Rejected as Barren, I Had Quadruplets with My Ex's Alpha Rival

Chapter 2

Six months into the marriage, my period was two weeks late.

Once, that would've kept me up all night with excitement. This time I just flipped the calendar page like it was nothing. In my five years bonded to Gareth, I'd let myself hope like that more than once. Every time, I was sure my turn had finally come. Clinging to that scrap of hope, I'd go to him with my voice shaking, and he'd call the family doctor. And every time, the doctor examined me and shook his head. "Mrs. Blackwood, it's just an irregular cycle. Your body isn't ready to carry a cub yet."

Gareth's smile would fade by degrees. The second the doctor was gone, he'd turn cold. "Don't open your mouth next time until you're sure. You may not be embarrassed, but I am." Next morning at breakfast, Victoria would throw her coffee in my face. "You know you're barren, and you still drag people out here to make a scene. The whole North Shore is waiting on a Silvercrown heir. You won't rest till they watch our line die out, will you?" I didn't dare say it stung. I didn't even dare get up to wipe my face. Gareth sat at the far end of the table and kept reading, like the coffee had landed on a dirty rug.

Every time those memories came back, my chest went tight all over again.

So this time I didn't call a doctor. I ate breakfast like normal and settled by the window with a book. At noon, Martha came rushing in. "Luna—the school called. Noah split another kid's lip!"

I looked up. "Then go find your Alpha."

"Mr. Hale flew to Canada this morning to close a partnership up north. He's gone a week. He said to tell you not to wait up tonight."

That threw me. Since when did I wait up for him? But Martha had gone white with panic, so I closed the book and went.

When the car stopped in front of St. Alban's Alpha Academy, my chest gave a hard twist. It was the finest blue-blood school on the North Shore—pack endorsement required just to get in the door. I was a Bennett daughter; Gareth was the only Blackwood son. We'd both gone here since we were kids. The stone archway hadn't changed. Neither had the silver wolf in the middle of the fountain. As children we'd once fished a kitten out of that fountain, and when a teacher made me stand in the hall as punishment, Gareth mouthed off on purpose just so he'd get to stand there with me. He even spread his coat over the steps in case I got tired and the stone was too cold to sit on. Back then his eyes tracked me everywhere. He'd sulk if anyone looked at me a beat too long. He swore that once he took Silvercrown, he'd give me the biggest bonding ceremony anyone had ever seen.

And he did. The estate drowning in white roses, every Alpha on the coast there to witness the bond. Under the moon he kissed me and called me his one and only Luna.

Then we married, and all because I couldn't give him a child, the man who'd once treasured me started treating me like something stuck to his shoe.

I dropped my head and blinked the tears back down. Martha nudged me forward, and only then did I make myself step through the doors.

We took the familiar hall. Before we even reached the lower school, I spotted Gareth inside the admin building. Six months apart, and he was as tall and put-together as ever—the silver Blackwood crest sharp against his dark suit, not even his tie out of place. None of the wreckage of a man who'd lost his mate. If anything, he looked lighter.

Nothing like me. I'd cried more times than I could count in six months, worn down so thin my old dresses hung off me.

As I stopped, a woman in a Chanel suit came into the lobby on an assistant's arm. Sophia Whitmore—the old headmaster's granddaughter, daughter of Mr. Whitmore, the academy's current board chair. I knew her. A few years younger than me, always dropping by the estate back then, sweet as pie, calling me big sister. Now, the second she saw Gareth, she threw herself into his arms. "Why are you here so early? I've been looking all over for you."

Gareth's hard face melted on the spot. He steadied her by the waist and smoothed her hair, careful. "Slow down. You shouldn't be running in heels that high."

I hadn't heard that kind of softness out of him in a very long time.

The teacher walking us in glanced at me and offered it up almost like it was for my benefit. "Miss Whitmore's going to be Silvercrown's new Luna next month. They're in love—of course they're all over each other."

My fingers tightened on my phone. Next month. He'd lined up a new wedding that fast. Of course he had. His eyes had gone red signing the papers to break our bond, but I'd caught the relief under the grief all the same. I knew him too well. Maybe he mourned the love we used to have—but he was even more grateful to finally be rid of me.

I made myself look away. We were divorced. Whoever he handed my old place to was none of my business. I knew that cold. And still the ache in my chest sat there like a needle to the heart.

Then the teacher led me to the disciplinary office, thank God. My stepson—who I'd seen maybe a handful of times in six months—stood outside the door. Noah's cheek was bruised, blood at the corner of his mouth, scratches down the back of one hand. The boy next to him, though, stood there with his chest puffed out, plainly waiting to watch Noah get what was coming.

I knew that one too. Henry—the son of Gareth's sister. His mother loved coming back to Silvercrown to stir the pot. Every time she brought him, she'd brag on him in front of Victoria and find a way to work in how useless I was. Afterward I'd get dragged into the Hall of Ancestors and whipped kneeling in front of the old Alphas' portraits. The last time, the blood soaked clean through the back of my blouse. That was when I finally agreed to the divorce.

The moment I stopped, Grant, the disciplinary instructor, came out with a wooden ruler in his hand. "Noah. Get over here. Why'd you hit him?"

Noah's eyes were red. "He started it. He called my mom a barren reject who couldn't whelp a single cub. Said my dad just picks up other people's trash. Said his uncle threw my mom out and my dad only took her after. I couldn't just stand there, so—"

Grant cut him off. "Excuses the second you open your mouth. No wonder Ironridge kids have no manners. Hand out."

Noah bit his lip and put both hands behind his back. "No. He started—"

The ruler came down hard. The boy couldn't dodge in time. A red welt puffed up across the back of his hand.

I'd only come to go through the motions. But watching him flinch from the blow and still refuse to say he was wrong, something cracked through the numb weight in my chest.

"Stop." I crossed to them. "You hit him without asking a single question. Grant—you figure this kid's got nobody to stand up for him?"