My Alpha Tried to Strip Me of My Luna Title

The bathroom door slammed open at two in the morning.

I was brushing my teeth when Landon stumbled in, and the smell hit me before he did — whiskey and jasmine, thick enough to choke on. Kira's scent. It clung to his shirt, his hair, his skin like a second mate mark.

My hand froze on the faucet.

"Taylor." His voice was rough. Drunk. He leaned against the doorframe, his eyes unfocused. "We need to talk."

I rinsed my mouth slowly, buying time. Seven years of marriage had taught me that drunk Landon was unpredictable Landon. I set the toothbrush down and turned to face him.

"It's late," I said quietly. "Can this wait until—"

"No." He pushed off the doorframe and crossed the space between us in two strides. Before I could step back, his hand slammed against the tile beside my head, caging me in. "It can't wait."

My heart kicked against my ribs. The mate mark on my neck — faded to almost nothing now, a pale ghost of what it had been — throbbed with phantom pain.

"Landon, you're drunk. Let's talk in the morning when—"

"You're weak." The words came out in a snarl, and then his Alpha tone rolled over me like a physical weight, pressing down on my shoulders, my chest, making it hard to breathe. "A weak, markless embarrassment. Your wolf is too broken to ever shift again. Do you understand that?"

I couldn't move. The Alpha tone held me pinned as surely as his body blocking the door. My wolf — Seraphina, dormant for seven years — stirred somewhere deep inside me. A flicker. A whisper.

"I've been patient," Landon continued, his breath hot against my face, reeking of scotch and her. "I've waited for you to recover. To be the Luna Stormridge needs. But you're not her. You're never going to be her."

Each word landed like a fist.

"You're a liability," he said. "I can't afford you anymore."

Something inside me shifted. Not broke — detonated.

Seraphina surged.

The bathroom mirror exploded.

Glass flew outward in a starburst pattern, cracks racing from edge to edge with a sound like ice breaking. Landon jerked back, his Alpha tone cutting off mid-breath. His eyes went wide.

I didn't think. My hand closed around the heavy ceramic bottle on the counter — the decorative one his mother had given us as a wedding gift, ironically — and I swung it into his temple with everything I had.

The impact made a sound I will never forget.

Landon's knees buckled. He went down hard, his head cracking against the tile floor. Blood welled from the cut above his eyebrow. He didn't move.

I stood there, breathing hard, the bottle still in my hand. Glass glittered in my hair. My lip was bleeding where I'd bitten it under the pressure of his aura. The mate mark on my neck burned.

Seraphina was awake.

I could feel her now — not just a whisper but a presence, furious and alive, coiling through my chest like smoke. She had been silent for so long I'd forgotten what her voice felt like.

*He called us broken,* she growled in my mind. *He will learn what broken really means.*

I set the bottle down carefully on the counter. My hands were shaking. Landon lay on the bathroom floor, unconscious, his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. For one terrible moment, I thought about leaving him there. Just walking out. Taking Ainsley and disappearing into the night.

But I couldn't. Not yet.

I stepped over him and went to his jacket, draped over the chair in our bedroom. His Alpha authority seal was in the inner pocket — a small metal stamp bearing the Stormridge crest, used to authenticate official pack documents. I'd watched him use it a thousand times.

I took it.

The document was already prepared, tucked in the back of my analog notepad behind the loose kitchen panel where I kept things Landon never bothered to look for. I'd been working on it for weeks, ever since I'd overheard him and his Beta discussing "asset protection" in his office. The lakeside property in Silverfang territory — the place where we'd spent our last good summer together, before everything rotted — was still technically joint pack property. Transferring it required Alpha authority.

I pressed the seal into the ink pad and stamped the document with steady hands. The property now belonged to a human legal trust in Ainsley's name. Landon couldn't touch it. Stormridge Pack couldn't touch it. It was the first thing I'd taken from him.

It wouldn't be the last.

I filed the document in my notepad, returned the seal to his jacket pocket, and went back to the bathroom. Landon was still out cold. I cleaned the blood off the tile with a towel, picked the glass out of my hair, and pressed a cold washcloth to my split lip.

Then I went to Ainsley's room and stood in the doorway, watching her sleep.

She was six years old. She had my dark hair and Landon's sharp jawline. She smelled like lavender shampoo and the faint, sweet scent of a pup who hadn't yet met her wolf. She was the reason I had suppressed Seraphina in the first place — the pregnancy had been so dangerous the pack healer said shifting would kill us both.

I would do it again. But I was done sacrificing for Landon.

*We fight now,* Seraphina said in my mind, her voice steady and cold. *We take everything.*

I pressed my thumb against the fading mate mark on my neck and made a promise to the daughter sleeping in front of me: he would not leave us with nothing.

When I woke the next morning, Landon was already downstairs. I could hear him in the kitchen, talking to someone — his Beta, probably. I came down the stairs slowly, every muscle in my body tense.

He was standing by the counter, a mug of coffee in his hand, a fresh bruise blooming purple across his temple. He glanced up when I entered and smiled thinly.

"Rough sparring session yesterday," he said to Derek, his Beta, who nodded sympathetically.

No mention of the bathroom. No acknowledgment of what he'd said, what he'd done. He poured himself more coffee, kissed Ainsley on the head when she came down for breakfast, and walked out the door smelling faintly of jasmine.

I sat down across from my daughter and pressed my thumb against my neck.

I couldn't do this alone. I needed intelligence. I needed someone I could trust who existed outside Stormridge's hierarchy, outside Landon's reach.

I needed Brinley Stewart.