My Mate Dug Up My Father's Grave

I guarded my father's grave—a hero who died saving our pack.

One night, I found his runestone replaced by cheap pink marble. His ashes dumped in the flooded Under-Crypts.

The one who ordered it? Kael. My fated mate. The future Alpha.

He did it to bury a dead dog for Selene—an Omega from a foreign pack he was trying to impress.

When I confronted him, he rolled his eyes. “Your father is just a collection of old bones. It's not as if he can feel the cold.”

He thought I was a weak Beta who managed graves.

He didn't know I carry the bloodline of the White Wolf.

I didn't cry. I gathered evidence, walked to the Supreme Council, and filed three petitions.

One to strip his title. One to exile his accomplices. One to reject him completely.

It was time he learned who he had betrayed.

Chapter 1

Elara POV

The new moon offered little light, leaving the Ancestral Crypts to the mercy of long, skeletal shadows.

I held the iron lantern high, its unsteady flame carving a path for me through the sacred burial grounds of the Silvermoon Pack.

The night air was a sharp intake of damp earth and the resinous scent of ancient pines.

I was the Keeper of the Crypts, a duty I held not with honor, but with a quiet, unyielding reverence.

This place was holy.

It was the final resting place for our generations of Alphas, Lunas, and high-ranking warriors.

The Moon Goddess herself watched over these souls.

To disturb them was not merely a sin; it was an unraveling of our world's very fabric.

I walked toward the Sunlit Caverns, the highest and most hallowed section of the crypts.

I came to visit my father, Elder Thorne.

He was a legendary Gamma warrior, the third-in-command of our pack.

The memory was a constant, unwelcome guest: his body shivering violently in my arms, veins alight with the toxic fire of Silver poison, a fatal dose he took to shield our pack from rogue wolves.

Because of that, I fought the elders to bury him here, in the third row, grave number seven.

It was the only spot that caught the morning sun.

I had wanted him to feel warmth again, even in his eternal sleep.

A faint smile touched my lips as I neared his plot, a bouquet of fresh white magnolias clutched in my hand.

But the smile dissolved into cold ash on my tongue.

The lantern's iron ring slipped from my suddenly numb fingers, striking the stone path with a clang that echoed far too loudly in the silence.

The glass shattered.

My father's ancient runestone marker was gone.

In its stead was a block of cheap, garish pink marble.

Before my mind could fully process the meaning of that offensive stone, the damp moss had already soaked through the hem of my skirt—my legs had simply forgotten how to support my weight.

My hands trembled, not from cold, but from a burgeoning rage as they brushed against the unnaturally smooth surface.

Engraved on it were the words: Star's little princess.

Below the stone, the earth had been freshly turned.

A scent invaded my senses, and a violent nausea churned in my stomach. It was not the wholesome smell of disturbed soil. Half-buried near the marble's base was a wilting, expensive rose, its petals edged with rot. A cloying, synthetic perfume clung to it, the very essence of manufactured decay.

It smelled like rotting roses.

An Omega's scent.

A female wolf from outside our pack had been here.

I read the smaller words at the bottom of the pink marble.

With love, from your mother Selene.

A dog.

Someone had exhumed my father, a hero of the Silvermoon Pack, to inter the carcass of a common hound.

My breathing hitched, each inhalation a painful rasp against my ribs.

There was a stillness that settled deep in my bones, a quiet cold that had nothing to do with the night air. It was a power I kept leashed, a truth I concealed beneath the guise of a simple Beta.

I carry the hidden bloodline of the White Wolf—not merely a rank, but a sacred genetic legacy passed through the rarest descendants of the Moon Goddess. It had slumbered in my father's line for six generations, waiting for a vessel strong enough to bear it. My Beta status was never a limitation; it was a deliberate concealment, a cloak my father had taught me to wear to keep the bloodline safe from those who would exploit it.

A low, vibrational hum started in the back of my mind, the precursor to a snarl my Inner Wolf ached to release.

I forced it down.

Rage was a blunt instrument; I needed a scalpel.

I stood up, my boots crunching on the shards of lantern glass.

I melted back into the shadows, my keeper's senses, honed by years in this silent domain, already parsing the lingering scent of the crypt manager from the stale air.

I found Zephyr, a low-ranking male wolf, hunched over a pile of coins in the record tower. He flinched, a sheen of sweat instantly beading on his skin despite the cold, as I materialized from the darkness.

I did not yell.

I did not speak, but let the silence distend within the chamber. I watched a single bead of sweat trace a path through the grime on Zephyr's neck, my gaze fixed on it while the only sound was the distant, tooth-grinding shriek of an iron gate rocking in the wind.

Then I let a sliver of my true nature slip—not the full force, just a whisper. The temperature in the room dropped by five degrees. The candle flames flattened, their light thinning to a pale silver. Zephyr's breath misted before his face, and he knew, in that primal place all wolves possess, that he was not in the presence of a mere Beta.

The pressure in the room became a physical weight, and Zephyr's knees gave way, not with a crash, but with a soft, pathetic slump as if his very bones had dissolved.

"The records," I whispered, the sound cutting through the thick quiet. "Now."

He scrambled to his desk on all fours and shoved the heavy, leather-bound book toward me with trembling hands.

I flipped the thick pages until I found the entry from the red moon night, last month.

There was a magic contract for a temporary ash relocation.

My eyes scanned the parchment, looking for the new location of my father's urn.

The Under-Crypts.

The lowest, darkest, most damp level of the burial grounds.

A place where the sun was a forgotten myth.

A place meant for traitors and forgotten souls.

A hot, dry sting burned behind my eyes, but the fury simmering in my veins cauterized the tears before they could form.

I remembered my father shaking, his lips blue from the Silver poison.

I grabbed Zephyr by the collar of his rough tunic.

"Why," I asked, my voice so devoid of inflection it was more terrifying than any shout, "was this approved without my seal?"

Zephyr whimpered, his eyes wide with a primal terror.

"I... I was ordered," he choked out. "And paid."

"By whom?" I demanded, the fabric of his collar twisting tighter in my grip.

He tried to resist. His mouth clamped shut, and I saw the calculation in his eyes—the future Alpha's wrath versus mine. He chose wrong. I allowed the cold to intensify, just slightly, and frost began to crystallize along the iron hinges of the record tower's door. Zephyr stared at it, and the last of his defiance shattered.

Zephyr broke into ragged sobs. "Two thousand gold coins. It was Kael. He... he did it for Selene. Her family controls the northern silver mines—the Council has been pressuring him to secure a trade route for years. She insisted her 'precious baby' needed a place of high honor. The dog was a gift to win her favor, and the Council... the Council has been pushing Kael to close this alliance at any cost. "

The name struck me with the force of a physical blow, silencing the blood in my ears.

Kael.

The future Alpha of the Silvermoon Pack.

And my fated Mate.

And now I understood—this was not merely his arrogance. This was a man who believed political necessity justified any desecration. He had weighed my father's grave against a silver trade route, and he had made his choice.