Rejected While Pregnant with the Alpha’s Secret Heir

Chapter 7 – Naming the Little Wolf

The apartment smells like cheap paint and boiled pasta.

It’s not mine, not really. Just a room over a laundromat with peeling linoleum and a window that rattles when buses pass. But the rent is low, the landlord took cash with only a glance at my ID, and the door locks.

For now, that’s enough.

I sit cross-legged on the mattress that passes for a bed, a cardboard box as my nightstand, the ultrasound photo propped against a chipped lamp. The tiny smudge on gray paper watches me while I eat overcooked noodles from a thrift-store bowl.

“You’re judging,” I tell the photo. “Don’t lie.”

My wolf huffs, amused.

The day’s been long. Job hunt in the morning—two cafés, a diner, a bookstore. The second café wrote my name and number on the back of a flyer and said they’d call. The diner manager looked me up and down and said, “You look like you can carry three plates in one hand. We’ll try you on nights.”

Nights are good. Nights mean fewer questions. More tips. Time in the mornings for clinics and nausea and naps.

I set the empty bowl aside and reach into the same cardboard box the lamp came in. On top of my folded clothes and the half-empty bottle of prenatal vitamins is a cheap, lined notebook and a pen.

I open it to a blank page.

At the top I write, in shaky letters:

Names.

The word looks huge on the white paper.

In the pack, names were a pack effort. Elders weighing in with old family lines, warriors suggesting fierce-sounding titles, Ivara tossing out softer, sweeter ones just to see Corin’s ears pinken. Someone always brought up the ancestors, the spirits, tradition.

Here, it’s just me and this notebook and the drip of the leaky faucet in the tiny bathroom.

My wolf shifts closer, curious.

“Okay,” I murmur. “We’re not calling you ‘Peanut’ for nine months. Or ‘Bean.’ We have standards.”

I write “Peanut” anyway, then cross it out.

Gender seems like a distant, almost irrelevant puzzle. Wolves don’t care much about pink and blue. Strength smells the same, whatever the body.

“Something that fits a wolf and a human,” I say, tapping the pen against my knee. “Something you can grow into.”

I think of the Vargan line, of heavy, old names passed from alpha to alpha like weighted cloaks. I could choose one of those. Bind this child to a legacy they’ll never officially be allowed to claim.

My pen stays still.

“No,” I decide softly. “We’re not starting with his shadow.”

I write down a few options. My handwriting looks foreign; my hands aren’t used to this kind of creation.

Rowan. Eli. Mira. Soren.

I cross out most, leave a couple.

I think of the way the heartbeat fluttered on the screen, quick and sure. Of the way my wolf said ours like a prayer.

“You’ll be fast,” I tell the photo. “Stubborn. Too smart. You’ll drive me insane.”

The faucet drips. Downstairs, a washing machine thunk-thunks into a spin cycle. The city hums outside.

“Your father would’ve argued for something dignified,” I go on, because the lie that he doesn’t exist at all tastes worse. “Something that carries weight in a council hall. He’d talk about first alphas and founding packs. Then Ivara would sneak in after and teach you to answer to some ridiculous nickname anyway.”

My throat tightens. I blink hard and keep writing.

Leo. Not quite. Too on the nose.

Lio.

I pause.

I say it out loud, letting it roll off my tongue. “Lio.”

Short. Light. Easy to shout across a playground or a clearing. Could belong to a human boy with scraped knees and a backpack. Could belong to a wolf pup with bright eyes and a too-loud laugh.

I write it down and don’t cross it out.

“Lio Vos,” I test. The old name feels ghost-heavy. I add another word under it, almost without thinking. “Lio Vargan.”

Pain spears through my chest. My wolf growls, low.

“Too much,” I whisper. “Too soon.”

I circle just the first name.

“Maybe you’ll choose your own last name one day,” I tell him. “Maybe you’ll make a new one.” I manage a crooked smile. “You seem the type.”

The room’s air is warm and a little stale. I crack the window. Night pours in: city sounds, faint car horns, someone laughing too loud on the sidewalk below. No forest. No pack song.

I’m surprised by how much that hurts.

For him, more than for me.

“I wish I could give you both,” I admit to the dark. “Trees and traffic. Moon and streetlights. A pack that doesn’t ask you to bleed for it before you grow your first real teeth.”

I glance at the ultrasound again.

“It might not be like that,” I say. “You might never run with a pack. Just with me. With… us. Maybe that’s enough.”

My wolf shifts at that, not in protest, but in thought.

Wolves are not meant to be alone. But we adapt.

I press my hand low over my abdomen, thumb tracing lazy circles.

“You’ll have a mother who would tear the world apart before she lets it decide your worth,” I say quietly. “You’ll have… stories. About where you came from. About a man who loved you before he knew you existed, even if he never deserves to hear your name.”

Tears prick my eyes again. I let two fall, then wipe the rest away. I won’t drown this kid in my grief. They deserve better than being born into a heart that’s only ashes.

“Lio,” I repeat, anchoring myself in the syllables. “My little Lio.”

My wolf likes it. She nudges the word back at me, a soft mental nudge.

I pull the ultrasound photo from its makeshift frame and tuck it into the notebook, pressing it flat over the page where I wrote the name. It feels like a promise.

Later, maybe, there will be forms that say Baby Boy Vos, or just Baby Vos, or some human notation that reduces my entire world to a case number and a room assignment.

Here, in this ugly little apartment over a laundromat, there is a different kind of record.

A girl with wolf eyes sits on a borrowed mattress and names her son.

“Sleep well, Lio,” I whisper, turning off the light and lying back. “Grow strong. Be as wild or as gentle as you need to be. The rest…” I exhale slowly. “The rest we’ll figure out together.”

The city hums. The building vibrates with washing machines and lives I’ll never fully know.

Under my palm, my body works in quiet defiance of the pack that cast me out and the alpha who thought he could cut us free.

Life goes on knitting itself together, cell by stubborn cell.

Lio.

Mine.