Rejected While Pregnant with the Alpha’s Secret Heir

Chapter 8 – No Way Back

The bus shudders over a pothole, and the plastic seat squeaks under me. Outside, the last scraps of forest give way to concrete and glass, the city rising like a wall I can’t see past yet.

I sit halfway down the aisle, bag shoved between my boots, one hand wrapped around the metal bar, the other resting low on my stomach. Not obvious. Not yet. Just a habit I can’t break.

“Next stop, Greybridge Central,” the driver calls. “End of the line.”

End of one line, at least.

The air on the bus is thick with human scents—perfume, sweat, old fries. No wolf. No damp earth, no pack house coffee. My wolf curls inside my ribs, nose wrinkled, but she’s quiet.

This is the choice. No going back.

A toddler two rows ahead twists in his seat to stare at me. Big brown eyes, fist clutching a battered stuffed dog. He lifts the toy, makes it bounce like it’s alive.

“Puppy,” he chirps.

His mother shushes him absently, scrolling on her phone. The kid keeps staring, then frowns and points, not at my face, but lower. Right where my hand rests.

“Puppy,” he says again, more certain. Then, with solemn emphasis: “Inside.”

Cold skitters up my spine.

Children are weird, I tell myself. Human kids say strange things all the time. But my wolf lifts her head, ears pricked.

I roll my shoulders, force a smile I don’t feel. “Not yet,” I murmur under my breath. “Give him time.”

The bus hisses to a stop. Doors wheeze open. A wash of city air hits me—hot asphalt, exhaust, coffee, rain on brick. Noise slams in a second later: car horns, chatter, music leaking from an open shopfront.

“Last stop,” the driver repeats.

I stand, knees stiff, and heft my bag. The world beyond the doors looks too big and too bright. For a heartbeat I see another path: stepping off here, catching the next bus back, creeping home with some half-true story about needing a night away.

You could still call him, a tiny voice says. Tell him about the baby. Give him the chance he never had.

My hand tightens on the strap until my knuckles ache.

He had his chance when he chose the pack over us. Over me. Over whoever this little heartbeat might become.

I step down onto the pavement.

Heat radiates from the concrete through the soles of my boots. People stream around me, weaving, brushing shoulders, not looking twice. I could vanish here. Just another girl with too much luggage and not enough sleep.

Above the roar of traffic, something cuts through the noise.

A sound I shouldn’t be able to hear from this far. Low, distant, carried on a shift of wind that brings with it a whisper of wet leaves and shadow and home.

A wolf’s howl.

My heart slams against my ribs. It’s not loud, not obvious. But my bones recognize it. My wolf goes rigid.

No. He’s too far. The territory is miles back, over ridges and rivers. He can’t—

The wind shifts again, bringing the city’s stink back, burying the sound. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe it was a siren, a dog, a trick of memory.

Or maybe somewhere, in a forest I just left behind, an alpha wolf is standing under a bruised sky, throwing his voice at the night because something in him just tore and he doesn’t know why.

“Keep moving,” I mutter.

I hitch the bag higher and step away from the bus stop, following the flow of people toward the station, the map in my pocket, the nowhere life I’m about to build.

I make it three strides.

Then it hits.

Not sound. Not scent.

Pain.

A sudden, sharp twist low in my abdomen, white-hot and knife-fast. It steals the air from my lungs so completely I can’t even gasp. My knees buckle. The bag slips from my shoulder and slams onto the pavement with a dull thud.

Someone swears nearby. “Hey, you okay?”

I can’t answer. I’m half-crouched on the sidewalk, fingers clawing at my stomach. It feels like the world has narrowed to a single point of fire just behind my navel.

Not cramp. Not nausea. Different.

Wrong.

My wolf explodes to the surface, throwing herself against my skin, howling silent and furious. Protect. Hold. Keep.

Cold sweat breaks out across my back. The edges of my vision go dark.

Not now. Not here. Please.

Warmth seeps under my palm.

For a heartbeat I think it’s just heat.

Then I see it.

A dark, creeping stain spreading across the front of my jeans. Not much. Not yet. But enough that my heart stops.

Blood.

The city blurs around me—voices rising, footsteps slowing, someone’s hand hovering over my shoulder, afraid to touch.

“Aeryn?” a man’s voice says, close, shocked, threaded with a scent I know better than my own breath. “Aeryn—”

I look up, half-blind with terror.

And see him.