After My Mate Chose Her, I Took His Pack

The Manhattan skyline glittered against the twilight as I stepped out of Bergdorf Goodman, my wolf restless beneath my skin. Three months. Three months since the Council declared Harrison fallen in battle, torn apart by rogues near the eastern border. Three months since I'd felt anything through our mate bond except the hollow ache of severed connection.

I adjusted the portfolio under my arm—contracts that would keep the Silver Moon Pack's human investments afloat for another quarter. Someone had to keep us from drowning. Someone always had.

Then the wind shifted.

Cedar and rain. Sharp. Unmistakable. Alive.

My wolf surged forward so violently I stumbled against a lamppost, my vision blurring as she clawed at my consciousness. No. Impossible. We buried an empty casket. We howled our grief to the Moon Goddess. We—

I followed the scent like a woman possessed, weaving through evening crowds, my heart hammering against my ribs. The trail led me down Fifth Avenue, growing stronger with each step until I could taste it on my tongue, until my wolf was screaming in my head.

There.

Outside the St. Regis Hotel, bathed in golden light from the entrance, stood my dead mate.

Harrison looked better than he had in years. His shoulders were relaxed, his smile genuine as he laughed at something the she-wolf beside him said. She was petite, blonde, her hand tucked possessively into his as they moved toward the revolving doors. Her scent—sickly sweet gardenias—clung to him like a second skin.

I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. The world tilted sideways as my wolf howled in anguish, a sound that never left my throat.

He wasn't dead. He was thriving. While I'd held our pack together through their grief, while I'd slept in his shirts trying to catch the last traces of his scent, while I'd stood before the Council and begged them to grant me emergency authority—he'd been here. With her.

They disappeared into the hotel, and I stood frozen on the sidewalk as the city moved around me. A cab honked. Someone bumped my shoulder. None of it registered through the roaring in my ears.

The six-hour drive back to Silver Moon territory passed in a blur. My hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel, my wolf pacing frantically in my mind. She kept reaching for the mate bond, that sacred connection the Moon Goddess herself had forged between us.

It should have been empty. A void where Harrison's presence once lived.

Instead, I felt a wall. Solid. Deliberate. Constructed.

He hadn't died. He'd blocked me out.

I pulled into the Pack House driveway just after midnight, my body moving on autopilot as I climbed the stairs to the Alpha office. Our office. The room I hadn't been able to enter without breaking down since the funeral.

The shrine I'd built mocked me from the corner—his favorite jacket draped over the chair, photos of us at our mating ceremony, the silver wolf pendant he'd given me on our first anniversary. Lies. All