After My Alpha Husband Brought His Mistress Home

I gasped for air, my lungs burning like I'd been drowning. My eyes snapped open to a ceiling I knew too well—cream-colored paint with that small crack near the corner that looked like a lightning bolt. The master bedroom of the Silverclaw Pack house.

No.

This couldn't be real. I should be dead. I should be lying in the rogue lands, my body wasted to nothing, my mind shattered by months of wolfsbane poisoning. The last thing I remembered was the dirt under my fingernails as I clawed at the frozen ground, searching for roots to eat. The taste of my own blood. The silence where my wolf should have been.

But the sheets beneath me were soft. Egyptian cotton. Isaac always insisted on the best.

My hands flew to my stomach. No hollow ache. No protruding ribs. I pressed harder, feeling the gentle curve of flesh that shouldn't exist on a starving rogue.

*Sasha?*

I reached inward, toward that empty space where my wolf had died slowly, poisoned pill by poisoned pill. For a moment, nothing. Then—

A whimper. Weak, confused, but unmistakably there.

*Sasha.*

My wolf stirred in the depths of my consciousness, her presence like a candle flame in a dark room. Fragile. Barely alive. But *there*.

Tears burned my eyes. The Moon Goddess had answered my dying prayer. She'd sent me back.

I sat up slowly, taking in the room. Morning light filtered through the gauzy curtains. The digital clock on the nightstand read 7:47 AM. I knew this day. God help me, I knew this exact morning.

This was the day Isaac brought *her* into our home.

The bedroom door swung open without a knock. Isaac filled the doorway, all six-foot-three of him, his dark hair still damp from his morning shower. He wore that gray suit I used to think made him look distinguished. Now I just saw a man playing dress-up as something he wasn't.

His eyes—cold blue, like a winter lake—fixed on me. "Vera."

I'd forgotten how he used to say my name. Like he owned it. Like he owned me.

"You're awake. Good." He stepped inside, and I felt it immediately—the weight of his Alpha aura pressing down on the room. In my previous life, weakened by wolfsbane, I'd crumbled under it. Now, with Sasha stirring inside me, I felt the pressure but didn't break.

I kept my face carefully neutral. Submissive. The mask I'd worn for years.

"I need you downstairs in twenty minutes," Isaac said. His voice dropped into that tone—the Alpha Command that vibrated in your bones and made your wolf whimper. "Allie Jordan will be arriving this morning. She's agreed to serve as our Pack Consultant. You will welcome her appropriately and show her to the third-floor guest suite."

Allie Jordan. The woman who would destroy everything.

In my first life, I'd fought this moment. I'd argued, pleaded, reminded Isaac of our mate bond. He'd used his Alpha Command to force me into silence, then locked me