When My Mate Chose Her

The pack house was silent at three in the morning, the kind of silence that pressed against my skin like a physical weight. I moved through the darkened hallways like a ghost, my bare feet making no sound on the cold wooden floors. Ophelia had finally fallen asleep after hours of fussing, her small body curled tight around her favorite stuffed wolf. But I knew better than to hope for rest. Sleep had become a stranger to me, another casualty of the darkness that had settled in my chest since she was born.

The medication the pack healer had prescribed sat untouched in my bathroom cabinet. I couldn't bear the thought of dulling myself further, of missing even more of Ophelia's precious moments in a chemical haze. Tonight, I needed something real—the small blue blanket Ophelia loved, the one that smelled like lavender and home, tucked away in Sterling's office.

I didn't turn on the lights. After months of navigating these halls in the dark, I knew every corner, every shadow. Sterling's office door creaked softly as I pushed it open, moonlight filtering through the windows and casting long silver fingers across his desk. The blanket should have been in the bottom drawer, but my fingers, clumsy with exhaustion, knocked against something else—a locked drawer I'd never noticed before.

It hit the floor with a sharp crack that seemed to echo through the entire house. My heart stuttered, but no footsteps came. Sterling's wolf was home, but he slept like the dead these days, curled in our bed without reaching for me. The drawer had split open on impact, the lock broken. Inside, nestled in the darkness, was a small wooden box.

My hands trembled as I lifted it out. It was beautifully carved with the Moonveil Pack symbol, the kind of box meant for treasures. But when I opened it, the scent hit me first—night-blooming jasmine and cedar, rich and foreign and unmistakably feminine. It wasn't my scent. It had never been mine.

Inside were notes. Hundreds of them, each one folded carefully and tied with a thin silk ribbon. I unfolded the first one, my eyes adjusting to the dim light.

"My dearest F," it began in Sterling's unmistakable handwriting, the dark ink flowing across the page with a lover's care. "Another night where I must pretend that duty is enough, that the mark on my neck means more than the ache in my chest. But it's your scent that follows me home, not hers. It's your voice that whispers in my mind when the moon rises..."

I read another. And another. Each one more intimate than the last, each one a knife twisting deeper into my chest. There were exactly 521 of them, I would count later. 521 pieces of my mate's heart, given to someone else.

"I've never told her what I've told you," one read. "She doesn't know me the way you do. She never will."

The phone on Sterling's desk buzzed, the screen lighting