When My Alpha Chose His Mistress Over Me

I woke at two in the morning to an empty bed.

Callum's side was cold. Not the kind of cold that comes from slipping out for a glass of water — the sheets had lost his warmth entirely, like he'd been gone for hours. I lay still for a moment, one hand resting on my belly, listening to the pack house breathe around me. Seven months along, and sleep had already become a negotiation. I told myself that was why I'd woken. I told myself a lot of things in those days.

Then I caught his scent.

It was faint in the room, but the thread of it pulled north, toward the clinic. And underneath the familiar cedar-and-smoke of him was something else — something sharp and urgent, the particular edge of Alpha pheromones that a male releases when he is protecting something he considers his. I knew that scent. He'd worn it the first time I'd felt our pup move, standing behind me with his hands on my waist, his chin on my shoulder. I'd thought it meant love.

I got up. I pulled on my robe and my shoes and I followed it.

The grounds were quiet. The night air was cold enough to sting, and I walked slowly, one hand pressed flat against my sternum out of habit, the other cradling the weight of my belly. The clinic lights were on. A single window glowed at the far end of the building — the birthing suite.

I told myself it was nothing. A pack member in labor. Callum being the Alpha he was, responsible, present, doing his duty.

I pushed open the door.

The smell hit me before anything else. His pheromones were so thick in that room they coated the back of my throat like something physical. Protective. Possessive. The scent of a male standing guard over what he claims.

Virginia Ross was in the recovery bed. A newborn was in her arms, wrapped in a white blanket, his face scrunched and pink and new. And Callum was standing over them both, his body angled forward, his shoulders set in that particular way — the way he stood when he was shielding something.

He turned when he heard me.

For one second, nobody moved.

I looked at the baby. I looked at Callum. I looked at the way his hand was resting on the bedrail, six inches from Virginia's shoulder, and I understood — with the absolute, airless clarity of a thing you have known for a long time but refused to name — that the affair had never ended.

I walked back to the pack house. I didn't run. I didn't cry. I pressed my palm harder against my sternum and I walked, and I told myself I would deal with it at dawn.

---

I found him in the hallway outside our room as the sky was going gray.

"Callum." I kept my voice level. "We need to talk about what I saw."

I