After My Mate Helped His Mistress Hunt Me

The white roses in my hands were wilting.

I stood behind the makeshift counter of Still Blooming — my flower stall tucked into a forgotten corner of the Nightcrest pack house common area — and trimmed the stems with careful precision. The shears made small, satisfying clicks. Outside the tall windows, rain hammered the glass in sheets. Inside, the usual hum of pack life continued around me: warriors passing through, she-wolves laughing near the coffee station, the low rumble of conversation I had learned to tune out years ago.

Nobody looked at me directly. They never did.

I was arranging a bouquet of yellow wood sorrel — my mother's favorite — when the mind-link slammed into my skull like a fist.

*Harmony—*

Mom's voice. Fractured. Terrified.

The shears clattered onto the counter. My hands flew to my temples. The pack bond was open, but this wasn't the usual soft hum of connected consciousness. This was raw panic, broadcast at full volume directly into my mind.

*Harmony, they won't stop—*

Then sound. Road noise. Wet asphalt under running paws. Truck horns blaring, sharp and endless. My mother's breathing came in ragged gasps that I could feel in my own chest.

"Mom?" I said it out loud, uselessly. "Mom, where are you?"

No answer. Just the horrible rhythm of paws on pavement and the roar of engines getting closer.

I threw myself into the pack mind-link, shouting through the bond with everything I had. *Maximus. Maximus, please. My mother is being chased. She's on the highway. Send warriors. Send anyone. Please.*

Silence.

I tried again, louder, desperate. *Alpha, please. She's going to—*

Nothing. The Alpha's end of the bond was a blank wall. He wasn't blocking me. He just wasn't listening.

In my head, my mother's link stayed open. I heard her stumble. Heard her try to shift mid-stride and fail. Heard the screech of brakes that came too late.

Then static.

Then nothing.

I stood frozen behind the counter, hands still pressed to my temples, while the pack house continued its evening routine around me. Someone laughed near the coffee station. A warrior asked his friend about weekend plans. The rain kept falling.

Four minutes. That's how long the link stayed open on her end after the sound stopped. Just road noise. Just her breathing, slower and slower, until it wasn't breathing at all.

When the silence finally came, it was so complete I thought I'd gone deaf.

I don't remember leaving the stall. I don't remember walking to the corridor outside the main banquet hall. But that's where I was when my phone rang — a human hospital, a tired voice, words that didn't make sense in order: hit-and-run, interstate, pronounced dead on arrival.

I slid down the wall onto the floor.

Behind the closed banquet hall doors, I heard the rise of voices. Laughter. Then Maximus's voice, amplified and commanding, cutting through the noise.

"To my Luna," he said. The words carried that specific Alpha resonance that made even the walls seem to lean in. "Laurel Dixon. The strength of Silverfang and the heart of Nightcrest."

Applause thundered through the doors. Glasses clinked. Someone whooped.

I sat on the floor with my phone in my hand and stared at the opposite wall. There was a crack in the plaster near the baseboard. I had never noticed it before. It looked like a river.

I didn't cry. I had learned, over five years, that crying changed nothing.

The funeral was two days later.

Kamden stood beside me at the grave, holding my hand too tightly. He was twenty-three but his mind worked differently, slower, and he kept asking when Mom was coming home. I told him she wasn't. He asked again ten minutes later.

The cemetery was small and cold. Just the two of us, the priest, and a grave that cost more than I had. I'd used the last of the money I'd saved from my three jobs — the ones I'd worked to fund Maximus's campaign, back when I still believed sacrifice meant something.

No one from Nightcrest came. No flowers. No acknowledgment. No condolences.

I wore a black dress and a scarf wrapped high around my neck, hiding the mark that burned like a brand beneath the fabric. Kamden cried quietly. I stood beside him and felt nothing at all.

That night, I went to Maximus.

I found him in his office, reviewing territory maps with Beta Dorian. When I opened the door without knocking, Dorian looked up sharply. Maximus didn't.

"She was murdered," I said. My voice came out flat. "Laurel's warriors chased her onto the highway. I felt it through the link. I called for help. You ignored me."

Maximus set down his pen with deliberate slowness. When he finally looked at me, his expression was cold.

"Your mother's death was a tragic accident," he said. Each word carried the weight of Alpha tone — not a command, but close. "And your accusations are exactly the kind of jealous behavior I've warned you about."

The tone pressed against my chest like a hand. My body wanted to comply, to apologize, to lower my eyes. I had learned to obey that pressure the way you learn to flinch from fire.

But I held his gaze for three seconds longer than I should have.

"She called for you," I said quietly. "Through the bond. You heard her."

"I heard nothing." His tone sharpened. "And you will stop this now, Harmony. Do you understand me?"

The Alpha command hit like a wave. My mouth closed. My head nodded.

"Good," Maximus said. He returned to his maps. "Dorian, where were we?"

I left the office, walked back to the small room I kept in the pack house, and locked the door.

Then I opened my laptop and started searching.

Pack security logs. Territory entry records. Anything that could link Silverfang warriors to the highway where my mother died. Every file required clearance I didn't have. Every door was locked.

I tried for a week.

On the eighth day, I went to Beta Dorian. He was Maximus's second, but he'd always been kind to me in the careful, distant way people are kind to things they pity but can't help.

"I need access to the security footage from last week," I said. "The night of the banquet. Please."

Dorian looked at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes — concern, maybe, or discomfort.

"Why?" he asked.

I told him. All of it. The chase, the mind-link, the warriors I knew were Silverfang.

He listened. Nodded slowly. Then said, "I'll look into it."

I believed him.

That night, Maximus summoned me to his office. When I arrived, his expression was colder than I'd ever seen it.

"Dorian tells me you're having trouble letting go," he said.

And I understood.

I had gone to the one person I thought might help. And he had reported me instead.

Something inside me — something small and hairline-thin — cracked.