My Mate Protected His Mistress, Let Me Die

I woke up screaming.

My hands flew to my stomach, fingers pressing desperately against the flat surface beneath my nightgown, searching for something that wasn't there. The phantom pain of impact—metal crushing bone, glass shredding skin—still echoed through my body like a ghost that refused to leave.

But there was no blood. No broken bones. No life draining away beneath the cold autumn rain.

I gasped for air, my lungs burning as if I'd been drowning, and forced my eyes open. Moonlight filtered through familiar curtains, casting silver shadows across walls I knew too well. My bedroom. The Silvermoon Pack house. The pale blue walls Damian had chosen because he said they reminded him of Ava's eyes.

Not mine. Never mine.

My heart hammered against my ribs as reality crashed over me in waves. I was alive. I was breathing. And my baby—

My hand trembled against my abdomen. There was no baby. Not yet. Not in this timeline.

Because somehow, impossibly, I had been given a second chance.

I sat up slowly, my body shaking with the weight of memories that shouldn't exist. The calendar on my nightstand confirmed what my instincts already knew: it was three months before the pack run. Three months before Ava would deliberately swerve her car into mine. Three months before I would die on that rain-soaked road, my unborn pup dying with me while Damian chose to protect her instead.

The Moon Goddess had sent me back.

I pressed my palm harder against my stomach, fighting the sob that threatened to tear free from my throat. In my past life, I had been so desperate to make Damian love me, so convinced that if I just tried harder, gave more, sacrificed everything, he would finally see me as his true mate. I had ignored every warning sign, every moment of favoritism toward Ava, every time his wolf purred for her scent while barely acknowledging mine.

I had been a fool.

But I would not be a fool twice.

The phantom weight of my lost pup settled in my chest like a stone, cold and unforgiving. I made a silent vow in that moonlit room, my voice barely a whisper but carrying the weight of a Luna's command: "Never again. I will never beg for a bond that was already broken. I will never lose another child to his selective blindness."

The next morning, I stepped out of my room with my head held high, my expression carefully neutral. The hallway stretched before me, the same ornate corridor I'd walked a thousand times, always hoping to catch a glimpse of my mate, always desperate for even a moment of his attention.

Not anymore.

I froze when I saw them.

Damian stood near the staircase, his broad shoulders blocking most of the morning light streaming through the windows. And pressed against his chest, her fingers trailing along his collar, was Ava.

She was rubbing herself against him like a cat marking territory, her movements deliberate