My Alpha Poisoned Me for His Mistress

The mind-link hit me at kilometer forty-three.

*Luna, you need to come now. Grandmother Fisher's heart is failing. Hours at most.*

I pressed my palm against the car window. Outside, the blizzard turned the mountain pass into a wall of white. Carter's hands were steady on the wheel. I opened my mouth to tell him we needed to go faster.

His phone buzzed.

Through the mate bond, I felt it before I saw it—a surge of warmth flooding his chest, bright and electric, like someone had lit a match inside his ribcage. It poured into me through the mark on my neck, foreign heat spreading under my skin.

Carter braked. The car slid slightly on the iced road before stopping.

"What are you doing?" My voice came out flat.

He picked up his phone. His thumb moved across the screen. I watched his face change—jaw loosening, eyes softening in a way I had spent three years trying to earn and never once received.

"Skyla needs me," he said.

The warmth in his chest swelled. I felt it bloom through the bond like a second heartbeat layered over mine, pulsing with a joy that had nothing to do with me.

"My grandmother is dying."

"The healers will take care of her." He was already typing a response, his fingers moving fast. "Skyla just got back to pack territory. She's alone. She needs—"

"Four kilometers," I said. "The healers' ward is four kilometers from here."

Carter looked at me for the first time since the phone buzzed. His eyes were clear. Decided.

"Walk," he said.

I stared at him.

"Get out, Esme. Walk the rest of the way. I need to go to her."

The bond pulsed again—his elation, his relief, his need—all of it flooding into my chest while my grandmother's heart failed four kilometers away in a room I wasn't in.

I opened the car door. The blizzard hit me like a fist. Snow drove into my face, my coat, the space between my scarf and collar. I stepped out onto the road.

Carter didn't wait. The car pulled away before I closed the door. I watched the taillights disappear into the white, his happiness still burning through the mark on my neck like a brand.

I started walking.

The cold bit through my coat within minutes. My boots slipped on the iced road. The wind screamed. I kept my head down and counted steps because counting was something I could control. One hundred. Two hundred. The bond kept pulsing—Carter's warmth, Carter's joy, Carter holding someone who wasn't me.

My wolf slammed against the inside of my ribs. Once. Hard. Like a fist against a locked door.

I pressed my thumb against the mate-mark and kept walking.

---

I reached the healers' ward with ice crusted in my hair and my fingers numb inside my gloves. The attending healer met me at the door. Her face told me everything before she opened her mouth.

"I'm sorry, Luna. She passed twenty minutes ago. She kept asking for you."

Twenty minutes.

I had been four kilometers away, walking through a blizzard, while Carter drove in the opposite direction with his happiness bleeding into my chest.

The healer led me to the room. Grandmother Fisher's hand was already cooling when I took it. Her eyes were closed. Her wolf was gone. The room smelled like sage and old linen and the particular emptiness that comes after someone stops breathing.

I sat beside the body. I held her hand. It was lighter than I remembered, the bones too close to the surface.

Through the bond, Carter's joy pulsed bright and warm. I felt it bloom under my sternum, a happiness that had nothing to do with the woman whose hand I was holding or the three years I had traded for a few more months of healer care that ended twenty minutes before I arrived.

I pressed my thumb against the mark on my neck. It burned.

I didn't cry. I sat there holding my grandmother's cooling hand while my mate's elation beat inside my chest like a second heart, and I felt something crack open beneath my ribs that had nothing to do with grief.

---

I returned to the pack house near midnight. The main hall lights were still on.

Carter was on the couch with Skyla curled against his chest. His nose was buried in the curve of her neck. His eyes were closed. His face held an expression of relief so complete it looked like pain leaving a body.

Neither of them looked up when I walked in.

I crossed the hall to Carter's desk. My hands were steady. I reached into my coat and pulled out the formal dissolution petition I had been drafting for months—signed, witnessed by two pack elders, legally complete. I slammed it on the desk.

The sound made Carter open his eyes.

He looked at the document. Then at me. He didn't stand. He didn't move Skyla from his chest.

He picked up the petition with both hands and shredded it. His claws went through the paper like it was nothing. He let the ribbons fall.

"You are my Luna," he said. His voice dropped into Alpha tone—the command that makes a wolf's body obey before the mind can refuse. "My marked mate. You will never leave Ironveil. The decision is not yours to make."

The bond flared. His certainty poured into me, absolute and unshakable.

I looked at the shredded paper on the floor. At Skyla's hand resting on Carter's chest. At the mark on my neck burning in the reflection of the window behind his desk.

"Understood, Alpha," I said.

I turned and walked toward the healers' ward. My wolf slammed against my ribs again—harder this time, furious.

I pressed my thumb against the burning mark and kept walking.