After My Mate Betrayed Me, I Took His Pack

The folder sat in my lap the whole drive home. Nia drove. She didn't speak. The pup shifted once, low and slow, and I pressed my hand to my side until she settled.

The pack house lights were on when we pulled up. Liam wasn't home—I could feel that through what was left of the bond, a thin static where his presence should have been. Good. I needed the house empty.

Barnaby met me at the side door. He pressed his head against my thigh for one second, then turned and trotted ahead of me down the hall.

He stopped at Liam's study.

A low growl started in his chest. Not loud. Steady. The kind of sound a wolf makes when it has been waiting for someone to finally listen.

I stopped behind him.

The study door was closed, but the scent under it was wrong. Pine and leather, yes—Liam's. But threaded through it, something sweeter. Vanilla and citrus. Sloan's perfume, the one she always wore when she came over with gifts.

She had been in there. Today. While I was at the roadhouse.

I crouched slowly beside Barnaby, one hand on the small of my back, the other sinking into his fur. His growl didn't stop. He kept his eyes on the door.

"You knew," I whispered. "You knew before I did."

His ear flicked toward me.

I scratched behind it, the way he liked. "Thank you."

I said it the same way I said things to the pup in the dark—quiet, certain, the kind of words you only spoke to creatures who couldn't answer with anything but trust.

Barnaby leaned his weight against my leg. The growl finally stopped.

I didn't open the door. I didn't need to. The house had been telling me things for weeks. I just hadn't been listening the way he had.

---

Liam announced the birthday run two days later, at a pack gathering on the back lawn.

He stood with a glass in his hand and the warm half-smile he wore for crowds. The Deltas formed a loose half-circle around him. The Omegas refilled trays. Sloan was there, of course—near the back, not too close, performing distance.

"You all know I run the Cascade Border every year on my birthday," Liam said. He let his voice drop into that easy Alpha cadence. "It's tradition. But this year I want to do something different."

His eyes found me across the lawn.

"This year," he said, "I want my Luna to run it with me."

A murmur went through the pack. A few warriors clapped. One of the older she-wolves put her hand to her chest and smiled the way she-wolves smile at performances of devotion.

Liam crossed the grass. He held out his hand. I took it.

"Just the two of us," he said, loud enough for the front row to hear. "Midnight, the overlook. Before the pup comes. One last run as just us."

I tilted my face up at him. I let my hand rest on his arm, light, the way a Luna's hand was supposed to.

"I'd love that," I said.

He kissed my forehead. The pack made a small, pleased sound.

Kaia did not move inside me. She didn't growl. She didn't surge. She just watched him through my eyes, calm as still water, while my mind walked the Cascade Border map behind them.

The ridge point. The dead zone. The exact step where the mind-link cut out and the territory bond went dark. I had walked that trail twice in the last week. I knew which boulder marked the edge of the silence.

I smiled at my mate.

He smiled back.

Sloan, behind him, lifted her glass and smiled too.

---

The nursery was the quietest room in the house at night.

I sat in the rocking chair by the window with one hand on my belly and Barnaby curled at my feet. The lamp threw soft yellow across the half-finished walls. The crib was already assembled. The fabric Sloan had brought for the curtains was still folded in its bag in the corner. I hadn't touched it.

I spoke to the pup the way I had been speaking to her for weeks now. Not in baby words. Not in lullabies.

In plans.

"On Saturday night," I said quietly, "we're going to the Cascade Border with your father. We'll walk to the overlook. There's a place at the top where the bond goes silent. He doesn't know I know that."

Barnaby's eyes opened. He watched me.

"I'm going to say the words first," I said. "I'm going to reject him before he can reject us. Then I'm going to lock him out of the territory link. He'll have to walk down alone."

My hand moved in slow circles over my belly.

"Marcus will be at the bottom of the trail. He'll drive us home. Grandma will be waiting at the door. So will Barnaby."

The wolf-dog's tail thumped once at the sound of his name.

"Everything I've done," I said, "I've done as your mother. Before anything else. Before Luna. Before mate. Mother first. I want you to know that."

The pup kicked. One time. Square against my palm.

I exhaled. I pressed my hand flat.

"Good," I whispered. "Then we're ready."

---

On the morning of his birthday, I made him eggs.

I brought the plate to him at the table myself. I leaned down and kissed the top of his head, slow, the way I used to when I still believed.

"Happy birthday," I murmured against his hair.

He caught my wrist and pulled me into his lap. He laughed. He smelled like pine and leather and the shower he'd just taken.

"What did I do to deserve this?" he asked.

I traced the edge of his collar with one finger. "Tonight," I said. "Just after midnight. Let's leave early. The view from the overlook is best when the moon clears the ridge."

"Just after midnight," he repeated. He smiled up at me. "Done."

He didn't reach through the bond to check beneath my warmth. He never did anymore. He had stopped looking a long time ago.

Kaia watched him from behind my eyes.

She said nothing at all.