The Cursed Alpha's Secret Pup

I have loved Alpha King Vale Varog since I was fourteen. Not in the giggly, desperate way the other girls in Nightshade Pack loved him. They loved the crown. They loved the title. They loved the way his name sounded when you whispered it at night. I loved him when he was bleeding. I was fourteen and had snuck into the war room to leave herbs for my mother - she was the pack healer then - and I found him there after the border war with the Red Claw. He was seventeen, already taller than every warrior, sitting alone on the floor with his back against the stone wall. His leathers were torn. Blood was running from a cut on his temple. His golden eyes - those cursed golden eyes everyone feared - were closed, and he was breathing like it hurt. Everyone said the Varog bloodline curse made them go feral. That they were monsters. But that night, he just looked like a boy trying not to cry. I knelt and pressed yarrow to his cut without asking. He flinched, then went still. He opened his eyes and looked at me for the first time. "You're Mara's wolfless girl," he said. "I'm Aston," I whispered. He didn't say thank you. He just stared at my hands, which were shaking so badly the yarrow kept slipping. Then he reached up and steadied them with his own. His hands were huge and warm. That was it. Four years ago. I have been his since. Tonight, the Moon Goddess finally agreed. The Mating Ceremony temple was full. Every adult in Nightshade had come. The bonfire in the center pit was taller than two men, and the drums beat so deep I felt them in my teeth. The air smelled like pine smoke and wet earth and too many wolves in one place. I stood in line with the other eighteen-year-old girls, wearing the same plain blue offering dress my mother had sewn. My knees were shaking so hard I thought I would fall. Not from fear. From hope. High Priestess Liora called us one by one. When she called "Aston Kaval, daughter of Mara and Jonah Kaval," my mother's hand squeezed my shoulder from behind. "You've waited long enough," she whispered. "Go." I stepped onto the moonstone circle. Vale stood on the Alpha platform above the fire, in his ceremonial black leathers. No shirt under the leather vest, so you could see the black curse veins that crawled from his left shoulder down to his wrist - they pulsed faintly every full moon, closer to his heart every year. His hair was longer than last year. His crown was simple iron. He was not looking at me. He was looking at the Moon, his jaw tight. Priestess Liora placed her cold hands on my temples. Her voice was ancient and carrying. "Child of Nightshade, your eighteenth year is complete. Let the Goddess speak." I closed my eyes. At first, nothing. Then - heat. It started in my chest and ripped outward like a live wire. My back arched. A scent hit me so strong it drowned out the smoke - pine, winter snow, blood and something darkly male that I knew instantly. My eyes flew open and locked on his. Vale's head snapped down. His nostrils flared. His whole body went rigid. The bond slammed into place. It was a recognition so violent it felt like my soul was being branded. Mate. The word wasn't a thought, it was a truth that vibrated in my bones. Fated. His. Mine. For the first time in my eighteen years, something moved inside me where my wolf should have been. A faint stirring. A tail flicking in deep sleep. Vale heard it too. I saw it in his face. His eyes widened. His lips parted. That relief, that raw want from when he was seventeen, flashed across his face for one second. He stepped forward - one step down from the platform, his hand half-reaching for me. My heart soared so fast I thought I would faint. Then his Beta, Kade, grabbed his arm and pulled him back, whispering harshly in his ear. I couldn't hear the words, but I saw Kade's eyes flick to the curse veins on Vale's arm, then to me, then back. Vale's expression changed. The want shut off like a door slamming. He shook Kade off, walked down the three stone steps, and stopped right in front of me. So close the heat from the bonfire and the heat from his body were the same. The entire pack went dead silent. Even the drums stopped. He looked down at me - at my shaking hands, my plain dress, my throat with no shifting mark - and his golden eyes turned to ice. "I, Vale Varog, Alpha King of Nightshade, reject you, Aston Kaval, as my mate and Luna." Someone screamed. My mother. I couldn't breathe. "What - what did you -" "I said I reject you," he said louder, so the back of the temple could hear. "The Moon Goddess made a mistake. A weak, powerless omega who has never shifted in eighteen years will never be worthy of being my Luna. You are wolfless. You are nothing to this pack." That's when the bond broke. If forming was like being branded, breaking was like being torn in half with bare hands. I felt it literally snap inside my chest. A white-hot lash of pain that started in my heart and shot down to my stomach, my thighs, my feet. My legs gave out. I hit the moonstone hard on my knees, and I couldn't even catch myself. I screamed - a terrible, raw sound that didn't sound human. The rejection sickness. I had seen one girl die from it when I was ten. She foamed at the mouth and seized for hours. Blood filled my mouth. My vision went black at the edges. Through it, I heard my father roaring, "VALE!" and my mother sobbing and trying to reach me, held back by warriors. And deep, deep in that blackness where I had been empty my whole life, something finally, furiously, woke up. She didn't whimper. She roared. She was huge. She was ancient. Her fur was pure white, glowing like moonlight on snow, and her eyes were molten silver. She had been sleeping for eighteen years because my mother's wolfsbane teas had kept her sedated - to hide her, I would later learn. But rejection pain is stronger than any herb. We are NOT nothing. She threw her head back inside my soul and howled. In the real world, I threw my head back on the temple floor and howled with her. It was not an omega's howl. The sound that ripped out of my throat made every wolf in that clearing - including the Alpha King - flinch and bare their necks by instinct. The bonfire flared white. When I opened my eyes, they were no longer brown. I could see my reflection in Vale's polished boot - silver, glowing. He was staring down at me, his face not cold anymore. Shocked. Pale. His mouth open. "A white wolf..." Priestess Liora whispered behind me, her hands shaking. "Blessed... impossible..." I didn't stay to hear more. I pushed up on bleeding knees, clutched my stomach where a new, different cramp had started - low and deep and terrifying - and ran. I ran past my mother, past my father, past the pack that had called me wolfless my whole life, past the border stones into the forest that led to the human highway. I ran until the drums were gone. I collapsed by the river, vomiting blood, and pressed my hand to my belly. And felt the faintest second heartbeat under my own. No. Oh, Goddess, no. The night before my birthday, during my first heat, when Vale had found me by the herbal shed and lost control to his wolf and his curse... I was pregnant. With his pup.