His Unwanted Mate: The Secret White Wolf

Seraphina POV:

I pulled the rosemary-crusted rack of lamb out of the oven, the heat seeping through my thick oven mitts while my stomach twisted into a cold, tight knot.

The antique clock on the penthouse kitchen wall showed eight in the evening. It was the eighth anniversary of the mating contract binding me to Julian Carlisle, the billionaire CEO of Black Stone Group and the supreme Alpha of the Black Stone Pack.

I glanced down at my left wrist. A custom anti-silver cuff sat cold against my pulse, masking the dormant aura inside me. To everyone in the Manhattan pack hierarchy, I was a genetic defect-a wolfless housewife who could neither shift into a Dire Wolf nor emit a scent, surviving solely on the Alpha's charity.

Closing my eyes, I tried to reach Julian through our Mind-Link. In werewolf society, mates and pack members preferred the Mind-Link to phones because it was instantaneous and could not be hacked. Yet the moment my awareness reached out, it hit an impenetrable barrier and recoiled, leaving a dull ache behind my eyes.

A Mind-Link required mutual mental alignment; Julian had sealed his barrier shut, refusing to let even a fraction of my emotions touch him. I exhaled slowly and picked up my phone from the marble island.

I dialed Julian's private number. The phone rang for a long time before the call abruptly ended. He had hung up on me.

A second later, a message appeared on my screen. "Busy."

My throat constricted until swallowing hurt. I took a deep breath and pressed two fingers to the throbbing vein between my eyebrows. Turning toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, I stared out at the glittering Manhattan skyline from the penthouse atop Black Stone Castle.

Since Julian refused to come home, I called my seven-year-old son, Finn. A child with strong Alpha blood should have known better than to leave his mother alone on a night like this.

I tapped the contact for Finn's smartwatch. It rang for nearly a minute before someone answered, and the gentle swell of a live violin drifted through the speaker from an upscale French restaurant.

"Finn, are you with your dad?" I kept my voice steady and soft.

Instead of Finn's voice, a sugary, breathless laugh echoed over the line.

"Oh, Seraphina, are you really using a seven-year-old's watch to check up on your husband?"

Chloe Sterling's voice hit me as a bucket of ice water poured straight over my head. She was the cherished heiress of the Sterling family and Julian's childhood sweetheart, a high-ranking she-wolf who had spent months trying to take my place as Luna.

My fingers tightened around my phone until my knuckles turned white. "Chloe? Why do you have Finn's watch?"

"Julian brought us out for a special anniversary dinner, and Finn is busy begging me to cut his steak," Chloe purred, emphasizing the word "us."

I could barely breathe. On the night of our anniversary, my husband had taken our son out to celebrate with another woman.

In the background, Finn's sharp, young voice rang out clearly. "Auntie Chloe, ignore that boring woman! She doesn't even have an Inner Wolf, and she has zero scent! I hate her!"

Among werewolves, a distinct scent was the primary mark of bloodline and status. Because my aura was sealed, even my own son looked down on me as less than human. My knees buckled, and my lower back slammed against the cold edge of the marble counter.

"Did you hear that, Seraphina?" Chloe whispered, dripping with malice. "A pup's instincts never lie. He needs a powerful, pureblooded Luna as a role model, not a pathetic wolfless waste of space."

I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted iron, refusing to plead the way I had for the past seven years. "Put him on."

I heard movement on the other end before Finn's impatient voice came through the receiver. "What? I'm busy! Dad said I can stay out until ten tonight!"

"Finn, tonight is my-"

"You're so annoying! All you ever do is nag me! I wish Auntie Chloe was my mom!"

The line went dead. I lowered the phone from my ear and watched the glass screen fade to black.

On the dining table, the rack of lamb had gone completely cold, the fat coating it in a waxy white film. I walked over to the table and picked up the heavy platter with both hands.

Without a second of hesitation, I let go.

The platter plunged to the hardwood floor and shattered into jagged white shards. A sharp piece sliced across my bare calf, drawing a thin bead of blood, yet I felt nothing at all. The invisible hand crushing my chest had finally squeezed the last bit of warmth out of my heart.

