My Alpha Took His Mistress to Our Mating Bed

The Moonveil Harvest Banquet smelled like cedar smoke, roasted venison, and something rotten underneath that only I could catch.

I stood at the head table beside Rowan, my hand resting lightly in the crook of his arm. Pearls at my throat. Hair pinned back the way the matrons of the Northern Alliance liked it—"the lucky little Omega Luna," they whispered behind their wineglasses, smiling as if I couldn't hear. I smiled back. I'd been smiling back for six years.

My name is Olivia Hayes. To this pack, I am Rowan Burke's mate, the soft-handed girl who married up. To my father, the Lycan King, I am the daughter who chose love over a throne. Tonight, both of those women were about to die.

Barnaby pressed his shoulder against my thigh. He had been growling since the sun went down—not loud, just a low note in his chest like a tuning fork. His silver fur stood up along his spine. I trailed two fingers behind his ear, the way he liked, and felt the vibration travel up my arm.

"Easy," I murmured. "Not yet."

He huffed. He always knew before I did.

Rowan leaned over, his lips brushing my temple for the watching crowd. "Smile, baby. Alpha Greer is staring." His silver ring caught the chandelier light as he set his glass down. "I'm going to do a perimeter walk. Pack's restless tonight."

"Of course," I said.

He kissed my forehead. He smelled like cedar and bourbon and—faintly, faintly—jasmine.

I waited. I sipped my champagne. I laughed at something the Greenfell Beta said about the harvest yield. Four minutes later, on the far side of the hall, Jessie Arnold rose from the warriors' table, clapped a Delta on the shoulder, and rumbled in that gruff voice she'd practiced for a decade, "Patrol rotation, boys. Don't drink my share."

The Deltas barked laughter. Jessie disappeared through the side arch.

Four minutes. Like clockwork.

I set my glass down and lifted Barnaby's leash. "I need air," I told the Greenfell Beta. He nodded, already turning back to his wine.

The corridor beyond the great hall was darker, lit only by the wall sconces I'd had installed last spring. I'd chosen the bulbs myself. I'd chosen everything in this pack-house myself, down to the runner under my feet, and Rowan had never once asked the price.

The jasmine grew stronger as I walked.

It was cloying tonight, almost wet, the way a flower smells when it has been crushed in someone's fist. Underneath it, a female heat-scent, raw and uncovered. My Lycan senses—senses I had spent six years dampening down to a polite human flicker—stretched out without my permission and traced it like a thread back to its source.

The library.

My library.

Barnaby's leash clip snapped under his weight. He didn't run. He padded ahead of me, deliberate, the way a wolf walks toward something it has already decided to kill.

I followed in my heels, champagne still in my left hand, untouched.

The library door was cracked an inch. Warm yellow light spilled through. I heard a low laugh I had heard a thousand times in my own bed, and a softer sound—an unmistakable, feminine gasp—answering it.

I pushed the door open.

Three seconds. I gave myself three.

The first second: Rowan, my mate, my fated bond, pressing Jessie back against the second shelf from the left—the shelf where I kept the first editions I'd had shipped from Edinburgh for his birthday last year. His hand was buried under her uniform shirt. His mouth was on her throat, right where the scent-blocking patch had melted in the heat.

The second second: Jessie. Her warrior braid had come loose. Her lips were parted, jasmine pouring off her skin in a wave so thick it stung my eyes. Her cheeks were flushed in a way no Delta male's ever were. The patch behind her ear was peeling, a wet pink corner curling away from her skin.

The third second: Rowan's silver ring, glinting against Jessie's bare collarbone. The same ring that had pressed against my cheek an hour ago when he kissed my forehead.

I closed the door.

I did not slam it. I did not breathe wrong. The latch clicked back into place as quietly as a held breath.

In my chest, something old and royal and very, very patient finally opened its eyes.

Barnaby looked up at me. His ears were flat. His tail was perfectly still.

I'm fine, I told him through the link only we shared. Walk.

We walked.

The banquet hall swallowed me back into its noise and light. I returned my untouched champagne to a passing tray and crossed the floor on a path I had already mapped before I reached the door.

There was a server clearing plates near the kitchen arch—slim, dark-haired, head bowed in the perfect posture of an Omega who had been beaten down too many times to look up. To anyone else he was furniture. To me, he was Caleb Brooks, eldest son of the Lycan Royal Guard, planted in this pack by my father six winters ago to keep me alive.

I stopped beside him. I didn't look at him. I adjusted an earring.

"Caleb."

His hands didn't pause on the plates. "My Luna."

Four words. That was all I needed.

"Table seven. The box."

A pause—half a heartbeat, no more.

"At once, Princess."

I moved on without turning my head. Behind me I felt him slip toward the back stair, toward the locked drawer in my private study where I had kept that gilded little box for two years, just in case. I had told myself it was insurance. Tonight it became a sentence.

I took my seat. I refolded my napkin. I smiled at Alpha Greer across the hall, and he—poor man—smiled back.

Three minutes later, the music dipped as a server in pressed white approached table seven, where Rowan had just slid back into his chair, his collar a shade too high, and Jessie had just sat down two seats away, her ears pink. Caleb's voice rang out, pitched exactly loud enough to reach the four neighboring Alpha tables.

"A gift from the Luna, sirs. With her compliments."

He lifted the lid.

Gold foil. Black lettering, large enough to read across a room.

HIGH-POTENCY HEAT-SUPPRESSANT PATCHES — FOR SUDDEN ONSET.

The Greenfell Beta's wineglass froze halfway to his mouth. Alpha Greer's wife inhaled so sharply her pearls clicked. Somewhere to my left, a fork hit china and nobody picked it up.

Rowan's face went the color of old ash.

Jessie's hand flew, instinctive, to the patch behind her ear.

I lifted my fresh glass of champagne, and across the long, suddenly silent hall, I met my mate's eyes and toasted him.

Barnaby, at my feet, finally stopped growling.