My Fated Mate Rejected Me for His Mistress

Duke didn't waste a second. He snapped his fingers, and two broad-shouldered Ironcrest warriors stepped out from the kitchen corridor carrying a heavy zinc bucket.

The stench hit the room before the water even splashed.

It was thick, sour, and chemically sharp—the unmistakable reek of rotten ditch weed mixed with raw wolfsbane. My inner wolf violently recoiled in the back of my skull, clawing against my ribs in panic. Wolfsbane was poison to our kind. It weakened the blood, burned the senses, and turned our natural healing into sluggish agony.

Laughter rippled through the gathered elites.

"Hold still, little dog," Duke drawled, stepping back to protect his custom trousers.

The two warriors hoisted the bucket between them and dumped the entire contents over my head.

The water was ice-cold, slamming into my skull like a brick. Then came the fire. The wolfsbane stung my eyes and seeped into my nose, searing like battery acid. The rancid liquid soaked through my faded cotton Omega tunic, plastering the freezing cloth to my skin. It ran in dirty streams down my neck, pooling around my worn canvas shoes.

The banquet hall erupted in howling laughter. Men clapped, and women shielded their smiles behind French-manicured hands, giggling at the spectacle.

Inside me, my wolf roared in murderous, royal fury. She bared phantom fangs, desperate to tear through my flesh and rip every throat in the room to shreds.

*Down,* I commanded her silently. *Not yet.*

I used three years of brutal, iron discipline to clamp down on her throat, forcing her into submission.

I didn't scream. I didn't drop to my knees. I didn't even blink back the burning stinging in my eyes. I just stood there, square in the center of the Persian rug, perfectly motionless as the foul water dripped from the ends of my wet hair.

Slowly, I raised my right hand and pressed my thumb against the rash on my neck. The inflamed skin from Quinton’s cheap nickel pendant burned in sync with the wolfsbane. It was a good anchor. It reminded me exactly where I was, and what this pack truly was beneath its glittering chandeliers.

A soft chuckle broke through the noise.

Juliette stepped into the cleared circle. Her emerald gown shimmered under the crystal lights, completely spotless. She held her smartphone up in front of her, angled perfectly to catch both my drenched, pathetic silhouette and Duke’s grinning face in the background.

She had already queued the live-stream. Her caption was typed, the hashtags ready.

"Hey everyone," Juliette spoke into the mic, her voice light, airy, and dripping with casual malice. "Just a little behind-the-scenes look at how Ironcrest keeps order at the banquet. This is what happens when an Omega forgets her place."

She took a slow, leisurely lap around me, holding the camera close so her viewers could see every drop of foul sludge dripping from my chin.

"Look at that stench," she whispered theatrically, wrinkling her pretty nose for the lens. "Some wolves just belong in the dirt."

I could see her phone screen from the corner of my eye. The viewer count was exploding. Five hundred. Twelve hundred. Three thousand. Comments scrolled past in a frantic blur, filled with laughing emojis and cruel taunts from wolves across three different pack territories.

Through the blur of hair in my face, I looked past Juliette's shoulder.

Quinton was standing at the edge of the circle. His arms were folded over his chest. His fingers lightly tapped his jaw—his nervous, guilty tell. He watched the dirty puddle spread across the expensive rug. He saw the way the wolfsbane was already reddening my bare skin.

He didn't take a single step forward. He didn't speak.

Instead, he smoothed his suit jacket and set his jaw into a flat, composed line. I knew that expression. It was the face he made when he calculated pack expenses. To him, my public humiliation was simply an acceptable cost for an alliance with Ironcrest. I was the coin he spent to buy his way into Duke’s good graces.

Riding the high of the live-stream and the crowd’s bloodlust, Duke stepped forward again. He raised his hands, soaking in the applause.

"You think that's it?" Duke shouted over the crowd. "That was just the rinse! Let's see if this stray has any real loyalty to the guests here tonight."

He turned and pointed toward the massive limestone fireplace at the side of the hall. Inside, thick oak logs were burning white-hot, surrounded by a bed of glowing, silver-coated coals.

The room suddenly went quiet.

Silver was lethal to werewolves. A silver-coated ember pulled from that heat wouldn't just blister the skin—it would melt into the flesh, eating away at muscle and bone, leaving permanent, twisted scars that could never regenerate.

A few older Betas near the buffet shifted uncomfortably. Even for a hazing ritual, this crossed the line from a cruel joke into lifelong mutilation.

Duke didn't care. He looked at Juliette's phone camera, soaking up the attention, then flicked his chin lazily at me.

"Go on, Omega," Duke ordered, his voice cold and commanding. "Pull a silver ember out of the pit with your bare hands. Bring it to Juliette as an apology for breathing her air."

A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the circle. Nobody laughed anymore. Every eye in the ballroom locked onto me.

The wolfsbane water dripped from my chin, landing with a soft *tap* on the wet floor.

I didn't move an inch toward the fire.

Instead, I slowly lifted my head, turned away from Duke, and looked directly across the circle into Quinton's gray eyes.