My Mate Gave Our Bond To His Mistress

The numbers on the supply ledger blurred for a second, and I blinked hard to bring them back.

It was Christmas Eve. The study smelled like pine from the wreath the pack omegas had hung over the door, and like the cedar logs burning low in the fireplace behind me. I had been working since six in the morning. Winter allocations. Grain for the eastern border families. Heating oil for the warrior barracks. A small extra stipend for the Healer's apprentice, who had a new baby.

My name is Victoria Lawrence. For three years I had been Luna of the Stewart Pack — or so the pack believed, and so I believed too. I signed the ledger "V. Stewart" at the bottom of every page, even though some private, careful part of me had never stopped writing the L of Lawrence first before correcting it.

Barnaby was asleep under the desk, his golden head warm against my boot. He sighed in his dream, the way he always did when the house was quiet.

Then my phone lit up. And lit up again. And again.

Three pack channels at once. Four. Six. The mind-link buzzed under my skin like a swarm of bees waking.

I opened the first clip.

The Crescent Hollow Pack Banquet hall. Chandeliers. A long table draped in white. Jameson — my Jameson — standing behind a she-wolf in a white gown, his hands at the back of her neck. He was fastening something. The camera zoomed.

A collar. Diamonds, set in a band of pale gold. And at the center of the band, pressed into the metal like a brand, the territorial seal of the Lawrence bloodline. My grandfather's seal. The seal I had signed over to Jameson two years ago so he could leverage the eastern timber rights for pack security.

The she-wolf turned her face up to him and laughed. I knew that face. Every she-wolf with a phone knew that face. Aliya Rodriguez. Tuberose and amber. Forty thousand followers. The smile she made for the cameras was the one she had practiced.

Jameson kissed her throat above the diamonds.

The clip looped. I watched it loop. Once. Twice. A third time. My hand was very steady on the phone, which was strange, because somewhere far underneath my ribs something had gone perfectly still in the way a forest goes still before a storm.

*Vic.*

The word was so faint I almost missed it. A flicker. A breath of a voice I had not heard in months.

Solene.

I pressed my palm flat against my sternum. "I'm here," I whispered. "I hear you."

She did not answer again. But the flicker had been there. I had not imagined it.

I closed the phone. I closed the ledger. I stood up.

Barnaby lifted his head and looked at me with that specific, careful look he reserved for moments when he had decided something was wrong. I touched the soft place between his ears.

"Come on, baby,"