My Mate Tried to Erase My Wolf While His Mistress Raised Our Son

The healer's hands paused over my abdomen. Just for a second. But in that second, I watched her face rearrange itself into the careful blankness of someone who'd just discovered something that didn't belong to her.

"Luna," Margot said slowly. Her fingers pressed a fraction deeper. "There's a second heartbeat."

I didn't move. The words landed somewhere in my chest and sat there, heavy and immediate. A second heartbeat. Another pup. Growing inside me while I planned the destruction of its father.

Margot withdrew her hands and folded them in her lap. "I'll need to inform the Alpha, of course. Protocol requires—"

"Of course," I said. My voice came out steady. Grateful, even. "Thank you, Margot."

She left quickly. I watched the door close and pressed both palms flat against my stomach. The bond hummed faintly—Elliot was somewhere on the eastern boundary, distracted and distant. He didn't know yet.

I had maybe three hours.

My wolf stirred beneath my ribs, a low rumble that felt like the beginning of something I couldn't name. She'd been silent for ten years. Now she was waking up piece by piece, and every time she moved it felt like tectonic plates shifting under my skin.

*This one,* I thought, pressing harder against my abdomen. *This one you will never touch.*

---

Elliot arrived with flowers.

He came through the Luna quarters at sunset, his face arranged into tender concern, a bouquet of white roses in one hand. The scent hit me first—too sweet, cloying in the small space—and beneath it, through the bond, I felt nothing. Just the flat, calculating emptiness I'd learned to recognize as his version of focus.

"Serena." He crossed the room and knelt beside the bed, setting the flowers on the side table. His hand found my stomach before I could move. "Margot told me. A pup. Our pup."

His fingers spread wide, possessive. I covered his hand with mine and made my eyes shine.

"I didn't think—" I let my voice catch. "After everything. After Owen—"

"This is a gift," Elliot said firmly. His thumb traced a small circle against the fabric of my dress. "The Moon Goddess is giving us another chance."

The bond transmitted satisfaction. Not joy. Not the overwhelming protectiveness a mate should feel. Just satisfaction, smooth and contained, like a man who'd just been handed a useful tool.

I smiled at him. I let a single tear slide down my cheek. I watched him lean forward and press his lips to my forehead, the picture of a devoted Alpha.

And I made a vow so cold and specific it surprised even me: *You will never hold this child. You will never speak its name. You will be gone before it takes its first breath, and it will grow up knowing you only as the thing its mother survived.*

"Thank you," I whispered against his shoulder. "For staying. For loving me even when—"

"Always," he murmured. His hand tightened fractionally on my stomach. "You're my Luna. My mate. Nothing changes that."

I closed my eyes and felt the bond hum between us, warm and present and utterly hollow.

When he finally left, I waited until his footsteps faded down the hall. Then I turned my face into the pillow and let my wolf make a sound that was not quite a growl—something lower and more dangerous, like the moment before a storm breaks.

---

Lena came the next morning with breakfast. She set the tray down carefully, her hands shaking the way they always did when she was carrying something she wasn't supposed to say.

I waited. I ate slowly, deliberately, until she couldn't hold it anymore.

"Luna," she whispered. "There's a healer coming. From outside the pack. The Alpha arranged it privately. I heard him talking to Beta Marcus. They called him a specialist."

I set down my fork. "A specialist for what?"

"I don't know. But—" She swallowed hard. "The Beta said something about silver work. Old rituals. Luna, I don't think—"

She broke off. I reached across the table and caught her wrist gently.

"Thank you, Lena."

She fled.

I sat very still. Silver work. Old rituals. A specialist healer brought in privately, outside the pack's normal channels.

The timeline I'd been working against had just shortened.

I pressed my thumb against the mark on my neck and felt my wolf stir again, louder this time, a frequency that resonated in my bones. Whatever Elliot was planning, it was moving faster than I'd anticipated.

I needed Jared's report. I needed Owen's location confirmed. I needed the Council's attention before Elliot could finish whatever he was building.

I closed my eyes and reached for the mind-link, pushing through the static until I found Jared's thread.

*How much longer?*

The reply came back hours later, terse and final: *Two days. Maybe three. The file needs to be airtight.*

Two days.

I looked down at my stomach, at the place where a second heartbeat pulsed quietly beneath my hands.

Two days to hold everything together. Two days to keep Elliot convinced I was still his grateful, broken Luna. Two days before the specialist healer arrived and whatever silver ritual he'd arranged began.

I exhaled slowly.

It would have to be enough.

---

That night, I woke to the bond flooding with heat again.

The same intimate pressure. The same rose-and-ash scent layered over Elliot's skin. Cynthia, somewhere beyond pack territory, her body against his while I lay alone with his mark on my neck and his child growing in my belly.

I didn't flinch this time.

I followed the sensation down through the bond, clinical and precise, cataloging every detail. The rhythm. The sounds. The moment he finished and the satisfaction that rolled through him afterward, warm and uncomplicated.

My wolf made a sound in my chest—low and resonant, like a string pulled too tight.

I pressed both hands flat against my stomach and thought about the silver-branding ritual. About the specialist healer. About the careful, calculated way Elliot had touched me earlier, his hand spread wide like he was marking territory.

He thought the pregnancy made me more vulnerable.

He thought it gave him more time.

He was wrong.

I closed my eyes and let my wolf's growl build in the dark, a promise that had no words yet—only the bone-deep certainty that when the moment came, when Jared's file was complete and the Council arrived and Elliot finally tried to put his hands on me one last time, I would be ready.

And he would never see it coming.