After My Mate Claimed My Step-Sister as Luna

The Luna access codes hadn't been changed yet.

That was Grayson's first mistake. Maybe he thought I wouldn't bother. Maybe he assumed I'd spend my days crying in the guest room with Cooper while Liliana redecorated my life. But I had been Luna of the Blackridge Pack for two years, and in those two years, I had managed every financial report, every resource allocation, every transfer that moved through our accounts. Grayson signed things. I read them.

I waited until three in the morning. The pack house was silent. Grayson's bedroom door — the master suite, the one that used to be ours — was closed. I could hear Liliana's laugh through the wall earlier that evening, bright and performative, the kind of laugh designed to carry. It was quiet now.

I sat on the floor of the guest room with my laptop balanced on my knees and Cooper's warm weight against my hip. The screen cast blue light across the walls. I logged into the Blackridge financial portal with my Luna credentials and started pulling records.

The first hour was routine. Pack operating expenses, warrior payroll, territory maintenance. Normal. Clean. Then I opened the external transfer ledger — the one that tracked funds moving outside Blackridge borders — and my fingers stopped on the trackpad.

There were transfers to Silverfang accounts. Monthly. Consistent. Not large enough to trigger an automatic audit, but steady. Like a drip.

I scrolled back. Further. Further.

The first transfer was dated fourteen months ago.

My father had died eight months ago.

I stared at the screen. Cooper shifted against my leg, and I pressed my thumb to the inside of my wrist without thinking. My pulse was fast. Too fast.

Fourteen months. Grayson had been funneling Blackridge resources into Silverfang territory for fourteen months. Six months before my father died. Six months before Liliana claimed the Alpha seat. Six months before the rogue ambush that nearly killed him and conveniently erased his memory.

This wasn't a pivot. This wasn't a man who woke up from a coma and suddenly remembered a different love. This was a plan. A long one. Funded, structured, and executed while he slept beside me, while I cooked for his pack, while I held his hand through Council meetings and smiled for photographs at alliance summits.

The mate bond in my chest throbbed. A dull, sick ache, like pressing on a bruise that went all the way to the bone.

I closed my eyes. My wolf stirred — she had been quieter since the mind-link broadcast, not gone but diminished, like an animal that had learned to make itself small. She pressed against the inside of my ribs now. Not howling. Just there. Waiting.

"I know," I whispered.

I opened my eyes and kept reading.

The transfers were routed through a secondary account tied to Grayson's personal authorization — not the pack's general fund, which would have required Callum's co-signature as Beta. He had been careful. Careful enough to avoid the obvious flags. But not careful enough to remember that his Luna had memorized the account structures she helped build.

I downloaded everything. Every transfer record, every authorization code, every timestamp. I saved them to an encrypted drive I kept in Cooper's treat bag — the one place in this house no one but me ever touched.

Then I closed the laptop and sat in the dark.

The evidence was damning. But evidence only mattered if it couldn't be dismissed. And right now, I was the woman who had thrown a silver-lined vase at her Alpha's head in front of twenty witnesses. Grayson had already framed the narrative — unstable Luna, emotional breakdown, a woman scorned. Anything I presented would be filtered through that lens. A bitter mate's fabrication. A desperate play for sympathy.

I needed a stage he couldn't control. A setting with witnesses he couldn't buy and cameras he couldn't erase.

I pulled up the pack calendar on my phone. The screen was cracked — I'd dropped it the night of the mind-link broadcast and hadn't replaced it. The date I was looking for was three weeks out.

The Blood Moon Banquet. Hosted annually at the Nighthollow Pack's grand lodge in the Cascade foothills. Every major Alpha in the region attended. Neutral territory. Nighthollow's security system was legendary — cameras in every corridor, every private room, every stairwell. The footage was archived by Nighthollow's Beta and made available to the Lycan Council on request. It was the one venue in the territory where what happened on camera couldn't be denied, altered, or buried.

I set the phone down and pressed my thumb to my wrist again. My pulse had steadied.

Three weeks. I could work with three weeks.

---

The call came two days later.

I was in the pack house kitchen, making breakfast for the warriors on morning rotation. It was a habit I hadn't broken — partly because the routine kept me sane, partly because the warriors who ate my food were the ones who still nodded at me in the hallways when Grayson wasn't watching. Loyalty is a quiet thing. It lives in small gestures. I wasn't above cultivating it over scrambled eggs.

My phone buzzed on the counter. The number belonged to Judith Crane, a pack-law consultant I'd retained during my father's estate dispute. She was expensive, discreet, and owed no allegiance to any Alpha in the region. I'd paid her retainer out of my personal account — the one Grayson didn't know about, funded by my mother's family before the mating.

"Eleanor." Judith's voice was flat. She didn't do pleasantries. "Your mate filed a preliminary petition with the Lycan Council yesterday. Formal rejection proceedings. Grounds cited are Luna instability and conduct unbecoming of a bonded mate."

I set down the spatula. The eggs kept cooking. I could hear them crackling in the pan.

"He's using the vase incident," I said.

"He's using everything. The vase, the shears, two witness statements from pack members describing erratic behavior. He's building a pattern. If the Council grants the petition, you lose your Luna title, your pack standing, and — this is the part you need to hear, Eleanor — under Section 14 of the Bonded Assets Provision, the rejecting Alpha can file a secondary claim for bloodline-linked assets as compensation for a broken bond."

The kitchen was very quiet. The eggs were burning. I didn't move.

"He's going after the Silverfang inheritance," I said.

"He's going after everything your father built. The territory, the resources, the bloodline registry. If the rejection goes through on his terms, he has legal grounds to petition for all of it. And with Liliana already holding the Silverfang seat, the Council would likely consolidate the claim in their favor."

I turned off the stove. My hand was steady. My wolf pressed against my ribs — harder now, a low vibration that felt like a growl trapped under water.

"How long do I have?"

"The Council review period is sixty days from filing. He filed yesterday. So fifty-nine days, minus processing."

Fifty-nine days. The Blood Moon Banquet was in nineteen.

"Judith. I need you to pull every precedent where a rejection petition was overturned due to evidence of premeditated mate-bond fraud."

A pause. Then: "How much evidence do you have?"

"Fourteen months of financial transfers from Blackridge accounts to Silverfang territory. Predating my father's death by six months. All authorized under Grayson's personal codes."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"That changes things," she said quietly.

"I know." I picked up the spatula and scraped the burned eggs into the trash. "I'll have the files to you by tonight."

I hung up and stood at the counter with both hands flat on the surface. The marble was cold under my palms.

This wasn't just a fight for my marriage. The marriage was already dead — it had been dead for fourteen months, maybe longer, maybe from the very first day Grayson looked at me and saw not a mate but a key to a territory he wanted. This was a fight for my bloodline. My father's legacy. The Silverfang territory that generations of my family had built and bled for.

And if I lost — if the Council granted Grayson's rejection on his terms — my wolf would not survive it. A formal rejection, backed by Council authority, didn't just sever the bond. It shredded it. Wolves had gone silent permanently after Council-sanctioned rejections. Some never shifted again.

I pressed my thumb to my wrist. Counted the beats.

Nineteen days until the Banquet. Fifty-nine days until the Council ruled.

I had the evidence. I had the venue. I had a plan that was still more skeleton than body, but the bones were there, and they were sharp.

Cooper padded into the kitchen and sat at my feet, looking up with those steady brown eyes. I reached down and scratched behind his ears.

"We're going to be fine," I told him.

He didn't look convinced. But he stayed.