My Mate Chose His Trainee Over His Luna

She came the next morning.

I heard the door open and assumed it was a nurse. I didn't look up. I'd been staring at the same water stain on the ceiling tile for the better part of an hour, counting the seconds between the mate bond's pulses. They were coming slower now. Fainter. Like a signal losing frequency.

Then I smelled her perfume. Something floral and sharp, the kind that costs too much and tries too hard.

Livia Snyder stepped into my room carrying a paper cup of coffee. She was dressed like she'd just come from a pack meeting — fitted jacket, hair neat, not a scratch on her. The arm Dallas had clipped the harness around looked perfectly fine.

Of course it did.

"Elena." She said my name like she was doing me a favor by using it. Her voice was soft. Measured. The voice of someone who'd rehearsed.

I didn't answer.

She set the coffee cup on my bedside table. Steam curled up from the lid. The room was quiet except for the low hum of the hospital monitors and the distant sound of footsteps in the hallway.

Livia looked at me.

I looked back.

For a moment, nothing happened. She just stood there with her hands at her sides and that careful, practiced expression on her face. And I watched her, because something felt wrong. The air in the room had changed. Too still. Too deliberate.

Then she picked up the coffee cup, peeled back the lid, and poured it over her own arm.

I didn't move.

The liquid hit her skin and she didn't flinch. Not for one second. Not two. She stood there and let it burn, her eyes locked on mine the entire time, and there was something in her expression that I recognized. Triumph. Cold, quiet, absolute triumph.

On the third second, she screamed.

It was a shattering sound, high and raw, the kind that punches through walls. The kind that makes people run.

They did.

The door flew open. Two nurses rushed in, then a pack warrior, then another. And then Dallas.

I felt him before I saw him. The mate bond lurched, a sick, violent pulse, and then his aura hit the room like a wall of heat. It pressed down on everything — the air, the light, the space between my ribs. My wolf made a small, involuntary sound deep in my chest, a sound I hated her for.

Dallas looked at Livia first. Her arm was already reddening, the skin angry and raw, and she was crying now, her shoulders shaking, her burned arm cradled against her chest.

"She—" Livia's voice broke on cue. She pointed at me. "She grabbed it. She grabbed the cup and—"

"That's enough."

Dallas's voice was low. Controlled. But his eyes were wrong. Too bright. Too wild. The kind of eyes a wolf gets when the human half is losing the argument.

He crossed the room in four steps and grabbed me by the shoulders.

The grip was hard. Not a shake, not yet, but the kind of hold that meant he could. He pinned me against the back of the hospital bed, and his aura crushed down on me like a hand around my throat. One of the nurses made a small sound and stepped back. The warriors didn't move.

"What did you do?" His voice was barely above a whisper. That made it worse.

I didn't answer. I didn't struggle. I just looked at him.

"You couldn't stand it, could you?" The words came out rough, fractured at the edges. "She's young. She's got a future. And you—" He stopped. His jaw tightened. "You're sitting here in this bed, bitter, and you took it out on her."

Bitter.

I heard the word and felt nothing. That surprised me. I'd expected it to land somewhere, to find a bruise. But there was nothing left in me for it to hit.

I looked into his eyes.

I looked for a long time.

I was looking for something. I don't know what. A crack in the certainty, maybe. A flicker of doubt. Some small, buried part of him that knew what he was saying was wrong.

But there was nothing there.

Just an Alpha who had made a decision and was still, even now, defending it. Still certain. Still sure that his judgment was the only one that mattered.

The mate bond pulsed between us. Weak and ragged. Barely there.

I felt my wolf go quiet.

Not in grief. Not in surrender.

In recognition.

This was what he was. This was all he had ever been. And I had spent years bending my spine — literally, physically bending my fractured spine — to stand beside him.

Dallas was still talking. I stopped hearing the words.

I just looked at him, calm and clear and completely still, until he finally ran out of things to say.

And in that silence, I made my decision.