My Mate Lied About Our Fated Bond

I told myself it was the scent that made me cry.

Not the Luna's quarters, not the view from the window, not the way the afternoon light came through the curtains in long gold strips and landed on the floor like something deliberate. Just the scent. Pine and cold earth and something deeper underneath — warm, almost sweet, the kind of smell that bypasses your brain entirely and goes straight to the part of you that is still animal, still instinct, still wolf.

Hayes's scent.

My wolf stirred the moment I crossed the threshold, a low hum in my chest that I had never felt before the King family's announcement. Before that day, I had spent years watching other she-wolves describe the mate pull — the way it felt like recognition, like coming home to a place you had never been. I had nodded along and kept my face neutral and told myself I was fine with waiting. That the Moon Goddess had her reasons.

Now I stood in the middle of the Luna's quarters with a single duffel bag at my feet and let myself believe she had finally answered.

I unpacked slowly. I didn't have much — an Omega family doesn't accumulate the kind of things that fill a room like this one. A few changes of clothes. A worn copy of pack law statutes I had read so many times the spine had given up. A photograph of Kason and me from three years ago, him making a face at the camera, me laughing at something just outside the frame. I set it on the nightstand and stood back and looked at it for a long moment.

"You'd hate this room," I said to his face in the photo. "Too many throw pillows."

He would have said something dry back. Something like, *at least you'll have something to throw when it goes sideways.* That was Kason — always one step ahead of the disaster, always making it funny so I wouldn't be afraid of it.

I wasn't afraid. Not yet.

I smoothed the bedspread with both hands, lined my shoes up by the door, and told my wolf to settle. She hummed and didn't argue. We were both, for the first time in a long time, cautiously, carefully hopeful.

---

The pack run was scheduled for late afternoon. I had finished unpacking early, so I decided to go down and find Hayes — surprise him, maybe, the way mates were supposed to do. The thought made me feel almost embarrassingly young. I was twenty-two years old and I was nervous about surprising my own mate.

I heard the gathering before I reached the main hall.

Not loud — nothing as obvious as a party. Just the particular murmur of high-rank wolves in a room together, the kind of sound that has a texture to it, a density. I slowed at the doorway.

Francesca Hart was sitting in the Luna's chair.

Not a chair near it. Not beside