REJECTED BY MY MATE, CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA KING

Seraphine's POV The pack house was too quiet and that was the first sign something was wrong. I stepped into the hallway and felt it immediately, that specific kind of stillness that settles over a place when everyone inside it knows something the person walking in does not. The training yard outside had gone silent. The kitchen had gone silent. Even the usual creak of the upper floorboards had stopped. Yvonne caught me at the bottom of the stairs before I could figure out why. Her hands were shaking when she grabbed my arm. "Alpha came back an hour ago," she whispered. "He brought someone with him." I did not ask who. My stomach already knew. Two years ago I left my pack, my parents, and everything I had ever been certain of for Xander Ironvale. I was eighteen when we met at a border patrol and the mate bond hit me so hard I forgot how to speak. He was the Alpha of Stoneclaw Pack, tall and certain of himself in a way that made every room feel smaller than he was. I thought the Moon Goddess had finally decided to be generous. I packed one bag, left a letter my father probably still has not forgiven me for, and followed Xander without looking back. For a while it really was everything I had imagined. He held me like I was something worth holding. He introduced me to his pack as his Luna and kissed me in front of all of them like he was proud of it. We married under a full moon and I told myself the ache of missing home was just the cost of something good. Mates were supposed to be forever. The bond was supposed to mean something. I had stopped believing that about six months ago. I just had not admitted it out loud yet. I pushed the bedroom door open before I could change my mind. The scent hit me first. Sweet and heavy, already settled into the room like it had been there long enough to belong. Then I saw them. Xander against the headboard, bare-chested, sheets tangled at his waist. A woman pressed against his side with her hand flat on his chest like that was where it lived. She turned when she heard the door and gave me the kind of smile that only works when the person smiling knows they have already won. "She's early," the woman said. Xander looked at me the way he had been looking at me for months. Like I was a problem he had already solved and moved past. "Seraphine." I walked out. I do not remember the hallway or the stairs. The next thing I was aware of was sitting in the library with an open book in my lap that I was not reading and my hands shaking against the pages. Yvonne appeared in the doorway after a few minutes and told me he was waiting for me in the living room. I closed the book and went. They were sitting together when I walked in. The woman had her hand over her stomach. Not dramatically. Just resting there, the way women do when they want everyone in the room to notice without appearing to try. "I'm Elisa," she said before I could open my mouth. "I'm sure this is surprising." I looked at Xander. "She's carrying my child," he said. Flat. No hesitation. Like he had been practicing the sentence and wanted to get it right on the first try. The room tilted. "No." "Two months along." Elisa's voice was soft and pleasant. The kind of voice that knows it does not need to be loud. "The doctors confirmed it this morning." Two months. I stood there and counted backward through two months of nights I had spent waiting up for him, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, convincing myself that distance was just something married people went through sometimes. "They confirmed something else as well," Xander said. "It is not me. You cannot have children, Seraphine." Elisa let out a soft laugh. Not cruel. Worse than cruel. Amused. "A Luna who cannot give her Alpha an heir." I stood there with the mate bond wrapped around my chest like something that had once kept me warm and was now just in the way. I looked at the man I had given up my entire life for and I waited for him to say something that would make any of this make sense. He looked back at me with nothing in his eyes at all. "You will move to the east wing tonight," he said. "The servants' quarters are being prepared." I turned around and left the room. I did not cry in the hallway. I did not cry anywhere. I walked to the small room at the end of the east corridor, sat on the edge of a cot that smelled like other people, and pressed my palms flat against my knees until my hands stopped shaking. My sister Amara had warned me about Xander before I ever left home. I had not listened. I was eighteen and certain and standing inside a mate bond that felt like sunlight at the time. Now I sat in a room I had never been in before and tried to remember what I had told Amara when she begged me to wait. That I knew what I was doing. That the bond meant something. That I was sure. I had never been more wrong about anything in my life. Amara would have said I told you so. But Amara was gone. Rosita Hayden had made sure of that two months ago, dressed it up as a rogue attack, and walked away clean while my family buried what was left of my sister. That was why I was here. Not for Xander. Not for the bond. For Amara. I was still sitting there, turning that over in my head and forcing my breathing back to something steady, when I heard footsteps stop outside the door. Not Yvonne. Too heavy. Too deliberate. Then a voice I did not recognize, low and careful, talking to someone further down the corridor. "Rosita says it is handled. The girl is no longer a problem." My blood went cold. I pressed my back against the wall and did not breathe. Rosita. The name I had been tracking for two months. The woman who killed my sister and called it a rogue attack. And she already knew I was here. The footsteps moved on. The corridor went quiet. I sat in the dark with my heart slamming against my ribs and understood one thing clearly. I had run out of time to be careful.