The Alpha's Borrowed Mate

Hilde Kane's POV

This was the first Winter Solstice Celebration I had officially presided over as Luna. And it had gone perfectly.

I held my smile to the very end, graciously accepting the elders' compliments before bidding them goodnight.

Then a savage pain ripped through my chest—so sudden, so violent, I nearly blacked out. I threw a hand against the nearest tree to keep from collapsing.

"What's happening, Sonia?" I gasped, barely able to breathe. "I feel… something terrible."

"Betrayal. He has betrayed us! Go—now!" My wolf Sonia's voice was a shriek of pure fury.

What?

My mind went blank, as though I'd been struck over the head.

Sonia had sensed betrayal—from my husband. From Alpha Stuart.

How was that possible?

Barely an hour ago, Stuart had pressed me against the wall of the Temple of the Moon, kissing me with an intensity that left me breathless. If my stepsister Lorena hadn't barged in on us, we would have been making love right now, sharing the most romantic night of our marriage.

"Impossible. Stuart would never betray me." I managed to steady myself as the pain ebbed. "Sonia, you must be wrong."

"I am not wrong. Go! NOW!" She was almost feral with rage.

I had never seen her like this.

Sonia was not a wolf who panicked easily. Even on the night of my first shift—the first time I truly met her—she had been far calmer than I was.

But now she was like a bomb about to detonate, hurling herself against the walls of my consciousness, desperate to tear free and drag me back in wolf form, all four legs pounding the earth.

I clamped down hard on the shift.

"Sonia, I can handle this. Where is he?"

"The Temple! Go to the Temple!"

I grabbed fistfuls of my gown and ran. My heels struck the cobblestones in a rapid, jagged staccato.

Outside the Temple of the Moon, the bonfire had burned low. Only a few stragglers remained on the lawn, drinking in the dark.

I charged straight for the main doors and threw them open. Empty.

"There's no one here, Sonia. Are you sure—"

"Upstairs! All the way to the top!" She cut me off, frantic.

I turned toward the staircase and began to climb. The only sound in the entire temple was the echo of my heels on stone. Without thinking, I softened my steps and held my breath.

At the top floor, there was a single door—wooden, ajar, leaking a sliver of warm amber light. And something else.

Sounds.

My feet froze to the floor.

Panting. Low. Stifled. It seeped through the crack in thin, relentless waves—wet, ragged, urgent. Not one person's breathing, but two, their rhythms tangled together, layered on top of each other. Each breath scraped across my nerves like a dull blade.

"My little sweetheart, you love it when I punish you like this, don't you? Take every inch of me."

In that instant, every drop of blood in my body turned to ice. My scalp prickled. I knew that voice—I knew it as well as my own heartbeat. It was my mate. Stuart Dormer.

He was calling someone else "sweetheart." His tone dripped with undisguised, intoxicated lust—a slap across my face delivered at full force.

"He has betrayed us." Sonia let out a howl, low and strangled.

I bit down hard on my trembling lip and shoved the door wide open.

Two bodies on the floor, tangled together.

Stuart saw me first. His pupils contracted sharply, and in the next second he wrenched himself upright, snatching at the clothes strewn around him, pulling them on in clumsy haste. The flush hadn't faded from his face, but when he spoke, his voice had already settled into that practiced Alpha composure.

"Hilda, what are you doing here?"

My gaze moved past him to the other figure. I had expected a stranger—some unknown woman lurking in the shadows who had stolen my mate. But when I saw the face clearly, I nearly stopped breathing altogether.

It was my stepsister. Lorena Kane.

She sat half-turned away from me, shoulders trembling, hands fumbling desperately for her clothes.

Then I saw the angry red marks scored across the back of her neck and shoulders, and the blood in my veins went from ice to boiling.

Stuart stepped forward, blocking my line of sight.

I shoved him aside.

"Look at me, Lorena." My voice shook.

