My Mate Protected His Mistress, Let Me Die

I woke up screaming.

My hands flew to my stomach, fingers pressing desperately against the flat surface beneath my nightgown, searching for something that wasn't there. The phantom pain of impact—metal crushing bone, glass shredding skin—still echoed through my body like a ghost that refused to leave.

But there was no blood. No broken bones. No life draining away beneath the cold autumn rain.

I gasped for air, my lungs burning as if I'd been drowning, and forced my eyes open. Moonlight filtered through familiar curtains, casting silver shadows across walls I knew too well. My bedroom. The Silvermoon Pack house. The pale blue walls Damian had chosen because he said they reminded him of Ava's eyes.

Not mine. Never mine.

My heart hammered against my ribs as reality crashed over me in waves. I was alive. I was breathing. And my baby—

My hand trembled against my abdomen. There was no baby. Not yet. Not in this timeline.

Because somehow, impossibly, I had been given a second chance.

I sat up slowly, my body shaking with the weight of memories that shouldn't exist. The calendar on my nightstand confirmed what my instincts already knew: it was three months before the pack run. Three months before Ava would deliberately swerve her car into mine. Three months before I would die on that rain-soaked road, my unborn pup dying with me while Damian chose to protect her instead.

The Moon Goddess had sent me back.

I pressed my palm harder against my stomach, fighting the sob that threatened to tear free from my throat. In my past life, I had been so desperate to make Damian love me, so convinced that if I just tried harder, gave more, sacrificed everything, he would finally see me as his true mate. I had ignored every warning sign, every moment of favoritism toward Ava, every time his wolf purred for her scent while barely acknowledging mine.

I had been a fool.

But I would not be a fool twice.

The phantom weight of my lost pup settled in my chest like a stone, cold and unforgiving. I made a silent vow in that moonlit room, my voice barely a whisper but carrying the weight of a Luna's command: "Never again. I will never beg for a bond that was already broken. I will never lose another child to his selective blindness."

The next morning, I stepped out of my room with my head held high, my expression carefully neutral. The hallway stretched before me, the same ornate corridor I'd walked a thousand times, always hoping to catch a glimpse of my mate, always desperate for even a moment of his attention.

Not anymore.

I froze when I saw them.

Damian stood near the staircase, his broad shoulders blocking most of the morning light streaming through the windows. And pressed against his chest, her fingers trailing along his collar, was Ava.

She was rubbing herself against him like a cat marking territory, her movements deliberate and possessive. I watched with the clarity of someone who had died once already as she tilted her neck, exposing the pulse point where she'd applied her scent-masking herbs. The same herbs her mother had taught her to use, the same deception that had stolen three years of my life.

Damian's eyes were half-closed, his wolf practically purring in his chest as he breathed in her manufactured scent. His hands rested on her waist with a familiarity that had once shattered my heart into pieces.

Now, I felt nothing but ice.

In my past life, I would have run to them, tears streaming down my face, begging him to remember our bond, pleading with him to choose me. I would have made a scene, and he would have looked at me with that confused, irritated expression, asking why I was being so dramatic when he couldn't even recognize my scent properly.

But I had learned the truth in my final moments: his scent blindness was dangerously selective. He could smell her perfectly. He always had.

I walked past them without a word, my footsteps silent on the hardwood floor. Ava's eyes met mine for just a second, and I saw the flash of surprise—and fear—that crossed her face when I didn't react. Good. Let her wonder. Let her worry.

I was done playing the desperate, broken mate.

That evening, my door opened without a knock. I didn't need to look up from the book I was pretending to read to know who it was. The Alpha presence that filled the room, heavy and demanding, could only belong to one person.

"Chloe."

Damian's voice carried that edge of confusion I'd heard so many times before. I slowly lifted my eyes to meet his, keeping my expression blank. He stood in the doorway, his dark hair slightly disheveled, his jaw tight with frustration.

"Why are you acting like this?" The Alpha command crept into his tone, the one he used when he expected immediate obedience. "You've been avoiding me all day. No texts, no visits to my office. You didn't even react when—"

He stopped himself, but we both knew what he'd been about to say. When you saw me with Ava.

In my past life, I would have crumbled under that Alpha tone, would have apologized for existing, for being inconvenient, for not being enough.

Now, I just looked at him with dead eyes.

"I'm tired, Damian," I said quietly, my voice carrying none of the desperate pleading he was used to. "That's all."

His frown deepened, his wolf clearly unsettled by my lack of reaction. He took a step into the room, and I watched him with the detached calm of someone who had already died once at the hands of his choices.

Let him be confused. Let him wonder why his mate had suddenly stopped begging for scraps of his attention.

Because while he stood there, trying to understand why I'd changed, I was already planning my exit from this pack, from this bond, from this life that had killed me once before.

I would never give him the chance to choose Ava over me again.