I picked up my phone again, scrolled to the contact labeled "Audrey," and pressed call.

Seraphina POV:

The line rang twice before Audrey Sullivan picked up, her crisp voice cutting through the quiet kitchen. "Calling me this late? What has Julian done to you this time?"

Audrey was my closest friend and one of the sharpest contract attorneys practicing before the Federal Werewolf Court. Hearing her familiar voice made my throat burn, and my own came out hoarse. "Audrey, I want to dissolve my Mate contract."

Papers rustled on the other end, followed by a sharp intake of breath. "Are you serious, Sera? Petitioning the Federal Werewolf Court for a unilateral contract termination against a reigning Alpha will tear you to shreds!"

"I'm done," I said, closing my eyes as Finn's voice, screaming that he wished Chloe were his mother, echoed in my head. "There is nothing left for me here."

Audrey fell silent for two seconds before adopting her cold, professional tone. "Fine. You legally hold a three-percent stake in Black Stone Group's core mineral veins through the original dowry agreement. If you're walking away, we'll make sure you reclaim every cent you're owed."

"I don't just want the assets. I want my life back." I opened my eyes, the submissive warmth I had worn for seven years disappearing from my gaze.

"Then we need solid proof that he breached the mate fidelity clause during your marriage," Audrey instructed briskly. "Under werewolf law, emotional betrayal by a marked mate causes severe spiritual damage. Only concrete evidence of infidelity will force the Pack Elders to waive his Alpha immunity."

"I'll find the proof. I'm done living with him, and I'm moving out tonight."

I ended the call and slipped the phone into my pocket. Stepping around the shattered pieces of the platter and the cold rack of lamb on the floor, I left the kitchen, crossed the dimly lit corridor, and pushed open the heavy oak doors of the master bedroom.

The room was saturated with Julian's scent-crisp cedarwood and biting winter snow. A werewolf's unique scent was supposed to anchor their mate, and for years, Julian's dominant Alpha scent had made me feel safe. Now, it made my stomach heave.

I headed straight for the vast walk-in closet, passing the racks of custom couture gowns Julian had forced me to wear to maintain his public image. From the bottom shelf, I pulled out a worn black nylon duffel bag and packed three plain cotton T-shirts, two pairs of jeans, and a travel toothbrush.

Crouching at the very back of the wardrobe, I pressed my palm against a dusty cedar panel and entered a sixteen-digit code.

A hidden compartment clicked open. Inside lay a scuffed, military-grade laptop-the weapon of "Lanyin," the ghost architect behind the federal neural network.

My fingertips trembled slightly as I brushed the cold alloy casing. For seven years, I had buried my true genius to play the obedient wife. I slid the laptop into the bottom of the duffel bag and zipped it shut. Its weight against my hip steadied my breathing.

Carrying the bag to the vanity, I studied the pale woman in the mirror and curled my lip into a cold smile. I opened the top drawer, took out the unlimited obsidian-and-gold supplementary credit card that symbolized my status as Black Stone's Luna, and tossed it onto the glass tabletop beside my brass house keys.

I slung the bag over my shoulder, left the bedroom, and headed down the grand spiral staircase. At the bottom, Martha Tucker, the castle's housekeeper, emerged from the side hall after completing her nightly patrol of the pack grounds.

Martha's eyebrows drew together when she spotted the nylon bag in my hand. "Luna? Where are you going at this hour?"

"Julian assigned me to handle some external pack business on the West Coast," I lied smoothly, keeping my expression blank. "I'll be back in a few days."

As an Omega servant bound to the castle, Martha didn't dare question the Alpha's orders. She bowed her head respectfully. "Shall I have a pack warrior drive you to the airfield?"

"No, thank you. I've already arranged for a ride."

I stepped past her before she could notice that Julian's scent was absent from my clothes and pulled open the heavy iron front doors. The cold autumn wind of late-night New York hit my face, clearing the last fog from my mind. I walked down the stone driveway to the streetlamp beyond the pack boundary and opened my rideshare app.

