Reborn After My Son Killed Me

Heavy hands pressed against my throat, stealing my last breath. I stared up into a pair of chilling, desperately familiar eyes, my heart heavy with a lifetime of regret. From somewhere in the shadows behind those hands, Selene’s malicious laughter echoed in the cold room. ​Everything faded into a suffocating darkness. ​Then, a sharp, piercing cry broke the silence. ​I gasped, my eyes flying open as my lungs frantically pulled in the air. I wasn't in the cold, stone execution hall. I was lying on a soft mattress, staring up at the heavy velvet canopy of the Blackridge Alpha’s bedroom. My body ached with a deep, exhausting pain. The metallic scent of copper hung thick in the air. ​“A male, Alpha,” a trembling voice announced nearby. ​I turned my head. The pack healer stood at the foot of the bed. In his arms was a tiny, crying bundle. ​My baby. ​My mind was spinning, completely disoriented. Was I dreaming? Was this the afterlife? A primal, desperate ache flared in my chest. I looked up, frantically seeking my husband. Cassius stepped out of the shadows, looking impossibly young and unblemished. ​“Please,” I whispered, my voice cracked and weak. I tried to lift my exhausted arms. “Let me see him. Let me hold our baby.” ​Cassius didn’t even look at me. His eyes were fixed entirely on the child. “Take him to the nursery,” he ordered coldly, waving a dismissive hand. ​“No,” I choked out, panic spiking through my confusion. “Wait. Cassius, please!” ​The healer didn't hesitate. He bowed his head and hurried out of the doors, taking the frantic cries of my newborn with him. The click of the latch echoing in the room sounded like a vault sealing shut. ​I was left empty. Hollowed out and bleeding on the sheets. ​Cassius finally turned to me. He dragged a wooden chair to the side of the bed and sat down. His face, usually so warm and commanding, was entirely blank. ​“I suppose it’s time to drop the charade, Rhea,” he said, his voice cold and transactional. “The mating ceremony. The Luna title. None of it was real.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I only needed your womb.” ​A strange, dizzying sense of deja vu washed over me. The words seemed to echo in my skull, overlapping with a memory I couldn't quite grasp. ​“Selene Voss was my promised mate from the very beginning,” Cassius continued, a sickening softness entering his eyes at the mention of her name. “But Selene is delicate. She is infertile. A pregnancy could have destroyed her. I wasn't willing to risk the woman I actually love just to secure my bloodline. If she could have carried a pup, a wolfless stray like you would never have worn the Luna title.” ​Infertile? ​My mind violently objected. No. She isn't infertile. ​The thought sliced through the fog in my brain with absolute clarity. She took moonshade root every morning to suppress her fertility. She just didn't want the physical ruin of carrying a child. ​I froze. How did I know that? I had never known that. ​Then, it hit me. ​Like a dam breaking, the missing pieces of my memory crashed into my skull with the force of a physical blow. The heavy hands on my throat. The desperate struggle for air. Staring into those familiar eyes as the life was squeezed out of me. I remembered dying. ​My eyes darted around the room. The ceiling. The bed. The impossibly young face of the Alpha sitting beside me. ​I hadn't just survived. I hadn't simply faded away in that execution room. I had been strangled to death, and now... I was back. I had been reborn. ​The realization brought something far darker, far more dangerous. The hatred that had consumed me in my final moments surged back to life, hot and toxic, flooding my veins. It burned away my confusion. It burned away the lingering sorrow of a mother separated from her newborn. ​I looked at Cassius, and the urge to rip his throat out with my bare teeth was so violent it made my vision blur. ​He thought he was the mastermind. He thought he was playing a brilliant game. I knew the truth now. I knew that Selene was playing him, just as she had played me. ​I needed to reject him. ​The urge was an instinctual scream in my blood. I needed to reject him before he could. ​I opened my mouth, drawing in a ragged breath to speak the words of rejection. ​Nothing came out but a wet, choking gasp. Blood bubbled past my lips, spilling down my chin. My body was completely broken from birth. The vocal cords that had screamed in agony during labor refused to function. I held the truth that could burn his entire meticulously crafted scheme to the ground—and I was completely powerless to speak it. ​Cassius looked at the blood on my chin with mild disgust. He stood up, smoothing the front of his shirt. ​“It’s time to finalize this,” he said, his voice dropping into the resonant, commanding register of an Alpha. The air in the room grew heavy as he released his aura, intending to force my submission to the rejection. ​I glared up at him, my gray-green eyes burning with a silent rage. I wouldn't speak. But I would watch him. I would memorize every line of his face as he made the biggest mistake of his life. ​“I, Alpha Cassius of the Blackridge Pack,” he began, his voice vibrating against the stone walls. “Reject you, Rhea, as my—” ​Bzzzz. ​The sharp ring of a cell phone cut through the heavy air. ​Cassius stopped. He pulled the phone from his pocket. The screen illuminated his face and instantly, the cruel Alpha mask melted away. His features softened into something sickeningly tender. ​He answered the call. “Selene,” he breathed. ​I lay perfectly still, listening to that tone for the second time in two lifetimes. It still cuts, but not with heartbreak. It cut like a surgeon’s scalpel, carving out any lingering vestige of mercy I might have held for this man. ​“It’s done,” Cassius murmured into the phone, his eyes drifting away from me. “He’s ours. Our son.” ​He listened for a moment, a fond smile touching his lips. “I’m taking care of the rest now. I’ll be there soon.” ​He ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket. The softness vanished the moment his eyes met mine again. ​“By order of the Alpha,” he said briskly, completely abandoning the ritualistic tone he had been using seconds before. “You are officially stripped of the Luna title. You are declared a rogue under pack law. You will be held in the dungeons tonight and escorted to the borders at dawn.” ​“Tell the nurses to bring pup to Selene’s chambers,” he threw over his shoulder to a guard stationed in the hall. “He doesn't need to be near this filth.” ​The doors clicked shut behind him. ​Silence descended on the room, broken only by the ragged sound of my own shallow breathing. ​But as the edges of my vision began to darken, a single, glaring detail anchored me to consciousness. ​Somewhere down the hall, echoing through the cold stone corridors, I could hear the faint, desperate cry of my newborn. He sounded like he was calling for me. ​I let the darkness pull me under, my last conscious thought echoing in the empty room. ​Why didn't he finish the rejection?