My Alpha Husband Chose His Mistress,I Became His Rival'sLuna

Chapter 1 — Ofiura's POV

"My son finally has an heir."

Helena said it the way she said everything, like she was reading a weather report. She didn't even look up from her tea. The morning light caught the diamonds on her fingers as she stirred, and for a second I thought I'd misheard her.

I hadn't.

"I'm sorry?" I set my fork down. Three years at this breakfast table, and I still hadn't learned to eat in this house without bracing for something.

"Patricia is pregnant." Helena finally lifted her eyes to mine. Not cruel, exactly. Almost gentle. That was the worst part. "Six months along, the doctor says. Damon's assistant. I assume you remember her."

I remembered her. Quiet, efficient, always two steps behind Damon with his coffee and his schedule and, apparently, his bed.

"That's not possible." My voice came out flatter than I expected. "The doctor told us Damon can't—"

"Can't he?" Helena's smile didn't move. "Because Patricia seems to be managing it just fine. Which makes me wonder, Ofiura, what exactly happened to those test results of yours."

The room tilted a little. Not because I was confused. Because I understood exactly what she was doing, and I couldn't believe she was doing it out loud, over eggs, like it was nothing.

"You think I falsified my own fertility results."

"I think it's an interesting coincidence."

Damon hadn't said a word. He sat at the head of the table with his phone in his hand, thumb moving, not even pretending to be part of this conversation until he had to be. Three years married to this man, and I still didn't know if the silence was guilt or boredom.

"Say something." I looked at him. "Damon."

He set the phone down like I'd interrupted something important. "What do you want me to say?"

"That this is insane. That your mother is accusing me of tampering with medical records because your assistant is pregnant."

"She's not just my assistant anymore." He said it carefully, like he'd rehearsed it. Maybe he had. "She's carrying my child, Ofiura. That changes things."

"It changes things." I laughed, and it came out wrong, too sharp. "You've been sleeping with her for six months and it *changes things.*"

"Watch your tone," Helena said.

"I'll watch whatever I want." I was standing now. I didn't remember standing. "You cheated on me. For six months. And I'm supposed to sit here and be told I lied about a doctor's report?"

Damon had the decency to at least look at the table. Helena did not.

"No one is asking you to lie about anything," she said. "We're asking you to be reasonable. Patricia will move into the east wing once the baby is closer. When it's born, you'll raise it as your own as Damon's heir, as this family's heir. You remain his Luna. Nothing changes for you publicly."

"Nothing changes." I stared at her. "You want me to raise his mistress's baby down the hall from where she sleeps with my husband."

"I want this family to survive," Helena said. "You've had three years and nothing to show for it. This is a solution."

I looked at Damon one more time, waiting for anything an apology, a denial, a flicker of shame. He looked back at me like a man waiting for a storm to pass so he could get back to his day.

"You knew about this," I said. "Before your mother told me. You knew, and you let her be the one to say it."

"I didn't know how to—"

"Don't." I picked my bag up off the back of the chair. My hands weren't shaking, which surprised me. "Don't finish that sentence."

I walked out before either of them could say anything else, out the front doors and down the steps to my car, and I sat there in the driver's seat for a long moment just breathing, because if I started the engine before I calmed down I was going to drive it into something.

I called my mother instead.

"He's been having an affair," I said, the second she picked up. "For six months. His assistant. She's pregnant, and his mother just told me I probably faked my own test results."

There was a pause on the line, and when my mother spoke again her voice had that careful, cornered softness I knew too well. "Ofiura. Oh, sweetheart. Let me—"

The line shifted, a fumbling sound, and then my stepfather's voice replaced hers, flat and already impatient, like he'd been standing close enough to grab the phone the second he heard my name.

"What's this about a divorce."

"It's not your conversation."

"It's my house you'll come running back to if you throw away everything you have." He didn't raise his voice. He never needed to. "You think Damon's family will just let this go quietly? You think our business survives you humiliating them?"

"He cheated on me."

"Men do that." He said it the way you'd state a fact about the weather. "You knew that going in. What you don't get to do is blow up an arrangement that's kept this family standing for three years because your pride is hurt."

"My pride." My hands were shaking around the phone now. "He got another woman pregnant."

"And you're going to throw away everything over it." A pause, and I could hear my mother saying something low in the background, cut off almost before it started. "You'll go to that banquet, you'll behave yourself, and you'll stop calling here with hysterics. Do you understand me?"

I didn't answer him.

I hung up instead, because if I kept the phone to my ear one more second I was going to say something to him that I couldn't take back, and some small, stubborn part of me still wasn't ready to find out what that would cost my mother.

I sat in the car a long time after that.

Fine. If that was what everyone wanted from me, patience, understanding, a wife who looked the other way while her husband built a family with someone else then I was done being that wife. Damon had spent six months doing exactly what he wanted with exactly who he wanted.

I could do the same.

By the time I got home that night, I'd already decided. I went through my closet until I found the black dress I'd never had a reason to wear, the one that did not belong to a Luna who stayed home and endured things quietly. I did my makeup with hands that were finally, blessedly steady.

If Damon could destroy our marriage without a second thought, I could give myself one reckless night and not think about it either.

The club I chose was loud enough that I didn't have to hear myself think. I ordered one drink and didn't finish it before I saw him….a man sitting alone in the corner booth, dressed like the noise around him was beneath his notice, watching the room the way someone watches a business he already owns.

I don't know what made me walk over. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was three years of doing the reasonable thing.

"Hi," I said. "Can you buy me a drink?"