The Alpha Rejected Me, But I Carry His Heir

The blood moon, swollen and red, hangs above Ravenscliff. Beneath it, I am about to lose everything. I sense him before I see him. That’s what the bond does — it hums under my skin the way it always has since I turned eighteen and the Goddess whispered his name into my chest. Kaelen. My mate. The Alpha of the Ravenscliff pack. The man I have loved in secret for three years, while he ignored the thread that bound him to me with every fiber of his being. I feel him looking for me tonight under all of those sets of wolf eyes, he will finally make his acknowledgment. I know he will. I've selected the pale grey dress my mother wore to her chosen ceremony. I braided moon flowers into my hair. I allowed myself, just for an hour, to believe I wouldn't be the only one standing alone. The great hall falls silent as I reach the dais. Kaelen stands in its center, broad-shouldered and terrible in his black formal coat; beside him, her hand curled around his bicep as if ownership itself had taken root there, is Seraphine. Daughter of the Eastern Alpha, beautiful in the sharp, cold way that only women who have been denied nothing and thus expect the world, hold themselves in. “Nova Vale.” His voice is flat as the stone I stand upon. Not the voice of a lover. The voice of an executioner. “Step forth.” I step forward. My heart is a frantic bird battering itself against my ribs. “The bond between us was an error of the Goddess,” Kaelen declares, his voice booming enough to reverberate against the rafters. “A failing. Ravenscliff can have no Luna who bears no rank to offer, no alliance to secure, no true worth.” His gray eyes meet mine; I see no hint of an apology, no flicker of pain. “I, Kaelen Thorne, Alpha of Ravenscliff, reject Nova Vale as my mate and Luna.” The word 'reject' isn’t a word. It's a blade. And the bond snaps. I've heard them talk of rejection; the older wolves whisper it with pitying awe. But nothing prepares me for the reality of it. A hand, cold and strong, reaches into my chest, closes around the thread of light that has sustained me for three years and tears it from my being. I hear myself scream. My knees strike the stone floor. In the distance, clear and sharp, Seraphine laughs. My hand clutches the floor and I burn. Through the haze of pain I see boots-his boots-pause before me. For one fraction of a second, I imagine he will kneel. That this is just a cruel test, that he will lift me up, embrace me, declare this is all a lie and we'll go home. He doesn't. He strides over me instead. “Have her removed from pack lands by sunrise,” he orders his Beta. He then looks directly at me, his gaze holding the coldness of a winter night. “You shouldn’t have dared to hope, Nova.” I’m dragged out beneath the red moon, not a single tear rolling down my cheeks. Somehow, amid the wreckage of my broken bond and Kaelen’s voice, I decided I would never waste another tear on that man. What I don't know then - what I won’t discover for another three weeks when the sickness sets in and the pack healer, who I bribe into silence with gold and an oath will confirm it-is that the Goddess has left me something on my way out the door. Not one heartbeat curled beneath my own. Two.