Rejected While Pregnant with the Alpha’s Secret Heir

Chapter 13 – Terms of War

The rain starts halfway across the intersection, a fine mist that turns the streetlights into smeared halos.

Of course it does.

Corin doesn’t seem to notice. His gaze stays fixed ahead, jaw tight, shoulders a wall of controlled tension beside me.

“He’s already decided,” Corin says. “Morin doesn’t like question marks. Or secrets. Especially not around his alpha.”

“You mean his investment,” I correct. “You’re just the suit he wears to meetings.”

His mouth twitches, but he doesn’t argue.

We reach the opposite curb. I slow, needing the extra second to make my lungs keep working. Lio makes a small protesting flutter under my palm, as if he feels the spike in my pulse.

“What’s he planning?” I ask.

“I don’t know yet,” Corin says. “But I know how he thinks. If he suspects there’s a pup—my pup—out here, he’ll start with pressure. ‘Concerns.’ Quiet conversations about my duty to the pack’s future.”

My stomach turns. “And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then he’ll use what leverage he can find,” Corin says flatly. “Including human systems, if he has to. He has contacts in city offices. Judges. Social workers.”

Cold slides down my spine, far sharper than the rain.

“Of course he does,” I whisper.

“I shut down the first feelers,” Corin adds quickly. “He asked for your full name. I lied. He asked if you were human. I said it wasn’t his business.”

“Bold,” I say. “Telling the man who practically raised you that something isn’t his business.”

His hand brushes mine by accident. We both flinch.

“He didn’t raise me,” Corin says, voice low. “He molded me. That’s not the same.”

We turn down my street. The brick buildings here are older, the sidewalks cracked, the trees in their iron cages valiantly trying to pretend this is a forest.

“What do you want, exactly?” I ask. “From me. From this.” I gesture vaguely at my stomach, at the path between the café and my apartment, at his looming pack in the distant trees.

For a few steps, all I hear is the slap of our boots and the hiss of tires on wet asphalt.

“Honesty,” he says finally. “From you. About what you’re willing to give. And a line we both agree on that the pack doesn’t get to cross.”

I laugh, sharp and humorless. “They don’t respect my lines.”

“They will,” he says.

There’s no arrogance in it this time. Just quiet, terrifying certainty.

“And if they don’t?” I press. “If Morin shows up with a legal order, or a patrol at my door, or some wolf in a suit saying ‘for the good of the pack’?”

“Then they answer to me,” Corin says. “And to you, if you’re willing to stand beside me long enough to say no.”

The word beside snags in my chest.

“I’m not your luna,” I remind him.

“I know.” He glances at me, rain beading in his lashes. “You walked away from that the second I made it a cage instead of a choice.”

Something inside me jolts at the admission.

“I’m not asking you to come back to the pack,” he says. “I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m asking you to decide what ‘ours’ means when it comes to him, before Morin tries to decide for us.”

We stop in front of my building. The buzz of the laundromat below seeps through the bricks—machines clanking, someone’s music playing tinny through a phone speaker.

I lean back against the rough wall, one hand braced beside me, the other steady on my stomach.

“‘Ours’ means this,” I say slowly. “You are his father if you act like it. Not because your name is on some wolf parchment. Not because your blood runs in his veins. Because you show up. You protect him from your own people as much as from strangers. You put him before your pride and before their politics.”

His throat works. Rain drips from his hair onto his collar.

“And what about you?” he asks, barely audible. “Where do you fit in that definition?”

“Where I choose to,” I say. “On good days? Beside you. On bad ones? Between you and anyone who thinks he’s theirs to claim.”

His eyes darken. My wolf watches him carefully, weighing.

“And what do you need from me right now?” he asks.

The question is simple. No demand hidden in it. No assumption he already knows the right answer.

I could say a thousand things. An apology that doesn’t sound like an excuse. Space. Silence. A promise he can’t guarantee.

Instead, what comes out is, “Time.”

He nods, like he expected that.

“You have it,” he says. “As much as we can steal before Morin forces my hand.”

That part I hate.

“We need our own leverage,” I say. “Something that makes it harder for him to move against us. Papers. Proof. Human systems that don’t answer to him.”

“You mean,” Corin says slowly, “you want me to acknowledge him officially.”

The idea hangs there, electric.

“Birth certificate,” I say. “Medical forms. School. If your name is there by my choice, not his demand, it’s harder for him to claim you’re absent. Harder for him to argue we’re a danger.”

“And easier,” Corin adds, “for him to prove in any court, human or wolf, that the alpha has a child he can sink his claws into.”

We stare at each other, raindrops ticking against the awning.

“That’s the mess,” I say. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. It was simpler when you were just… a ghost I’d decided my child didn’t need.”

His face crumples, just for a heartbeat. It feels like kicking a wounded thing. It also feels like the truth.

“I needed to hear that,” he says hoarsely. “All of it.”

“Good.” My voice is raw. “Because if you’re going to stand in front of Morin and say ‘no,’ you need to understand exactly what you’re saying it to.”

He drags a hand down his face, then looks up at my windows.

“Let me think,” he says. “About the best way to put my name on his life without handing Morin a weapon.”

“You have until my next appointment,” I say. “Two weeks.”

He huffs something like a laugh. “An alpha on a deadline. You don’t go easy on a man.”

“Not on this one,” I say. “Not ever again.”

For the first time, there’s no flinch in his eyes when I say it.

“Two weeks,” he repeats. “Then we make a decision. Together.”

“Together,” I echo, and the word doesn’t taste as impossible as it once did.

I turn, climb the stairs, and this time when I look back through the stairwell window, I half-expect him to be gone.

He isn’t.

He’s still there, shoulders squared against the rain, watching the door like he’s already decided whose side of the threshold he’ll fight from.