My Mate Believed His Mistress Until I Disappeared

The message came through my phone just after midnight. Chelsea's name on the screen. *Need archived samples from cold storage. Urgent case. Can you meet me at the healing wing?*

I stared at it for a long moment. Lyra stirred uneasily in my chest, a low warning growl that had nothing to do with sound.

I should have ignored it. Should have deleted the message and gone back to organizing my exit materials. But something in the phrasing caught my attention. Chelsea never handled sample retrieval herself. She had staff for that. And she'd never once asked me for help with anything, not in five years.

I pulled on my jacket and walked across the dark grounds. The healing wing was quiet. Most of the lights were off. I found Chelsea waiting near the sub-zero vault at the back of the storage corridor, her face illuminated by the cold blue glow of the temperature display.

"Thank you for coming," she said. Her voice had that breathless quality she always used around Richard. "The samples are in the back. I can't reach them."

I looked at her. At the emerald silk dress she'd worn to the banquet, now covered by a lab coat. At the way she stood between me and the corridor exit.

Every instinct I had screamed danger.

I stepped into the vault anyway.

The cold hit immediately. Sub-zero storage, designed for biological materials that needed temperatures below freezing. My breath misted in front of my face. I moved toward the back shelving units, scanning the labels.

"Which samples?" My voice echoed off metal walls.

The door sealed behind me with a heavy magnetic click.

I turned. Through the small reinforced window, I saw Chelsea's hand on the external lock mechanism. Her face was perfectly visible through the glass. And her expression had changed completely.

The warmth was gone. The breathless vulnerability. What remained was flat. Precise. Almost bored.

"You're smarter than I gave you credit for," she said. Her voice came through the intercom speaker, tinny but clear. "That fellowship acceptance. The way you've been organizing your quarters. You were planning to leave."

I said nothing. The cold was already seeping through my jacket.

"I can't let that happen," she continued. "You know too much. You've seen too much. And Richard might be blind, but the Lycan Council isn't. If you get to Silverpeak, if you start talking to Elder Arthur..." She shook her head. "No. This ends here."

My hands were already starting to shake. Not from fear. From cold. "Richard will come looking."

"Richard will find exactly what I tell him to find." Her smile was small and precise. "A tragic accident. You came down here alone, the door malfunctioned, and by the time anyone realized..." She shrugged. "These things happen."

Lyra snarled inside me, throwing herself against the bond that connected us to Richard. But the bond was weak, unmarked, and he was too far away to feel it through whatever walls his guilt had built.

"Before you freeze," Chelsea said, her tone almost conversational, "I want you to know. The pregnancy was fabricated. Every symptom, every test result, every tear I cried over that miscarriage — all of it was performance. Richard's guilt made him so easy to manipulate. He wanted to believe he'd failed me. So I let him."

My breath came faster. Misting. Vanishing.

"And your sister." Chelsea's expression didn't change. "The rogue attack wasn't random. I paid them. I arranged the patrol gap through Nora — she's very good at schedule manipulation. And I made sure Richard's investigation went exactly nowhere. Elianna was too smart. She would have exposed me eventually. So I removed her."

The cold was in my bones now. My fingers were going numb.

"You tried to kill her," I said. My voice was steady. It surprised me.

"I succeeded in neutralizing her," Chelsea corrected. "There's a difference. She's alive. Technically. And she'll stay that way as long as Richard thinks keeping her that way serves his guilt. But you?" She leaned closer to the window. "You're the real threat. You always were. So this is where it ends."

I looked at her through the reinforced glass. At the woman who had stolen five years of my life. Who had orchestrated an attack on my sister. Who had manipulated my mate with surgical precision.

"You will answer for this," I said.

Chelsea laughed. The sound came through the intercom speaker, sharp and bright. "To who? Richard? He'll believe whatever I tell him. The pack? They already think you're unstable. The Lycan Council?" She shook her head. "You'll be dead, Skye. And I'll be Luna."

She turned away from the window. Her footsteps echoed down the corridor.

I was alone in the dark.

The cold was absolute now. My body shook violently. I tried the door mechanism from inside, but the external lock override had been engaged. I slammed my palm against the reinforced glass. Once. Twice. The sound was muffled, swallowed by insulation and metal.

Lyra howled inside me. Not the howl of a wolf calling for her mate. The howl of a wolf who had finally, completely, understood that her mate would never come.

I sank to the floor. The metal was like ice against my legs. My thoughts were starting to slow, the hypothermia creeping into my brain.

I pressed my thumb against my wrist. The gesture was automatic now. Muscle memory.

And I began to count.

Not to five this time.

I counted every detail Chelsea had just confessed. Every crime. Every manipulation. Every word.

I counted them because if I survived this — and I would survive this, I had to survive this — I would need to remember every single one.

My eyes closed. The cold was inside me now.

Somewhere far away, I heard footsteps returning.

And a voice I knew too well, sharp with Alpha command: "What happened?"

Chelsea's response was immediate. Tears in her voice. Perfect. "She attacked me. I don't know why. She locked herself in and I couldn't — Richard, please, you have to help her—"

The vault door opened.

Cold air rushed out. Warm air rushed in.

I looked up through blurred vision and saw Richard's face. Saw the moment his senses flooded with Chelsea's distress scent. Saw his expression harden.

He didn't smell the chemical residue on her hands. Didn't see the external lock mechanism. Didn't question why I would lock myself in a sub-zero vault.

He saw what he always saw: Chelsea in tears, and me as the problem.

Two pack warriors lifted me from the floor. My legs wouldn't hold me. Richard's voice came from somewhere above, that Alpha tone that expected obedience without question.

"Skye Montgomery, you are suspended from all pack duties effective immediately. You will be confined to quarters pending formal review. If you resist, I will strip your rank entirely."

I looked at him. Really looked.

And felt absolutely nothing.

No longing. No grief. No rage. Just a vast, cold absence where five years of love used to live.

The expression on my face must have shown it, because something flickered in his eyes. Confusion. Maybe unease.

Then he turned away to comfort Chelsea, and the warriors dragged me toward the exit.

I didn't fight them.

I just started counting again.