Bullied by my Alpha Mate

By the time training ended, Lisa’s hands were raw. She rinsed the dirt from her palms at the pump behind the healer’s den, rubbing until the cold water turned her skin red. Mud swirled away between the cracks of old stone, but it did nothing to wash off the heat still clinging to her from the sparring ring. Or the memory of Adrian hand around her wrist. She shut the pump off hard. The yard beyond the den had nearly emptied. Most of the young wolves had already gone to breakfast, their voices fading into the larger hum of pack life. Smoke curled from the central kitchens. Somewhere deeper in camp, children were laughing. It should have felt ordinary. Safe, even. Instead, Lisa felt watched. She looked behind her . No one was there. Still, the back of her neck prickled. “Lisa.” She turned sharply. Mia stood in the doorway of the healer’s den, arms full of folded cloth, one gray brow raised. She was small and wiry and at least sixty, though everyone in Black Moon kne

The cold outside the dining hall should have calmed her.But It didn’t. Isla stood on the stone steps with stew drying on her skirt and the night air cutting through the heat of her humiliation. Her whole body was shaking — not with weakness, not exactly, but with the effort of holding herself together. Behind the heavy wooden doors, the sound of the hall had already started up again, muffled now, the pack swallowing the scene whole and moving on as if nothing had happened. As if she had not just been made into a spectacle. Again. She wrapped her arms around herself and started walking. The path between the hall and the healer’s den curved through the center of camp, lit by low lanterns and the pale spill of moonlight over the roofs. Wolves crossed here and there in pairs and small groups, their voices low, their eyes sliding to her and then away again. Some had seen what happened. Some had only heard the tail end of it. Either way, she could feel the story moving faster than she

The next morning, the summons came before sunrise. Lisa had barely slept. She had spent most of the night turning Mary’s warning over in her mind, listening to the wind scrape against the healer’s den and wondering which was worse — Adrian’s cruelty when he felt in control, or whatever might come if that control finally cracked. By dawn, her thoughts felt bruised. She was grinding fever root in the back room when a knock sounded at the door. Mia glanced up from the herbs she was sorting. “Get that.” Lisa wiped her hands on her skirt and crossed the room. When she opened the door, one of the Alpha’s messengers stood on the step, shoulders dusted with frost. “The south patrol came in injured,” he said. “Mia is needed at the lower barracks. And so is she.” He jerked his chin toward Lisa. Mia appeared behind her before Lisa could answer. “How many?” “Three with cuts. One with a shoulder out. Nothing fatal.” Mia nodded once. “We’ll come.” The messenger hesitated, then added, “Alp

The next morning, Black Moon felt different. Not louder. If anything, quieter. The kind of quiet that comes after a storm has knocked a tree loose somewhere in the dark and everyone is waiting to see where it will fall. Lisa noticed it the moment she stepped out of the healer’s den with a bucket of rinse water in one hand. Wolves in the yard were speaking in lower voices than usual. Conversations paused when certain people passed. Eyes lingered too long, then slid away. The air itself seemed full of held breath. Last night had changed something. Adrian shoving Tony against the post in the middle of the dining hall had been too public, too sharp, too strange to dismiss as ordinary pack aggression. Not when it had happened over a joke about her. Not when the Alpha had walked in and seen enough to know the shape of the problem, even if not its name yet. It won’t stay small. Mary’s words had followed Lisa into sleep and back out again. She crossed to the side trough and dumped the

Lisa kept writing, but her attention already shifted back to the marks on Adrian’s arm which had only shown for a second before he dragged the sleeve back down, yet the image stayed with her — four raw crescents, red and angry, cut deep enough that they could not have been an accident. Not from work. Not from training. They looked like claw marks. Self-inflicted, a quiet voice in her mind whispered. The thought unsettled her so badly she nearly missed the next count he gave. “Six short spears,” Adrian said. “What?” His head snapped up. “I said six.” Lisa stared at the crate, then wrote it down. Her pulse had changed rhythm again, no longer racing from anger alone. Something colder had entered it now. A new awareness. A different kind of danger. By the time the morning assignment ended, she had made three mistakes in the ledger and crossed out two lines hard enough to tear the page. One of the apprentices was sent to return the records to the quartermaster. The other le