My Alpha Chose His Fake Luna Over Me

The erasure started small.

Three days after the lake incident, my name disappeared from the warrior rotation postings. I found out when I showed up for dawn patrol and the Gamma on duty looked at me like I'd walked into the wrong room.

"You're not scheduled," Marcus said. He didn't meet my eyes.

I checked the board. My name wasn't there. It had been there yesterday.

"There's been a mistake," I said.

He shrugged. "Take it up with the Luna."

Luna. The word sat wrong in my mouth. Hanna hadn't been marked. Hadn't been announced. But the pack was already calling her that, and no one corrected them.

I didn't take it up with anyone. I went to the eastern perimeter alone and ran my own patrol. When I came back, my strategy room—the small office where I'd kept eleven years of border maps and rogue movement logs—had a new sign on the door: *Luna's Council Space*. The maps were gone. My desk was gone. There were cushions on the floor and a low table set for tea.

Hanna was inside, arranging flowers.

She looked up when I opened the door. Her smile was warm. Surprised.

"Oh, Diana," she said softly. "I'm so sorry—did you need something from in here? I thought this room wasn't being used anymore."

I stood in the doorway. My fingers pressed against the frame.

"It was," I said.

Her face did something delicate. Concerned. "I didn't realize. Aidan said it was available, so I just—" She gestured at the space, helpless. "I can move if it's a problem?"

She said it like a question. Like she was offering me a choice.

Behind her, through the window, I could see three ranked wolves passing in the corridor. They slowed. They were listening.

"It's fine," I said.

I closed the door.

I heard her laugh—light, relieved—as I walked away.

---

The food contamination happened two weeks later.

Pack stores near Kairo's quarters were found spoiled. Meat gone rancid. Grain bags split and crawling with mold. The healer traced the contamination pattern and announced, in front of the evening meal assembly, that the source was "proximity-based"—something in Kairo's quarters was causing accelerated decay.

It was a lie. I knew it was a lie. Kairo kept his space cleaner than anyone in the pack house because he had to—because being blind meant he couldn't afford mess. But no one asked him. No one checked.

They just started avoiding him.

Wolves crossed to the other side of the corridor when they heard his cane. At meals, the bench beside him stayed empty. When he reached for the water pitcher, the wolf nearest him stood and moved to a different table without a word.

I started taking his pack duties onto my own schedule. Inventory counts he couldn't do without sight. Perimeter checks he couldn't navigate alone. I slept four hours a night and told him none of it.

He knew anyway.

"You're killing yourself," he said one night, his voice flat in the dark of his room.

I was sitting on the floor with my back against his door, too tired to make it back to my own quarters. My hands were shaking. The wolfsbane tincture was three days out, and my body was already starting to feel it.

"I'm fine," I said.

"You're lying."

I didn't answer.

He was quiet a long time. Then: "When this breaks, Diana—and it will break—you need to let me go."

"No."

"You need to—"

"No."

I stood. I left before he could say it again.

---

The formal pack dinner was on the next full moon.

Every ranked wolf attended. The hall was full. Candles lined the long tables. Aidan sat at the head with Hanna beside him, her hand resting on his wrist, her amber wolf practically glowing under her skin. I sat at the far end of the warriors' bench. Kairo sat across from me, three seats down, his shoulders tight, his hands flat on the table.

We were halfway through the meal when Hanna collapsed.

She went down hard—chair tipping, her hand flying to her throat, gasping. Aidan caught her before she hit the floor. Every wolf in the hall froze.

"Wolfsbane," she choked out. Her eyes were wide. Terrified. Her finger lifted—shaking—and pointed across the table.

At Kairo.

"He put it in my cup."

The hall went silent.

Kairo didn't move. His face stayed perfectly still. But I saw his jaw lock. I saw his hands flatten harder against the wood.

"That's not possible," I said. My voice cut through the silence. "He can't see the cups."

Aidan looked at me. His eyes were cold.

"She said he did it."

"She's lying."

Hanna made a small wounded sound. Aidan's arm tightened around her.

"Enough," he said.

He stood. He crossed to the healer's station at the side of the hall—where the medical supplies were kept, where my monthly wolfsbane antidote was stored in a glass vial with my name on it. He picked it up.

My stomach dropped.

"Aidan," I said quietly. "It's the night of my dose."

He looked at the vial. Then at me.

"Then your brother should confess."

The tremor started in my fingers first. The tincture's toxicity was already peaking—I could feel it crawling under my skin, my muscles tightening, the poison searching for the wolf it was supposed to suppress and finding nothing but flesh to burn instead.

"He didn't do it," I said. My voice was steady. My hands were not.

Aidan held the vial higher. Out of reach.

"Confess, Kairo."

Kairo said nothing.

My knees buckled.

I hit the stone floor hard. The convulsions started immediately—my back arching, my muscles seizing, the wolfsbane tearing through me in waves. I heard someone gasp. I heard chairs scraping. I heard Hanna's soft voice saying something I couldn't parse.

I locked my eyes on Aidan's face.

I did not scream.

I had screamed every month for eleven years when the tincture hit—small, involuntary sounds I couldn't stop. But this time I bit down. I swallowed it. I looked at him and I did not make a sound.

His face shifted. Something uncertain flickered behind his eyes.

Then he looked away.

"I invoke Alpha authority," he said, his voice carrying through the hall, formal and cold. "Kairo Reynolds is blacklisted from every healer in every allied territory. Permanent. Continent-wide. Signed by my seal."

The words landed like stones.

I convulsed again. My spine hit the floor. My vision blurred.

Aidan threw the vial.

It skittered across the stone and stopped three feet from my hand. He turned. He left with Hanna on his arm, her head tucked against his shoulder, her soft sobs echoing as they disappeared through the archway.

I crawled to the vial.

My hands shook so hard I almost dropped it. I got the needle in. I injected the antidote into my thigh. The relief was immediate and nauseating—my muscles unlocking, my breath coming back, the poison retreating just enough to let me function.

I lay on the floor.

Two hundred wolves. Not one of them moved to help me.

Across the table, Kairo sat with his hands in fists beneath the wood. His jaw was locked. His blind eyes were fixed on nothing.

He did not say a word.

Neither did I.