My Mate Replaced Me on Marking Ceremony by Alyssa J

My mate, the Alpha, was planning to replace me. He was terrified of the family curse that took his mother in childbirth, and he decided his human lover, Lila, was a safer bet to carry his heir.

The plan was as cruel as it was calculated. He was throwing me a lavish birthday party, not to celebrate me, but to create a public stage for my rejection. He told his most trusted men he would break our sacred bond and install Lila as his new mate right after.

The humiliation was a constant, public execution. He flaunted Lila at every turn, and for a tiny scrape on her hand, he performed a sacred life-force ritual meant only for a dying mate, a blasphemy that horrified our pack. At a formal dinner, Lila announced she was pregnant, and he fled with her when I demanded the rejection he had planned all along.

Later that night, through the agony of our bond, I felt him kiss her. It was a passionate, claiming kiss that finally shattered my heart. He thought I was too gentle to fight back, a willing sacrifice for the good of the pack.

He was wrong. Using his own rage against him, I twisted the rite and severed our bond myself. The next morning, I signed his papers, took none of his blood money, and walked out of his life forever, leaving him to the future he'd built on a bed of lies.

Chapter 1

The other side of the bed was cold.

Elara Thorne ran her hand over the empty space, the fine cotton sheets cool against her fingertips. It was a stark contrast to the warmth that should have been there, the heat of her mate, her Alpha, Kade Blackwood.

His scent lingered, a ghost in the room. Forest rain and dark cedar, the smell that had been her comfort, her home, since the day the Moon Goddess had declared them mates. But now, it was tainted. Underneath the familiar earthiness was something else, something cloyingly sweet and artificial. The perfume of a human woman.

Lila Faye.

*Unworthy,* her inner wolf snarled, pacing restlessly in the back of her mind. *Intruder. Chase her out.*

"He is the Alpha," Elara whispered to the empty room, trying to soothe the beast within as much as herself. "He has to deal with humans for the pack."

But the excuse felt hollow, worn thin from overuse.

She rose from the bed and walked to the large bay window overlooking the packhouse grounds. The afternoon sun cast long shadows across the manicured lawn. And there, near the ancient oak tree, stood Kade. He wasn't conducting pack business. He was laughing, his head tilted back, a genuine, carefree sound that she hadn't heard directed at her in months.

His attention was entirely focused on the woman beside him. Lila. The sunlight caught the dark strands of Lila's hair, styled so deliberately to look like her own, and it was like a physical blow, stealing the air from Elara's lungs.

A hollow ache pulsed from the mate bond, a spiritual emptiness that mirrored the cold sheets on their bed. Needing to feel something, anything, from him, Elara closed her eyes. She reached out with her mind, not to speak, but just to touch the edges of his consciousness through their mind-link, to feel the familiar warmth of his presence.

The connection snapped into place, but there was no warmth. No welcome.

Instead, she was a trespasser. An eavesdropper on a private channel.

Kade's voice filled her head, not with love, but with a tired, grim resolve. He wasn't speaking to her. He was speaking to his Beta and Gamma, his brothers in arms, Finn and Rhys.

"For the bloodline, I have to do it," Kade's thoughts were sharp, decisive. "Lila is human. She'll have a better chance of carrying an heir to term."

The curse. The Blackwood curse that claimed she-wolf mates in childbirth. It was his greatest fear.

Finn's voice, hesitant and laced with concern, broke through. "But Elara is the one the Goddess chose… To reject her, Alpha… you'll feel half the pain. It will cripple you."

*Rejection.*

The word slammed into Elara's consciousness, and her heart stopped. It wasn't a beat it missed. It simply stopped, a dead, heavy weight in her chest.

"My mind is made up," Kade's voice was cold iron. "After her birthday party, I'll hold the ceremony. She will accept the rejection. Then I will hold the Chosen Mate ceremony for Lila."

The party. The grand celebration he was planning for her. It wasn't a celebration. It was a farewell. A public stage for her downfall.