Claimed as the Alpha's Second Luna

Chapter 1

Annie's POV:

"Annie, I want you to have a child with my husband, Alpha Alexander."

I blinked.

The roses smelled sweet on the breeze. Somewhere above us, a bird kept chirping as though Elena hadn't just turned my entire life upside down.

"Sorry—what?"

Elena sat across from me in the rose garden, looking much the same as she always did. Her long, pale blonde hair fell over her shoulders. Her sapphire eyes still held that warm, easy glow she showed everyone.

She was elegant. Beautiful. Everything a Luna was supposed to be. Everyone in the pack liked her, and it was easy to understand why. Even I liked her, though I had always kept my distance.

For a moment, I convinced myself I'd heard her wrong.

Elena set her teacup down and folded her hands in her lap. Her knuckles had gone white.

"A few years ago, the Ironclaw Pack was attacked," she said. “I was badly wounded in the fighting. The wounds healed, but my body can't carry a child anymore.”

"The Ironclaw Pack needs an heir," she continued. Her voice stayed even, almost detached, as though she were describing something that had happened to someone else. "Alexander is the last of his direct bloodline. If he dies without a child, the strongest families in the pack will tear each other apart fighting over who becomes the next Alpha."

She lowered her eyes.

"The Council is already putting pressure on him. They say that if I can't give him an heir, he should choose a woman who can."

Elena's mouth curved, but there was no warmth in it.

"I'd rather choose that woman myself than wait for the Council to shove some ambitious she-wolf into my husband's bed."

She looked at me again.

"Do you understand, Annie? If I do nothing, eventually they'll put a woman beside him who wants his title, his bed, and everything that comes with them."

I stayed quiet for a beat, trying to make sense of what she was asking.

Everyone in the Ironclaw Pack knew how much Alexander loved her. So did the rest of the Northern Territory.

They had been mated for ten years. In that time, the pack had survived attacks, food shortages, and territory wars. Through all of it, Alexander's devotion to Elena had never wavered.

Whenever she entered a room, his eyes found her.

Always.

It wasn't duty. It wasn't some public display of respect from an Alpha to his Luna. It was the way a man looked at the woman he loved.

And Alexander had never lacked options.

He was one of the most powerful Alphas in the North, and women noticed. They let their scents linger around him and invented excuses to approach him, but he shut every one of them down.

Any she-wolf who openly challenged Elena's position risked exile.

Nobody was stupid enough to come between them.

Yet his mate—his beloved Luna—was sitting across from me, asking me to carry his child.

"Why me?"

The tension around Elena's eyes eased.

"Because you've already had a healthy child. Your body has proven it can do this."

I frowned. That was true of plenty of women in the pack. It didn't make me special.

Elena seemed to read the doubt on my face. She leaned closer and lowered her voice.

"And more importantly—you don't want my husband."

I didn't answer right away.

Because she wasn't wrong.

Before Ironclaw, I had belonged to the Thornwood Pack.

My mate, Louis, had been the pack's bravest warrior. Five years ago, enemies crossed our border. When our warriors were forced to retreat, Louis stayed behind and held the line alone.

He saved everyone he could.

He never made it back.

The survivors saw him go over the cliff and into the river below. By the time they reached the bank, he was gone.

His body was never recovered.

I still remembered kneeling in the mud that day with newborn Jack clutched against my chest.

A severed mate bond felt like losing half your soul. I survived, but my wolf let out one desperate, broken howl, then retreated so deep inside me that I could no longer reach her.

After that, no matter how often I called, she never answered.

I still carried a wolf's scent, but I couldn't shift. I couldn't feel her.

To every other wolf in the territory, I might as well have been human.

The Thornwood Pack dissolved not long after Louis died. A wolfless woman was no use to a pack at war, and I had a newborn son to keep alive.

No pack wanted us.

So I carried Jack out of our old territory and followed the edges of other pack lands. We had no permission to enter, so we stayed outside their borders, searching for somewhere safe to spend the night.

Sometimes we found an abandoned hunter's shack. Sometimes a cave. More nights than I wanted to remember, we curled up beneath the trees and waited for dawn.

Eventually, Elena persuaded the Ironclaw Pack to take us in. She gave Jack and me a home when no one else wanted us, and I never forgot her kindness.

Even after we were given a place in the pack, I kept my distance from everyone else. I didn't attend pack gatherings, get involved in politics, or try to improve my standing. My whole world had narrowed to one thing: keeping Jack safe.

When Elena later gave me a position in her household, I did everything I could to prove that her kindness had not been wasted. I kept her rooms in order, carried out every task she gave me, and made sure she never had a reason to regret helping us.

No matter how small the job was, I did it as well as I could.

But today, Elena was asking for something no amount of gratitude could make easy.

She was asking me to carry her husband's child.