After My Alpha Declared His Mistress Luna

I didn't sleep that night.

I sat on the floor of the corridor until the banquet noise died down, until the last drunk Delta stumbled past me without a glance, until the pack house went dark and silent. Then I peeled myself off the floor, walked to the room I'd shared with Colt for three years, and sat on the edge of the bed.

I didn't pack. I didn't cry. I just sat there, staring at the wine stain on my dress, waiting for something that I couldn't name.

It came at seven in the morning.

A knock. Sharp, businesslike. I opened the door to find Marcus Webb, Colt's Beta, standing in the hallway with a cardboard box and an expression that was carefully, professionally blank.

"Nyomi." He didn't meet my eyes. "Alpha Colt has requested that you relocate to the Omega quarters by noon. Your personal belongings have been sorted. Anything that belongs to the Alpha suite stays."

I looked at the box in his hands. It was small. The kind you'd use for a pair of shoes.

"That's everything?" I asked.

Marcus shifted his weight. For a brief second, something flickered across his face — discomfort, maybe guilt — but it vanished before I could name it. "That's everything that's yours."

Three years. Three years of living in this room, sleeping in that bed, folding his shirts, arranging his books on the shelf by the window. And everything that was mine fit in a shoe box.

I took it from him. It was light. Painfully light.

"The ring stays on," Marcus added quietly, already turning to leave. "Alpha's orders."

I looked down at my left hand. The titanium band sat there, dull and immovable, like it had grown into my bone.

Of course. He didn't want me, but he wouldn't release me either. I was still his property. Still tagged.

The Omega quarters were in the basement of the pack house — a long, windowless hallway with six narrow rooms, each containing a single cot, a metal shelf, and a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The walls were unpainted cinder block. The air smelled like mildew and industrial cleaner.

I set my box on the cot. Inside: a hairbrush, a photo of my mother who died when I was four, a worn copy of a novel I'd read six times, and Barnaby's spare leash. That was it. That was my entire life, reduced to objects that could fit in my lap.

I sat down. The cot springs groaned.

Above me, through the thin ceiling, I could hear footsteps. Laughter. The sound of furniture being moved. Camille was settling into the Alpha suite. My suite. The sheets I had changed yesterday morning were probably already stripped and replaced with something red and silk.

I pressed my palms flat against my knees and breathed.

---

By two o'clock, Camille found her rhythm.

A young Omega girl appeared at my door, eyes wide and apologetic. "Miss Camille says you're to report to the training yard. There's mud from last night's rain. She wants it scrubbed before the evening session."

I stared at her. "Scrubbed."

"Yes, ma'am. On hands and knees. She said — she said to use the small brush."

The training yard was a massive, open-air rectangle behind the pack house, bordered by packed earth and lined with wooden sparring posts. Last night's storm had turned the ground into a churned mess of brown sludge. It would take hours. It was also completely pointless — the warriors would destroy it again within minutes of their next session.

That was the point.

I took the small brush. I walked outside.

The October air hit my face, cold and damp. The yard stretched out in front of me, a sea of thick, wet mud dotted with boot prints and claw marks. A bucket of soapy water sat at the edge, along with a scrub brush the size of my palm.

I got on my knees.

The mud soaked through my jeans immediately, cold and gritty against my skin. I dipped the brush and started scrubbing. The bristles barely made a difference. I was essentially pushing mud from one spot to another, leaving faint, clean streaks that filled back in within seconds.

It didn't matter. I kept going.

Within twenty minutes, the first audience arrived.

Three warriors — men I had once served dinner to, men who had nodded politely at me when I stood beside Colt — leaned against the fence posts with their arms crossed. They didn't say anything at first. They just watched. One of them smirked. Another elbowed his friend and tilted his chin toward me.

Then Sasha appeared.

She walked up to the fence with her phone already raised, the camera pointed directly at me. She didn't try to hide it. She held it up like a tourist filming a street performer.

"Smile, Nyomi," she called out. Her voice was bright, cheerful, dripping with amusement. "The pack network needs some entertainment today. Everyone's been asking what happened to the Alpha's little pet."

I didn't look up. I kept scrubbing.

"Oh come on," Sasha laughed. "At least give us a reaction. You're so boring when you're quiet." She turned to the warriors. "Isn't she boring?"

One of them chuckled. "Always was."

Sasha panned her phone slowly across the yard — my muddy knees, my raw hands, the pathetic little brush, the endless expanse of dirt. "Caption ideas?" she asked her phone. "'From Luna dreams to mud queen'? Or maybe 'Know your place'?"

She posted it. I heard the notification chime.

My hands kept moving. Scrub. Dip. Scrub. The repetition was the only thing keeping me from shattering. If I stopped, if I looked up, if I acknowledged any of it, I would break in a way that couldn't be fixed.

So I scrubbed.

The mud was endless. My back ached. My knees were raw. The sun moved across the sky and I didn't stop.

---

I was still covered in dried mud when the summons came for the pack run.

Mandatory. No exceptions. Every wolf in Silverfang, from Alpha to Omega, ran together under the full moon. It was tradition. It was law.

I stood at the tree line with the other Omegas, shivering in the evening chill. My body was exhausted — six hours on my knees in the yard, no food since yesterday's banquet, my muscles trembling with fatigue. Around me, wolves were already shifting. The air filled with the sound of cracking bones and rustling fur as bodies transformed, growing larger, more powerful.

Colt stood at the front of the pack in his human form, watching. Camille was beside him, already shifted into a sleek, dark-furred wolf that pressed against his leg. He ran his hand along her spine absently, like petting a prize show dog.

His eyes found me across the clearing. They were flat. Expectant.

"Everyone runs," he said. Not to me specifically. To the pack. But his gaze didn't move.

I closed my eyes and reached inward.

The shift was supposed to feel like falling into warm water. That's how the others described it — a rush, a release, a joyful surrender to the wolf within. For me, it felt like dragging something dead up from the bottom of a well.

I pulled. I begged. I clawed at the dark, silent place where my wolf lived.

And slowly, agonizingly, she came.

The transformation was wrong. I felt it immediately. My bones cracked too slowly, grinding rather than snapping clean. My skin rippled and tore rather than flowing smoothly into fur. When it was finally over, I stood on four trembling legs and knew — without seeing myself — that something was deeply, visibly wrong.

I was small. Half the size of the other females. My fur was thin and patchy, a dull, grayish color that looked like dirty dishwater. My ribs were visible beneath the sparse coat. I looked like a sick dog, not a wolf.

The clearing went quiet.

Then someone laughed. A single, sharp bark of disbelief. It spread quickly — snickers, whispers, open stares. Even the other Omegas edged away from me, as if whatever I had was contagious.

Sasha's wolf — glossy, well-fed, a rich chestnut brown — trotted past me and deliberately bumped my shoulder. I stumbled sideways, my weak legs barely catching me.

Colt watched from the front. His expression didn't change. He simply turned away, shifted into his massive black wolf form, and launched into the forest.

The pack followed. Three hundred wolves surging forward in a thunder of paws and muscle.

I ran. Or tried to. My legs shook with every stride. The pack pulled ahead of me within seconds, their powerful forms disappearing into the dark trees while I limped behind, gasping, my small body struggling over roots and rocks that the others cleared effortlessly.

The distance between us grew. The sound of the pack faded. The forest closed in around me — dark, cold, indifferent.

I ran alone.