After My Alpha Declared His Mistress Luna

"The Moon Goddess has finally blessed me," Colt’s voice echoed through the speakers, filling the grand hall.

His voice sounded different now. The Alpha tone that usually made my chest warm with pride and submission now felt like a physical blow to my ribs.

He pulled Camille flush against his side. She looked up at him through thick, dark lashes, a picture of perfect devotion.

"She revealed my true fated mate to me," Colt declared, his eyes scanning the cheering crowd before settling back on Camille. "My future Luna."

He leaned down and pressed a lingering kiss to her temple.

As he did, a wave of scent rolled off the stage and hit the front rows. It traveled fast, suffocating the delicate, natural smell of the white peonies I had arranged just hours ago. It was floral. Overwhelmingly, aggressively floral. It smelled like jasmine and crushed roses, but there was a sharp, chemical edge to it. It didn't smell like a wolf's natural aura. It smelled like a department store perfume counter.

It smelled exactly like the natural scent Colt had ordered me to suppress.

*Tone it down, Nyomi. It's distracting.*

My stomach violently twisted. He hadn't hated my scent. He just hadn't wanted it from me. Now he was breathing in Camille’s cheap, synthetic imitation like a starving man, burying his nose deeply into her dark hair.

The hall erupted. Men howled. Women cheered and clapped, stomping their feet against the wooden floorboards. The noise was a physical weight pressing down on my shoulders, pinning my feet to the ground.

I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. Three years. Three years of waking up at dawn to manage his house. Three years of swallowing my pride, taking unscented showers, and silencing my inner wolf so I wouldn't be a nuisance to his Alpha sensibilities. All of it collapsed in the space of a single heartbeat.

I was a placeholder. I had always been a placeholder.

"Move out of the way, Omega."

The sharp whisper cut through the ringing in my ears. I blinked, my vision slowly coming back into focus.

Sasha Vance, Camille’s right-hand Delta, was walking straight toward me. She was flanked by three other elite females from their clique. They didn't alter their path to go around me. They marched forward like I was nothing but a minor obstacle in their way.

Sasha held a crystal goblet filled to the brim with dark red wine. As she brushed past my shoulder, she didn't even pretend to stumble. She simply tilted her wrist.

The cold liquid splashed directly onto the bodice of my deep green dress. It soaked through the fabric instantly, a freezing, sticky shock against my skin. It dripped down my stomach and pooled at the hem.

I gasped, taking a clumsy step back.

Sasha stopped and looked at me. Her lips curved into a cruel, jagged smile. "Oops," she said, her voice dripping with fake sympathy. "So sorry, Nyomi. But really, you should know better than to stand so close to the spotlight. It makes you look desperate."

One of the girls behind her snickered. "Omegas really need to learn their place. Did she actually think she was getting the Luna title tonight?"

"With that cheap metal on her finger?" Sasha scoffed, eyeing my left hand. "Please. He practically bought that out of a vending machine."

They laughed, the sound sharp and ugly, before shoving past me to get closer to the stage. One of them bumped my shoulder hard enough that my heel caught on the floorboards. I barely caught my balance.

Nobody helped me. Nobody even looked at me. Three hundred wolves in this room, and I was entirely, utterly alone.

I looked down at the dark, spreading stain on my dress. It looked like a bleeding wound.

I didn't cry. My eyes were dry, burning with a strange, hollow heat. The shock had burned away the tears before they could even form.

I turned my back on the stage. I didn't look at Colt. I didn't look at Camille. I just put one foot in front of the other, slipping through the heavy side doors and out into the dimly lit corridor.

The heavy oak doors clicked shut behind me, muting the wild cheers of the pack. The sudden quiet of the hallway was almost deafening. The air out here was cool, smelling of floor wax and old wood, totally free of Camille's suffocating perfume.

I stopped walking and leaned against the wall, sliding down until I hit the floor.

My hands were shaking. I lifted my left hand and stared at it.

The titanium ring caught the flickering light of a nearby wall sconce. It was thick, dull, and heavy. It didn't sparkle. It didn't catch the light the way a diamond would. It was just a solid, unbreakable band of industrial metal.

*It doesn't come off,* Colt had said, laughing when the jeweler couldn't scratch it.

I pressed my thumb against the cold metal, twisting it. It was tight. It had always been a little too tight, restricting the blood flow just enough to remind me it was there.

It wasn't a promise. A promise was given freely. A promise was meant to be beautiful.

This was a collar. It was a tag on a stray dog. He had chained me down with a piece of unbreakable metal so I would sit quietly in the corner and wait, keeping his bed warm and his house clean until his real prize came along.

I closed my eyes and reached inward, searching the deep, dark spaces of my mind for my inner wolf. I needed her. I needed her anger, her strength, her fangs. I needed her to howl and tear down the walls of this pack house.

*Please,* I whispered to her in my mind. *Please wake up.*

Nothing.

There was no answering growl. No comforting warmth. Just a vast, dead silence. I had shoved her down into the dark for so long, starving her of our natural scent, silencing her instincts to make Colt comfortable. Now, when I needed her most, she was gone. She was either too deeply buried to hear me, or she was simply dead from a broken heart.

I opened my eyes. A single drop of red wine fell from the hem of my ruined dress and hit the polished floorboards.

*Plop.*

It looked exactly like a drop of blood.

I stared at it for a long time. The cheers from the banquet hall rumbled through the walls, vibrating against my spine. They were celebrating their new Luna. They were celebrating the Alpha who had just shattered me into a thousand pieces.

I gripped the titanium ring, pulling at it with my right hand. It didn't budge. It dug painfully into my skin, scraping over my knuckle, refusing to let go.

I let my hand drop to my lap. The coldness of the wine was seeping into my bones, but beneath it, a tiny, unfamiliar spark of absolute clarity began to take root.