My Alpha Poisoned Me for His Mistress

Three days after the funeral, I was in the pack records room when the omega found me.

Her name was Lily. She was sixteen, small, with nervous hands that twisted the hem of her apron. She shouldn't have been anywhere near the Luna's wing, but she stood in the doorway anyway, breathing hard.

"Luna," she whispered. "They went to the burial grounds. The Alpha and... her."

I didn't ask who 'her' was. I closed the ledger I'd been reading and stood.

Lily caught my wrist as I passed. "Don't go alone."

I looked at her hand on my arm. She let go immediately, her face going pale.

"Thank you," I said.

I went alone anyway.

---

The burial grounds sat at the eastern edge of pack territory, where the forest pressed close and the old stones leaned into each other like tired soldiers. My mother's grave was near the back, under a pine tree that dropped needles year-round. The headstone was simple—just her name, her dates, and a carved moon at the top.

I saw them before they heard me.

Skyla was crouched in front of the stone. Her hand moved slowly, deliberately, dragging her claws through the carved letters of my mother's name. The sound was wrong—metal on stone, scraping, deliberate. She wasn't trying to hide what she was doing. She was performing it.

Carter leaned against the iron gate ten feet away. His arms were crossed. He watched her work with the same expression he used during pack strategy meetings—detached, evaluating, waiting for the outcome.

I didn't think. I moved.

I was halfway across the burial ground when Carter's head snapped toward me. He moved with Alpha speed—faster than thought, faster than my body could process. His hand closed around my forearm and yanked me sideways. My knees hit the mud. My palms followed.

He pressed my face into the ground in front of the stone. Mud filled my mouth. I tasted earth and old rain and something metallic that might have been blood from where my lip split against a rock I couldn't see.

Skyla stopped dragging her claws. I heard her stand. I felt her move closer.

Carter's breath was warm against my ear. His hand pressed the back of my skull, holding me down with just enough force that I couldn't lift my head without breaking something.

"I, Carter Jenkins, Alpha of Ironveil," he said, his voice formal, ritual-precise, "reject you, Esme Perry—"

The bond detonated.

Pain ripped through my chest like a claw tearing open my sternum from the inside. My spine arched. My vision went white. Every nerve ending in my body screamed at once—not the sharp pain of a wound but the soul-deep agony of something fundamental being ripped apart while still connected. The mate bond, half-opened, pulsed with a wrongness that made my wolf howl inside the cage of my ribs.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. The pain was everything.

Then it stopped.

Not because the bond dissolved. Because Carter stopped speaking.

The pain didn't leave. It hung there, throbbing, incomplete—a rejection vow spoken halfway, a wound opened but not closed, a bond torn but not severed. The mark on my neck burned like someone had pressed a brand against it and held it there.

Carter's hand lifted from my skull.

I heard him stand. I heard Skyla's soft laugh. I heard Carter's voice, calm and commanding, speaking to someone behind me.

"Grind it to rubble."

Footsteps. Multiple wolves moving forward. The sound of claws on stone, deliberate and methodical. I pressed my face into the mud and listened to them destroy my mother's headstone. The carved moon. Her name. The dates that marked the years she had lived and the year she had stopped.

They reduced it to gravel.

I didn't lift my head. I didn't look. I lay there with mud in my mouth and bond-pain screaming through my chest and my wolf slamming against my ribs so hard I thought something would crack.

Eventually, the footsteps faded.

I waited until I couldn't hear them anymore. Then I waited longer.

When I finally pushed myself upright, my hands were shaking. Blood mixed with mud on my palms. Gravel was embedded in my knees. The bond pulsed—open, agonized, unresolved.

I looked at the space where my mother's headstone had been. There was nothing left but rubble and disturbed earth.

I stood. My legs held. I started walking.

---

The healers' ward was quiet when I arrived. The night-shift healer looked up from her desk, her eyes widening when she saw my face.

"Luna, what happened?"

"I fell," I said.

She didn't believe me. I could see it in the way her mouth tightened. But she was an omega, and I was still the Luna, and she led me to the treatment room without arguing.

She cleaned the gravel from my palms with careful hands. She dabbed antiseptic on the cut above my lip. She asked if I needed anything for pain.

"No," I said. "But I need to check something."

I stood and walked to the dispensary. The healer followed, confused.

"The supplement stock," I said. "The iron capsules filed under my name. I want to verify the current batch."

She hesitated. "Luna, if there's a problem with your supplements, I should—"

"There's no problem," I said. My voice was steady. Calm. "I'm verifying. That's all."

She unlocked the dispensary cabinet. The bottles were labeled with my name, dated, organized by month. She handed me the current bottle.

I opened it. The capsules inside were pale yellow, slightly larger than standard iron supplements. I palmed two and slipped them into my coat pocket while pretending to examine the label.

"Everything looks fine," I said. I handed the bottle back.

The healer took it, still uncertain. "If you're sure..."

"I'm sure."

I walked out of the healers' ward with two capsules in my pocket and the bond-pain still pulsing through my chest. My wolf was quiet now. Not calm—just waiting.

I pressed my thumb against the mark on my neck. It burned.

I kept walking.