My Alpha Replaced Me with His Luna

Seven years.

That's how long it takes for a pack house to become a stranger's home.

I stood at the edge of the tree line and looked at the lights of Silvercrest through the falling snow. Warm gold, every window. Music drifting out across the frozen ground, faint but real. The Winter Solstice Banquet — I had counted the days to it like a soldier counts ammunition. One more month. One more week. One more night.

My thumb found the mark on my neck before I even realized I was doing it. The skin there was faded and slightly raised, the way old scar tissue gets when it's been pressed too many times. I pulled my hand down and made myself keep walking.

The cold didn't bother me anymore. That had stopped somewhere around year three. My boots knew the frozen ground, my lungs knew the thin air, and my body had learned to carry cracked ribs the way other wolves carry bruises — quietly, without complaint. I'd taken a hit from a rogue two weeks ago. Three ribs, maybe four. I hadn't stopped to count.

I had my patrol journal tucked inside my coat. Worn leather, the spine cracked, every page dense with kill tallies and weather patterns and route notes. Seven years of surviving written in my own handwriting. I don't know why I brought it. Force of habit, maybe. Or maybe some part of me wanted proof. That I had been there. That it had been real.

The pack house gates came into view.

Two warriors stood post. I didn't recognize either of them — young, well-fed, the easy posture of wolves who had never spent a winter at a border outpost. They looked at me the way you look at something that wandered in from the wrong direction.

"Stop there." The taller one stepped forward. "State your name and business."

"Olivia." I kept my voice flat. "Olivia — I'm Charles's mate. I've been stationed at Frostfang. I'm here for the banquet."

The silence that followed was a specific kind of silence. Not confusion. Something worse.

The shorter one glanced at his partner. Then he smiled. It was the kind of smile that knows something you don't, and enjoys knowing it.

"Charles's mate," he repeated.

"That's what I said."

"Alpha Charles," the taller one said, drawing the title out slowly, "has had a Luna for three years. Faye Woods." He paused to let that land. "They have a pup. The mating ceremony was — what, Garrett, two summers ago?"

"Three," the shorter one said. "Big celebration. Whole pack was there." He looked me over, taking in the frost-burned coat, the worn boots, the general appearance of someone who had walked a long way in bad weather. "Whole pack except you, I guess."

They both laughed.

I didn't move. I didn't speak. I stood in the snow and let the words go through me the way cold goes through a coat that isn't thick enough — all at