While Our Daughter Died, My Alpha Kissed His Mistress

Three days after the rogue attack, I was sitting beside Lily's bed when the fire alarm went off.

The sound was distant at first—a low wail from somewhere deep in the pack house—and then it got louder, closer, until the recovery wing lights flickered and the healer on duty grabbed the emergency kit and started wheeling patients toward the exit corridor.

I didn't move. Lily was still asleep, her breathing shallow but steady. The bandages on her ribs were fresh. The IV line in her arm was clear.

"Luna." The healer's voice was sharp. "We need to go."

I looked up. Smoke was curling under the door.

"Where's the fire?"

"Family wing. The whole corridor's going up."

I stood. My hands found Lily's shoulders, and I was lifting her—careful of the IV, careful of the stitches—when the healer said, "Alpha Silas is out. He's safe."

I stopped.

"What?"

"He got out through the east stairwell. Border patrol saw him on the grounds ten minutes ago."

I looked down at Lily. Her bedroom was in the family wing. Third door on the left, windows facing the forest, walls painted yellow because she liked the sun.

"Did he—" My voice cracked. "Did he get her out?"

The healer didn't answer right away. That was answer enough.

I carried Lily to the exit myself. She was small, but my arms were shaking by the time we reached the outside air. I laid her on the grass near the medical transport van and turned back toward the building.

Smoke was pouring from the third-floor windows. The family wing. I could see flames through the glass.

Silas was standing near the tree line, talking to his Beta. His clothes were clean. No soot. No burns. He looked like a man who'd walked out of a building before the fire started.

I started toward him, but a Delta warrior—Daniel, I think his name was—grabbed my arm.

"Luna, wait—"

"Let go."

"Someone's still inside."

I turned. Daniel's face was pale. He was looking at the third floor.

"Who?"

"Your daughter. She was in her room when the alarm went off. I saw her through the window."

The world tilted.

"What?"

"I pulled her out. Just now. She's—" He gestured toward the grass where I'd laid her. "She's safe. But the corridor collapsed right after. If I'd been thirty seconds slower—"

I didn't hear the rest. I was already walking toward Silas.

He saw me coming. His expression didn't change. He said something to the Beta, and the Beta stepped aside.

I stopped three feet away from him.

"You left her."

Silas looked at me. "The fire spread too fast. I couldn't reach her room."

"Daniel reached it."

"Daniel's a Delta. He doesn't have the same risk."

I stared at him. "Risk?"

"The silver-taint, Emmeline." His voice was patient, like he was explaining something simple to someone slow. "Contact with her in a high-stress situation could trigger a reaction. I couldn't risk it."

My hands were shaking. "She was in a burning building."

"And she's out now. Because Daniel got to her." He glanced past me toward the medical transport. "She's fine."

She wasn't fine. She had second-degree burns on her left arm and smoke damage in her lungs and she'd been alone in a room filling with fire while her father stood outside and did nothing.

I opened my mouth. The words were right there—*You're lying. You're a coward. You let her burn.*

Silas's eyes went cold. The Alpha tone dropped into the space between us, threading down the bond and locking around my throat like a hand.

"Go back to the medical wing, Emmeline. Stay with Lily. Do not make a scene."

The compulsion hit. My mouth closed. My wolf whimpered and curled in on herself and I couldn't—I couldn't—

Silas turned and walked away.

I stood there, hands clenched, throat locked, watching him disappear into the crowd of pack members gathering near the tree line.

Then I walked back to Lily.

She woke up an hour later in the recovery wing. Her voice was hoarse from the smoke. She looked at me and whispered, "Where's Daddy?"

I smoothed her hair back from her forehead. "He's busy, sweetheart. He'll come see you soon."

She nodded and closed her eyes.

He didn't come.

---

A week later, I was sitting in the pack archive again.

Lily was stable. The burns were healing slowly. The healer had started her on a wolfsbane-extract treatment course—expensive, but necessary to prevent infection in wounds that weren't closing fast enough on their own.

I'd asked about the cost. The healer had looked uncomfortable.

"It's covered by the emergency healing fund," she'd said. "Don't worry about it."

But I did worry about it. Because I'd been Luna of this pack for seven years, and I knew exactly how much was in that fund. Forty thousand dollars. Allocated specifically for situations like this.

I pulled the ledger.

Carla, the archive attendant, handed it over without comment. She didn't ask why I wanted it. Maybe she already knew.

I opened the ledger on the records-room table and started reading.

The fund had been emptied six weeks ago.

Not all at once. In pieces. Furniture orders. Textile deliveries. A rebuilt bathing chamber. All charged to the Luna suite.

The Luna suite that Silas had been renovating for the past two months.

The Luna suite that I had never asked for and had never seen.

I turned the pages slowly. Every entry was documented. Every redirect was clear. There was no attempt to hide it.

He'd never imagined I would look.

I sat there for a long time, staring at the numbers.

Then I pulled out my phone and photographed every page. I added the files to the folder I'd started after the rogue attack—the bloodwork panels, the silver-taint documentation, and now this.

I didn't know what I was building yet.

But I knew I wasn't stopping.

I closed the ledger, filed it back where it belonged, and stood up.

My hands were steady.

My wolf was still pressed against the inside of my skull, trapped under the weight of the Alpha-tone command, but she wasn't whimpering anymore.

She was waiting.

I walked back to the recovery wing. Lily was asleep, her small hand curled around the edge of the blanket. I sat beside her bed and opened the folder on my phone.

Two bloodwork panels. One ledger. Forty thousand dollars spent on furniture.

I looked at my daughter's face—pale, bruised, bandaged—and something behind my ribs went colder.

Silas's scent was still nowhere in the room.

I didn't pull at the bond. I didn't call his name.

I just sat there, phone in hand, and started making a list.