My Alpha Publicly Rejected Me for His Mistress

Maren's cottage smelled like dried lavender and old wood. It was small — just two bedrooms, a kitchen barely wide enough for one person, and a sitting room that doubled as her workspace. But it was quiet. And it was mine, at least for now.

I moved in three days after the Summit. I didn't have much to pack. Five years in the pack house and I could fit everything I owned into two duffel bags and a cardboard box. Clothes. Books. My healing supplies. The pregnancy test, still wrapped in tissue paper, tucked into the bottom of the box where no one would see it.

I left the nursery exactly as it was. The yellow walls. The silver paw prints. The folded blankets. Let him find it. Let him walk into that room and see what he threw away.

Maren didn't ask questions when I showed up at her door. She just stepped aside and let me in. She gave me the smaller bedroom, the one that faced the back garden, and told me I could stay as long as I needed.

That night, she sat me down at her kitchen table and pulled out a leather-bound ledger. "I need to document this," she said quietly. "Everything. The injuries. The pregnancy. All of it."

I pushed up my left sleeve without a word. The burn scar was ugly in the lamplight, raised and shiny, the skin pulled tight where it had healed wrong. Maren traced it with one finger, her expression unreadable.

"He did this?"

"Five years ago," I said. "During his recovery. He threw a pot of boiling broth. I was standing too close."

She wrote it down. Date. Location. Cause. She asked about other injuries. I told her about the time he shoved me into the doorframe and I cracked two ribs. The time he grabbed my wrist so hard it bruised black for a week. The smaller things — the words, the silences, the way he made me feel like I was disappearing.

She wrote it all down.

"The pregnancy," she said finally. "You're sure you don't want to tell him?"

I shook my head. "He doesn't get to know. Not after what he did."

Maren closed the ledger. "If the Council asks, I'll testify. To all of it. Whatever you need."

I looked at her. She was older than me by maybe fifteen years, her hair streaked with gray, her hands rough from decades of healing work. She had been the pack healer since before I arrived. She had seen everything.

"Why are you helping me?" I asked.

"Because someone should have helped you a long time ago," she said. "And I didn't. I'm not making that mistake again."

I felt something crack open in my chest. I pressed my hand to my mouth and nodded. I did not cry. I had no tears left.

The Healer Trials were in two weeks. I threw myself into preparation because it was the only thing I had left. The formulas I had been developing for two years — the regenerative compound for nerve damage, the pain-modulation salve — were finally ready. I had tested them. Refined them. Documented every step of the process in meticulous detail.

I worked at Maren's kitchen table late into the night, my notes spread out in careful stacks, my research case locked and sitting beside me. The case was old, a battered leather thing with a combination lock I had set myself. Inside were my formulas, my methodology, my entire professional legacy.

I registered my submission formally with the Trials committee. I triple-checked the documentation. I made copies and stored them in three separate locations. I was not taking any chances.

Seren was still silent. I reached for her sometimes, out of habit, and found nothing. Just emptiness where her voice used to be. I told myself it was temporary. I told myself she would come back.

I didn't believe it.

The night before the Trials, I was reviewing my notes one last time when I heard a knock at the door. Maren had gone to bed an hour earlier. I set down my pen and walked to the front of the cottage.

Elina was standing on the porch.

She wore a soft cream sweater and jeans, her hair pulled back in a loose braid. She looked casual. Approachable. Like someone who had just stopped by to chat.

"Lyra," she said, her voice warm. "I hope I'm not interrupting."

I stared at her. "What do you want?"

"I wanted to talk," she said. "Just the two of us. No drama. No pack politics. Just... a conversation."

I should have closed the door. I should have told her to leave. But some small, stupid part of me wanted to hear what she would say. What excuse she would offer. What lie she would try to sell.

I stepped aside. She came in.

We sat in Maren's sitting room. Elina perched on the edge of the armchair, her hands folded in her lap, her expression open and earnest. She talked for twenty minutes. About how she never meant to hurt me. About how she and Ethan had a connection she couldn't explain. About how she hoped, someday, we could all move forward.

I didn't say a word. I just watched her. The way her eyes flicked around the room. The way her fingers tapped lightly against her knee. The way she leaned forward just slightly when she thought I wasn't looking, her gaze landing on the locked research case sitting on the table behind me.

She left after twenty minutes. She hugged me at the door — a brief, performative thing — and told me she wished me luck at the Trials.

I closed the door behind her and stood there for a long moment.

Then I walked back to the table. The research case was still locked. But it had been moved. Just three inches to the left. I was sure of it.

I unlocked the case and checked the formulas. Everything was there. Every page. Every note. Nothing missing.

I told myself I was being paranoid. I told myself Elina was just a manipulative woman who liked to play games. I locked the case again and went to bed.

I did not sleep well. I dreamed of silver paw prints and empty rooms and a wolf that wouldn't answer when I called her name.