Ten minutes later, a black Toyota sedan pulled up to the curb. I yanked open the back door, tossed my duffel onto the seat, and climbed inside.

"Queens, 42nd Street," I told the driver, watching Black Stone Castle shrink in the dark rearview mirror as the car pulled away.

Seraphina POV:

The Toyota stopped outside a weathered red-brick apartment building on 42nd Street in Queens. I paid the driver, grabbed my duffel bag, and climbed three flights of creaking wooden stairs.

I unlocked the rusted deadbolt and entered apartment 3B. The cramped studio smelled faintly of damp plaster and warm air from the old radiator-a world away from the billion-dollar luxury of Black Stone Castle.

Yet my chest felt lighter than it had in years. I dropped my bag onto the frayed sofa, drew the yellowed curtains shut against the neon streetlights, and set my military-grade laptop on the wobbly wooden coffee table.

When I pressed the power button, pale blue light washed over my face as lines of encrypted code scrolled rapidly across the screen. I placed my fingers on the keyboard, drew in a steady breath, and began typing at blinding speed, reconnecting to the dark web's neural hub I had abandoned seven years ago.

Once the highest-level security protocols verified my biometrics, the handle "Lanyin" appeared online across the network's most secure nodes. Within three minutes, I created a phantom routing script that bounced my IP address across twelve offshore servers, making it extremely difficult for Black Stone Group's cybersecurity division to trace my signal.

Leaning back against the sofa cushions, I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a palm-sized mechanical wolf sentinel forged from dark steel and topped with a tiny red metal hat.

Julian had forged this sentinel himself seven years ago as a wedding gift. It was the only thing of his I had brought with me. Looking down at its cold metal shell, I pressed the rune-carved switch on its chest.

"I do not love you."

The mechanical voice box repeated the same flat, emotionless recording it had played every night for the past seven years.

A dry laugh escaped my throat. Without blinking, I tossed the red-hatted mechanical wolf into the wire trash basket beside the table.

I looked down at my left ring finger, where a plain moonstone band gleamed dull white in the dim room. Gripping the band with my right thumb and forefinger, I pulled it over my knuckle, leaving a pale indentation on my skin, and dropped it onto the coffee table beside me.

I picked up my phone, logged into Black Stone Group's internal HR portal using my employee ID, and submitted my immediate resignation as Senior Data Analyst. Then I dialed an encrypted European number I hadn't dared to call in seven years. It belonged to Helaine Parks, the Supreme Elder of the White Wolf bloodline and head of the couture house Aethelgard.

The moment her stern, aged voice answered, my eyes stung. "Grand-aunt, it's Sera. I'm ready to come home to Aethelgard."

Julian POV:

At eleven o'clock at night, I turned my black Range Rover into the gated drive of Black Stone Castle, with Finn snoring softly in the passenger seat, his tablet beside him.

I killed the engine, lifted my sleeping son out of the SUV with one arm, and strode through the brightly lit front doors into the main foyer.

I inhaled instinctively, expecting to catch that faint, familiar trace of warm cotton that meant Seraphina was waiting for me by the stairs. Instead, the vast marble hall was silent.

"Seraphina?" I frowned, letting a ripple of Alpha Dominion roll through the ground floor. No one answered.

Martha hurried out from the side corridor, bowing her head under the pressure of my aura. "Alpha, the Luna left with a travel bag three hours ago. She said you sent her to the West Coast on pack business."

"I sent her to the West Coast?" My cold grey eyes narrowed into slits. After handing Finn over to a nanny, I took the stairs two at a time and shoved open the master bedroom doors.

On the glass vanity, the obsidian supplementary card and her brass keys sat side by side under the chandelier light. I yanked open the closet doors. Every couture gown and diamond set remained untouched; only her cheapest human clothes were gone.

My gaze shifted to the nightstand, and my pupils contracted. The red-hatted steel wolf sentinel was missing.

My hand closed around the titanium lighter in my pocket, my Alpha strength denting the heavy metal casing as I clenched it. A violent snarl rumbled in my chest-how dare a scentless, wolfless woman play this pathetic runaway game with me!