After My Alpha Declared His Mistress Luna

I spent six hours on my feet getting the grand hall ready.

The long tables needed fresh linens — ivory, not white, because Colt hated white. The centerpieces had to be low enough that the Alpha table had a clear sightline across the room. The caterers needed someone to walk them through the seating chart twice because the third time I'd handed it to them, one of the Delta females had 'accidentally' spilled coffee on it. I reprinted it without a word and handed it over again with a smile.

That was my life in the Silverfang Pack. Smiling. Reprinting. Starting over.

My name is Nyomi Ryan. I'm twenty-two years old, and for the past three years I have been Alpha Colt's partner — his companion, his hostess, his placeholder. I run his household. I organize his events. I wear the titanium ring he slid onto my finger on the night he told me, 'You're mine, Nyomi. That's enough for now.'

I believed him. God help me, I believed him.

The ring sat heavy on my left hand as I adjusted the last floral arrangement on the head table. White peonies and eucalyptus — Colt's preference, not mine. My natural scent is floral, something sweet and warm that rises off my skin when I'm relaxed. Colt had asked me early on to cover it with a neutral spray. 'It's distracting,' he'd said, not unkindly. 'Just tone it down.'

So I did. I bought unscented everything. I stopped letting myself get too warm, too comfortable, too much. I toned myself down in every way I could think of.

Tonight was supposed to be different.

The Pack Banquet happened every year at the autumn equinox. It was the biggest event in the Silverfang calendar — every ranked member in attendance, the hall lit with hundreds of candles, the Alpha making formal announcements about the pack's future. Last year, Colt had squeezed my hand under the table and said, 'Next year, Nyomi. I'll make it official next year.'

Next year was tonight.

I smoothed the front of my dress — deep green, fitted, the nicest thing I owned — and looked around the hall. It was beautiful. I had made it beautiful. The candlelight turned everything gold, and the long tables gleamed, and for one moment I let myself imagine standing beside Colt when he took the stage. Imagine him reaching for my hand in front of the whole pack. Imagine finally, finally being seen as something more than the quiet girl who refilled his coffee and pretended not to hear the whispers.

'Placeholder.'

'Omega-level nobody.'

'Does she actually think he's going to mark her?'

I'd heard every version of it. In the kitchen, in the corridors, at the edge of pack runs when they thought I was out of earshot. The Beta and Delta females had a whole vocabulary for what I was, and none of the words were kind.

I touched the titanium ring with my thumb. It was plain and thick and completely indestructible — I'd learned that the hard way when I'd once tried to resize it and the jeweler's tools had barely scratched the surface. Colt had laughed when I told him. 'That's the point,' he'd said. 'It doesn't come off.'

At the time, I thought that was romantic.

The hall filled up fast. Pack members streamed in dressed in their best, the ranked wolves taking their seats at the long tables while the Omegas moved quietly along the walls. I knew where I stood — not quite Omega, not quite Luna, hovering in the uncomfortable space between. I took my usual spot near the side of the room, close enough to the head table to be useful, far enough away to be invisible.

Colt arrived at eight sharp.

He walked in the way he always did — like the room had been waiting for him, like the air itself rearranged to accommodate his presence. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair and the kind of jaw that made the unmated females straighten up when he passed. His Alpha aura rolled off him in slow, deliberate waves, and I felt it the way I always did — a pressure at the base of my skull, a reflex to lower my eyes.

I didn't lower them tonight. Tonight I watched him.

He scanned the room as he moved toward the stage. His gaze swept past me without stopping.

I told myself that was normal. He was focused. He had a speech to give.

The hall quieted the moment he stepped up to the microphone. That was the thing about Colt's aura — it didn't ask for silence. It just took it. Every conversation died, every glass was set down, and three hundred wolves turned their faces toward their Alpha like sunflowers toward a very cold sun.

'Three years ago,' Colt began, his voice filling every corner of the room, 'I told this pack that I was still searching for my path forward.'

My heart started to beat faster. I pressed my thumb against the ring.

'Tonight, I'm done searching.'

Someone near the front began to clap, and it spread quickly, a wave of anticipation moving through the crowd. I felt my lips part. My chest was so tight I could barely breathe.

This was it. Three years. Everything I had given, everything I had swallowed, every morning I had woken up and chosen to stay — it was all about to mean something.

Colt smiled. It was the slow, satisfied smile of a man who already knew how this story ended.

'I've found my true mate,' he said. 'And I intend to make her my Luna.'

The applause exploded.

I was already smiling when he extended his hand toward the side of the stage — toward the figure I hadn't noticed standing in the shadows.

She stepped into the candlelight in a red dress, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, her smile wide and practiced and aimed directly at me.

Camille.

The applause kept going. It was very loud. I stood there with my smile still on my face because my face hadn't gotten the message yet, hadn't caught up to what my eyes were seeing and what my stomach already knew.

Colt took Camille's hand. He raised it. He looked out at his pack with the expression of a man who had never once considered that someone in this room might be breaking apart.

The ring on my finger had never felt heavier.