After My Mate Chose His Mistress as Luna

Six weeks after the rejection, I was sitting in Rosalina's office when the news came through.

A Council messenger arrived at the door—young, breathless, his uniform still crisp. He handed Rosalina a sealed envelope and left without waiting for a response.

Rosalina opened it. Read three lines. Then looked up at me with an expression I couldn't quite parse.

"James collapsed during a pack run," she said.

I went very still.

"His legs gave out midway through the territory. His wolf wouldn't surface. They carried him back to the infirmary." She set the letter down. "The Decay erupted. Violently."

I pressed two fingers to my neck. The dead mark was cold as always.

"How bad?" I asked.

Rosalina's eyes flicked back to the letter. "Bad enough that he tried to reach you through the mind-link. Multiple witnesses heard him howling your name across the territory."

Something twisted in my chest. Not sympathy. Something older and more complicated.

"He got static," I said quietly.

"Yes." Rosalina folded the letter and tucked it into my tribunal file. "The bond's dead. He knows that now."

I stood and walked to the window. Outside, the street was bright and ordinary. People moved through their lives without knowing that an Alpha had just learned what irreversible meant.

"What happens next?" I asked.

Rosalina leaned back in her chair. "Medically? His wolf goes dormant. Permanently. The Decay will progress without bond-channeled healing. There's no cure."

"And the pack?"

"They're watching." Her voice was clinical. "An Alpha who can't shift loses credibility fast. Especially one who just publicly rejected his fated mate for a chosen bond."

I turned back to her. "Trinity?"

Rosalina's smile was thin. "Already asking the substitute Healer for prognosis timelines."

I closed my eyes. Of course she was.

"There's something else," Rosalina said. She pulled another envelope from her desk—this one sealed with the Lycan Council's formal crest. "The Lycan King himself has requested to serve as arbiter for your tribunal."

My eyes snapped open. "What?"

"Aldric Dray. Sovereign above all Alphas." Rosalina's voice was carefully neutral. "It's highly unusual for a case of this scale. Typically a senior Council judge would preside. But the King personally requested it."

I stared at the envelope. "Why?"

"I don't know yet." Rosalina set it on the desk between us. "But Abby, this changes the stakes. Royal attention means the tribunal won't just be about your bond severance and custody. It'll be a political statement."

I thought about the blood vial I'd given her weeks ago. Routine paperwork, she'd said. Healer certification through the Lycan King's court.

"The blood sample," I said slowly. "Did the results come back?"

Rosalina hesitated. Just for a second. "Not officially. But the King's physician would have processed it by now."

"And if something in those results caught royal attention?"

"Then we'll find out at the tribunal." Rosalina's gaze was steady. "Whatever it is, Abby, it's working in your favor. The King doesn't personally oversee cases unless there's a reason."

I nodded. My hands were shaking.

Rosalina stood and walked around the desk. She placed both hands on my shoulders. "James is collapsing. Trinity is calculating her exit. The tribunal has royal attention. Everything is moving in the direction we need."

"It doesn't feel like moving," I said quietly. "It feels like falling."

"Good," Rosalina said. "Let it feel like falling. You've been holding yourself upright for ten years. You're allowed to let gravity do some of the work now."

I looked at her. My pack-sister. My attorney. The wolf who had snarled when she saw my dead mark and sworn to destroy the man who'd put it there.

"Thank you," I said.

She squeezed my shoulders once. Then she released me and returned to her desk. "The tribunal is in three weeks. We have time to prepare."

I pressed my fingers to the mark one more time. Still cold. Still empty.

But somewhere in Ironwood territory, James was lying in an infirmary bed with legs that wouldn't hold him and a wolf that wouldn't answer. He had reached for a bond he'd severed himself and found only silence.

I didn't feel triumph. I didn't feel vindication.

I felt the particular stillness that comes before something enormous shifts.

"Three weeks," I repeated.

Rosalina nodded. "Three weeks."

I walked out of her office into the late afternoon sun. The tribunal date was set. The Lycan King was coming. And somewhere in the royal court, my blood sample sat in a file with results I hadn't seen yet.

I didn't know what was coming.

But I knew I wouldn't face it on my knees.