The Alpha’s Runaway Mate and Secret Son

Chapter 3

The moment I understand the guards aren't sent by Luna Kaida but by Darius himself, I know everything I believed about him was a lie.

It's not the anger that tips me off, Darius's always been angry but the expression in his eyes. The way he looks at me like I've stopped being a person and started being a problem that needs solving.

"You're not gonna lock me up, are you?” my voice is surprising steady.

“This is the only way to talk to you.” He slams with a finality that echoes through the small room.

"Are you here to talk about Tova?"

He'd laughed. Actually laughed, like I'd made a joke about my own impending destruction.

"There's nothing to discuss." His hands gripped my shoulders, not gentle, "You knew what this was."

"I knew what you told me it was," I spat back. "Two years, Darius. Two years of promises and"

"Promises?" He pulled back, and his eyes were something new without warmth. "I never promised you anything except honesty about what you mean to me. And I've been honest. You're my mate. You're mine. That hasn't changed."

The cruelty of it took my breath away not because it was vicious, but because he genuinely didn't see what he was saying.

To him, possession was love and ontrol was loyalty. The fact that he was marrying someone else, that he'd been sleeping with Tova for over a year, meant nothing beside the fact of the bond between us.

Then I stand up. “I will leave then.”

"What are you doing?" His voice had shifted into something dangerous.

"Leaving."

The laughter had turned ugly. "You're not leaving."

"Watch me." I undid the ropes and walk to the entrance. “Congratulations on your new Luna, Alpha Darius.” The words pricked my throat as I say them.

Before I’m able to leave, he grabs my duffel bag and thrown it across the room like it weighed nothing.

I push him “what did you want me to do? Sit here and watch you and your Luna romance each other?”

“I can take you as my concubine.” His breathing turn fast. “You just have to stay locked in, it would look like punishment and we can finally be together.”

"I'd rather die than be your mistress," I say, and I mean it with every cell in my body.

The shift in him is instantaneous. His eyes turn gold, animalistic, and for a moment I thought he might actually hit me.

But he hadn't. He just looked at me like I'm now become something beneath contempt.

"You have no one," he'd said quietly. "No family. No allies. No protection. An Omega who can't even shift properly. You think you have options? Do you think anyone cares whether you live or die?"

The words hit harder that I think. But I snap my hand off his. “I'm sorry, you don't need to care about me.”

And he move to the door and lock it.

***

The room is smaller than I remember. The kind of space that makes your own breathing sound like an accusation.

I pace the perimeter like an animal, my mind cycling through possibilities and finding none of them viable.

The window doesn't open. There's a servant's door that leads to an exterior corridor, but I can hear the guard outside it, the shuffle of heavy boots, the deliberate scrape of metal that tells me there's a weapon.

Darius's kept me locked up before but not like this, with the door sealed from the outside. They were times where he'd lock me in his room to attend royal meetings, times when I still mattered to him.

Now I understand it was always controlled.

The nausea hits around sunset, coming in waves that bend me double. I make it to the chamber pot in time, my body purging itself of everything I've eaten today.

The violence of it surprises meI haven't eaten much, just picked at the food sent up with my breakfast, too anxious about the ceremony to manage anything substantial. But my stomach is determined to empty itself anyway, determined to reject everything, including the life growing inside it.

The pregnancy.

God.

I sink onto the edge of the narrow cot and pressed one hand oo my still-flat stomach. It's been three weeks now or maybe four.

I'd been going to tell him tomorrow, after the ceremony was done, after I'd had time to think about what it meant. After I'd figured out if there was any way this could be good news instead of a disaster.

Darius doesn't want children. He's said this explicitly, multiple times. "Breeding isn't part of the plan,I Can't have some Omega bastard complicating matters."

The words had stungobviously interpreted as he wasn't referring t me and I'd pushed the hurt away the way I've learned to push away most of my pain.

Except the world hasn't forgotten. And neither has my body.

six hours later, I’m sitting cross-legged on the cot, staring at nothing. when I hear footsteps in the hallway, I know who it was.

Luna Kaida.

She walks in like she owns the space, because in some fundamental way, she does.

Luna Kaida Blackthorn is everything I'm not and might never be. powerful, respected, beautiful and maybe sassy.

"You look terrible," she says.

"You locked me in," I reply, because apparently I've decided today is a good day to be suicidal.

"My son locked you in and I'm here to offer you a choice." She pulls a bundle of bills from somewhere within her gown, letting them drop onto the cot beside me. "Take this money and leave tonight. Don't come back or dare to contact anyone including Darius.”

“Why should I?”

“If you disappear, then this…bastard becomes a non-issue."

I stare at the money like it's a snake that might bite me. It's more money than I've earned in my entire life but still…

"What if I say no?" I ask, though I already know the answer.

"Then Darius keeps you locked in here until you agree to his terms." She moves toward the window, her posture suggesting she's said all she intends to say on this subject. "My son has made his choice. Tova is politically expedient. You are not. The pregnancy" she pauses, and my heart stops, "complicates matters significantly. Darius doesn't know yet, but he will. And when he does, he'll have to decide if the bastard is worth keeping."

"Get out," I whisper.

"You have twenty minutes," she says, turning back to me, and there's something almost kind in her expression, which is somehow worse than if she'd been cruel. "There's a servant's entrance two corridors east. The guards rotate in four minutes. There's a three-minute window where the corridor will be empty. The forest begins half a mile north. Humans won't follow you there."

She leaves before I can respond, before I can ask if this is a trap, if she's setting me up to be recaptured and punished for attempting escape. But I already know the answer. She's given me an escape route because she wants me gone. Because I'm a threat to Darius's carefully constructed future with Tova. Because even the possibility of a bastard child complicates the narrative she wants to tell about her son.

The money sits on the cot like a promise and a threat wrapped together.

I leave it behind.

This choice surprises me even as I'm making it. I take the money she's offered and what little I own and I move, my body operating on instinct and rage and something deeper that I'm only beginning to understand. I'm not going to let Luna Kaida dictate my escape. I'm not going to owe anything to anyone. If I'm going to leave, I'm going to do it on my own terms, with nothing but what I can carry and the will to survive that's gotten me through four years of poverty and loss.

The hallway is empty when I slip out of the room. My heart is hammering so hard I'm convinced someone will hear it, will sense my escape and come running. But the servants' corridor remains empty, and I move through it like a ghost, like someone who's spent her entire life learning how to be invisible.

The night air hits like a physical presence when I slip out through the servant's entrance. It's warmer than it should be, the kind of heat that clings to your skin and makes thinking difficult. I don't look back at the manor. Don't let myself dwell on what I'm leaving behindDarius's bed, the possibility of status, the security of knowing exactly where my next meal is coming from.

I just started walking.