid home with a heavy clank.

Above me, the floorboards vibrated with the muffled thud of the celebration bonfire.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows, coughing as the wolfsbane scorched my lungs. My wolf clawed at my chest, frantic and alive, refusing to let me go under.

I dragged my body across the grit toward the iron water pipe in the far corner. Behind the pipe was a loose foundation stone I had found five years ago while checking the pack house foundation.

I wedged my fingers into the seam, scraped my skin bloody, and yanked the brick free.

Tucked inside was Gage’s black emergency burner phone.

I tapped the screen. The display lit up in the dark. A message preview sat unread on the glass, sent three minutes ago from Saige Hughes:

*Did you lock her down? The trucks are already crossing the southern border.*

Above my head, heavy footsteps suddenly stopped right outside the iron cellar hatch.