The Cursed Alpha's Secret Pup

The Night Before

The river water was freezing.

I stayed on my knees in the mud, both hands pressed to my stomach, waiting for that second heartbeat to go away. Praying it was just an echo from the bond breaking, or my own heart beating too fast.

It didn't go away.

Inside me, my wolf - who I still didn't have a name for - was pacing, agitated, circling around a warm spot low in my belly that hadn't been there yesterday.

Pup. Protect.

No.

I curled forward and threw up again. This time it was just water and bile. The silver glow in my eyes was fading, but I could still see it reflected in the river. Silver eyes. White wolf. Blessed healer.

My mother had lied to me for eighteen years.

"A little wolfsbane tea every morning, Aston. To help your anxiety. To help you sleep."

Wolfsbane tea suppresses a wolf. If you give it to a child from birth, her wolf will never surface. The pack will think she's wolfless. An omega.

Why would my own mother make me wolfless?

The answer was suddenly, horribly obvious.

Because a white wolf hasn't been seen in a hundred years. Because every Alpha kingdom would have killed to breed one. Because my mother was trying to hide me.

And she had succeeded. Until Vale Varog rejected me so hard he broke through her drugs.

I heard footsteps crashing through the ferns behind me. I scrambled back, baring my teeth - my actual teeth, which felt sharper now.

It was my mother.

Mara Kaval was not a soft woman. She had delivered half the pups in Nightshade and set broken legs without flinching. But when she saw me on the riverbank - dress torn, knees bleeding, eyes silver - she collapsed to her knees and started sobbing.

"Aston. Oh, my baby. My white girl."

"You knew," I said. My voice sounded wrong. Like two voices at once. "You knew what I was."

She crawled to me and grabbed my face. Her healer hands were warm.

"Yes. I knew from the moment you were born. Your fur was white in the womb, Aston. I saw it on the ultrasound - the midwife thought it was a glitch. I knew if they knew, they would take you. The Varogs, the Red Claws, all of them. White wolves are not allowed to love, baby. They are only allowed to be used."

"So you made me an omega," I choked out. "You let them bully me. You let them call me nothing. You let him... "

"I let him reject you because I thought it would save you!" she cried. "I begged Kade to make him do it! I told him if Vale claimed a white wolf while cursed, the curse would transfer and kill you!"

The world tilted.

"What?"

She was shaking. "The Varog curse - it kills blessed mates. That's why his mother died. His father was cursed and he claimed her anyway. It burned her up from the inside. I couldn't let that happen to you. I told Kade to tell Vale you were too weak, that you would die if he marked you properly. I thought if he rejected you publicly, you would run, you would be safe in the human world -"

I stared at her.

She had arranged my rejection.

My own mother had asked Kade to make Vale throw me away.

Before I could speak, the cramp hit again - low, twisting, so sharp I doubled over and cried out.

My mother's hands flew to my stomach. Healer instinct. Her eyes went wide. She pressed, felt, and her face went white.

"Aston... when did you last have your heat?"

The memory slammed into me.

Last night .

The night before my eighteenth birthday, my first heat had come early. Hours early. My mother had given me a double dose of wolfsbane to suppress it so I could stand through the ceremony today, but it hadn't worked. It had made it worse - wild, uncontrollable.

I had gone to the herbal shed to get more yarrow, sweating, shaking, my scent was everywhere.

And Vale had been there.

He had come to get bandages for his curse veins - they always burned before a full moon. He froze when he smelled me. His golden eyes went completely black, wolf taking over.

"Aston?" he had growled, voice wrong. "Why do you smell like... "

"I don't... I'm not... " I couldn't speak. My heat scent was flooding the small shed.

He tried to leave. He actually turned to the door. His hand was on the frame, his whole body shaking with effort.

Then I whimpered.

One small, needy sound I had never made before.

And his wolf snapped.

He crossed the shed in one step, pinned me gently but firmly against the herb table, burying his face in my neck and inhaling like he was drowning. "Mine," he snarled, not to me - to his own curse, to his own control.

I should have pushed him. I should have screamed. But my body - my treacherous, heat-addled, eighteen-year-old body that had loved him for four years - arched into him.

He claimed me.

Not a full Luna mark. He didn't have enough control left for that. But a claiming bite, high on the joint between the neck and the shoulder, deep enough to leave a scar. And more.

One night. One time. My first heat.

"Oh, Goddess," my mother whispered now, her hand still on my belly. Her silver healer sight was on. She could see what I couldn't yet. "Aston, you're with a pup."

I started sobbing so hard I couldn't breathe.

Vale hadn't rejected me because I was weak.

He rejected me because my mother told him I would die if he didn't.

And now I was carrying his pup - the Alpha King's heir - with a white wolf inside me that every kingdom would hunt, and a curse that was trying to kill its father.

"Aston, listen to me," my mother grabbed my shoulders, fierce now. "You cannot stay here. Vale will smell the pup by morning. If Sorphim's family finds out a blessed wolf is pregnant with a Varog heir... "

Sorphim. The Alpha's daughter from the eastern territory. The girl they had been trying to pair Vale with for two years. The girl who wanted to be Luna.

"She will kill you and cut it from your womb," my mother said flatly.

Inside me, my white wolf snarled so loud my throat vibrated.

Let them try.

My mother pulled a small leather pouch from her apron and shoved it into my hands. Money. Human money. A bus ticket. A piece of paper with an address.

"My sister lives in the human city - Detroit. She left the packs twenty years ago. She will hide you. Go now. Don't stop. Don't look back."

"What about you? What about Dad?"

"We will say you died from rejection sickness. It's common for omegas. They will believe it. Go, Aston. Protect my grandpup."

Grandpup.

That word broke me and fixed me at the same time.

I pressed my forehead to hers for one second, then stood up.

My blue offering dress was ruined, stained with mud and blood. My neck throbbed where Vale had bitten me last night - the mark was already scarred silver. My belly was still flat, but I felt him now. Or her. Tiny as a seed.

I looked once back at the lights of the Nightshade temple through the trees. I could hear Vale howling in the distance - a furious, broken, confused sound.

Then I turned and ran toward the human road.

I didn't stop until I reached the highway.

Five years. I would stay away for five years.