She turned her head slowly. The corner of her mouth twitched. Her lower lip appeared to be bleeding where she had bitten through it. Her reddened eyes flickered across my face, then quickly looked away. But in that single glance, I caught something unmistakable—a flicker of calm self-assurance, and beneath it… triumph.

"Hilda, I'm sorry." Stuart finished buttoning his shirt and stood before me again.

"What did you do to her? She just turned eighteen—she's barely more than a pup—" My throat constricted. I pointed at Lorena.

"It was an accident."

"Did you force her?"

"Are you out of your mind? I'm an Alpha!" Stuart's brow furrowed, displeasure darkening his expression. "I don't need to force anyone."

He glanced sideways at Lorena.

She was dressed now, standing behind him. The faintest curl lifted the corner of her lips.

"I've worshipped Alpha Stuart since I was a little girl. You know that, Hilda. I… I love him. I couldn't help myself. I feel… like we were meant to be together."

My stepsister loved my mate? They were meant to be?

She wasn't my parents' biological daughter, but she had grown up in our household, been raised as my closest companion. And the man she had just been with was supposed to be my partner for life. Now the two people I loved most in this world had joined hands to betray me.

A roar filled my ears. It felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked from the room, and a crushing sense of suffocation closed around my throat.

I clutched at my collar, struggling to breathe, and turned toward the stairs.

I hadn't taken two steps before a pair of hands seized my shoulders.

"Hilda, you are the one I love. Please believe me."

I spun around, raised my hand, and slapped him across the face with every ounce of strength I had.

Stuart's head snapped to the side. A faint handprint bloomed on his cheek, but his grip on my shoulders didn't loosen.

"Let me explain."

I wrenched free, chest heaving. "Shut up."

I pointed toward the room behind him, my voice trembling. "This is the Temple of the Moon. This is where we stood before the Moon Goddess and swore to be faithful to each other forever. And you—here, of all places—you betrayed me."

Stuart's expression shifted.

Lorena emerged from the room, head bowed, dark hair falling over her eyes, producing a series of theatrical little sobs.

She murmured, "Dear sister, just accept reality. Otherwise, you—"

Stuart whipped around, crimson flaring in his irises, and the full crushing weight of an Alpha's dominance slammed into Lorena. "Lorena. You've said far too much tonight!"

She staggered backward, pinned against the wall, shoulders quaking uncontrollably.

A heartbeat later, Stuart turned back to me, and just like that, the tenderness had been painted back onto his face.

"Hilda, darling, believe me—tonight was nothing but an accident. Forgive me."

I looked past him at Lorena. She was slowly regaining her breath, head still lowered, fingers twisting the hem of her blouse, the corners of her eyes raw and red, the muscles of her face still contorted with lingering pain.

No. This was not that simple.

Something had been off about Lorena for a long time.

We had been inseparable growing up. She used to cling to me and say that when she was older, she would become a warrior—she would protect me, take care of me.

Then one day, all that closeness stopped dead. Which day?

My eighteenth birthday.

The day I confirmed my mate bond with Stuart. After that, my sister became a different person. She would watch me with anguished eyes, and when I met her gaze, the anguish would harden into something that looked like hatred. Before long she was lashing out—mocking me, tearing me down with vicious words. Once, drunk, she had snarled at me: "Why do you have to be the goddamn Luna? Why don't you just leave—get the hell out and never come back?"

At the time, I'd written it off as teenage rebellion—a girl struggling to adjust as her closest sister found a mate.

But what if it was never rebellion? What if, in Lorena's eyes, I had never been her beloved sister at all—only the obstacle standing between her and Stuart?

A tremor ran through my entire body, unbidden.

So behind all that cruelty toward me lay a deep, festering jealousy.

"Hilda, are you even listening to me? Please forgive this one moment of madness between Lorena and me."

I blinked back to the present and found Stuart holding my hand, his expression gentle, as though everything that had just happened was nothing more than a misunderstanding.

"Stuart," I said slowly, "do you dare swear an oath? Here, in the sacred Temple of the Moon—swear that this was the one and only time."