Rejected by the Alpha: Pregnant with His Twins

Chapter 3: Escaping the Trap

The underground tunnel was narrow, damp, and freezing. The smell of wet earth and ancient pine roots filled my lungs as I dragged my body forward on hands and knees. Above my head, the muffled sounds of violence—shouted curses, heavy thuds, and splintering wood—echoed through the soil before fading into ominous silence.

Hold on, Doctor Vance, I prayed silently, my chest heaving as tears cut tracks through the dirt on my face. Please, just stay alive.

My heart thundered like a war drum. Every movement sent a searing flare of agony through my freshly torn neck, but the instinct to protect the tiny sparks of life inside my belly gave me a supernatural burst of momentum.

After ten agonizing minutes of crawling through the suffocating dark, a pale beam of gray winter light cut through a tangle of frozen briars at the end of the shaft.

I burst through the hidden exit, tumbling onto a steep, snowy embankment tucked behind a massive granite ledge. The blizzard was howling harder now, sweeping across the rugged borderlands and obliterating visibility.

I pulled Vance’s heavy wool cloak tightly around my shoulders, gasping for breath as I surveyed my surroundings. I was standing near the treacherous edge of Deadman’s Ravine—a jagged, two-hundred-foot drop into a roaring, icy river that separated the Silver Moon territory from the neutral human lands.

Suddenly, a loud, bone-chilling howl split the storm from the direction of Vance’s cabin.

A tracking wolf.

My blood ran cold. One of Chloe’s assassins had shifted into his beast form. Even in a blizzard, a trained Silver Moon enforcer could catch the scent of fresh blood from half a mile away. And my neck was still dripping crimson onto the pristine white snow.

"Think, Jane, think..." I muttered to myself, forcing my panic-stricken mind into overdrive.

If I simply ran toward the human border, three fully shifted warrior wolves would catch me in less than ten minutes. They didn't just want me gone; Chloe wanted proof of my corpse. If I wanted to save my babies, running wasn't enough.

I needed to die.

I scanned the cliffside frantically. Parked half-buried in a snowbank near the edge of the ravine was an ancient, rusted pickup truck—an abandoned piece of human junk left behind by loggers decades ago. Its gas tank was exposed, leaking a faint stench of old fuel into the freezing air. Nearby lay the half-eaten carcass of a deer, freshly killed by wild predators and frozen solid in the drift.

A dangerous, desperate plan flashed through my mind.

Ignoring the blinding pain in my neck, I grabbed a sharp, jagged stone from the ground and sliced open my own palm. I smeared my fresh, warm blood across the torn wool of my cloak, then ripped off the outer layer of the garment. I wrapped the bloody fabric tightly around the frozen deer carcass.

Next, I scrambled over to the rusted truck. I jammed a heavy rock onto the accelerator pedal, popped the ancient gear shift into drive, and jammed a bundle of dry wolfsbane leaves—the highly flammable herb Vance had given me—into the leaking fuel line.

Behind me, the sound of heavy paws crunching through the deep snow grew dangerously close. Through the swirling white curtain of the blizzard, three pairs of glowing red eyes emerged from the treeline.

"There she is!" a voice growled, snapping into a guttural wolf snarl.

"Don't let her jump! Lady Chloe wants her head!"

With every ounce of strength left in my battered body, I sparked a small flint striker Vance had tucked into my pocket and touched it to the soaked wolfsbane leaves.

FSHHH!

Orange flames exploded instantly along the fuel line.

I shoved the bloody deer carcass—wrapped in my recognizable cloak—into the driver’s seat, kicked the wooden block away from the tires, and threw myself backward over the snowbank into a deep, hidden ditch below the ridge.

The ancient truck shuddered, its engine roaring to life with a deafening metallic screech. The tires spun on the ice before gripping the dirt, sending the heavy steel vehicle barreling full-speed toward the edge of the ravine.

The three assassin wolves burst into the clearing just in time to see the truck—engulfed in roaring orange flames, smelling heavily of fresh blood and burning wolfsbane—plunge off the jagged cliff edge.

KABOOM!

A blinding explosion roared from the bottom of the ravine as the gas tank ignited upon impact with the sharp rocks below. A massive plume of black smoke and fire billowed up into the snowy sky, accompanied by the horrific crunch of twisted metal and the rush of the icy river swallowing the burning wreckage.

In the hidden ditch, I pressed my face into the freezing snow, holding my breath, not daring to twitch a single muscle.

Up on the ridge, the lead assassin walked to the edge of the cliff, peering down into the fiery, churning abyss below. He sniffed the air heavily. The overpowering stench of burning fuel, scorched flesh, and vaporized blood filled the gorge.

"Target destroyed," the leader grunted, his voice cold and satisfied. "No human or unshifted weakling could survive a two-hundred-foot drop into a burning wreck. Report back to Lady Chloe. Jane Reed is dead."

The heavy footsteps crunched away, slowly vanishing back into the howling storm.

Meanwhile, ten miles away, inside the warm, luxurious Master Suite of the Silver Moon Pack House...

Alpha Lucas Vance stood before the floor-to-ceiling glass window, looking out over his vast, snow-covered territory. He held a crystal glass of aged scotch in his right hand, his knuckles stark white against the glass.

He was supposed to be celebrating. In the grand hall downstairs, the music was still playing, and Lady Chloe was entertaining the high nobility of the Northern Alliance as his official Luna-elect. He had secured the political alliance his pack desperately needed. He had done his duty as an Alpha.

So why did he feel like his chest was collapsing from the inside out?

Lucas lowered his head, his icy blue eyes staring at the floor. The memory of Jane tearing off his temporary mark—her blood splashing across her collarbone, her eyes filled with a cold, absolute finality—was burned into his retinas like a scar.

“From this night on, I owe nothing to the Silver Moon Pack. And you owe nothing to me.”

Her voice echoed in his mind, louder than the wind outside.

"She will come back," Lucas muttered to himself, trying to quiet the dark, thrashing beast inside his chest. His wolf, a massive black beast named Shadow, had been growling furiously against his ribs ever since Jane walked out of the ballroom. "She has nowhere else to go. She is unshifted and weak. She will go to the border clinic, and tomorrow... tomorrow I will send her money. I will secure a comfortable house for her in the outer city."

Suddenly, a violent, agonizing spasm hit Lucas directly in the center of his heart.

CRACK!

The heavy crystal glass slipped from his fingers, shattering into a hundred pieces on the hardwood floor.

Lucas gasped for air, dropping to one knee as a wave of cold, phantom agony surged through his veins. It wasn't a physical injury. It was something far deeper—a brutal, agonizing severing of the soul.

His wolf, Shadow, let out a long, mournful, ear-splitting howl inside his mind.

SHE IS GONE! Shadow roared, thrashing against Lucas’s soul with wild, panicked fury. OUR MATE IS GONE! THE BOND IS DEAD!

"No..." Lucas choked out, grabbing his chest, his breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches. A cold sweat broke out across his forehead. Werewolves only experienced this specific, soul-crushing void when their true mate’s life force vanished completely from the earth.

"No! Jane!"

The heavy double doors of his suite burst open. Chloe stepped into the room, her silver dress sparkling under the chandelier light, a look of simulated panic on her face.

"Lucas! What happened?" Chloe rushed to his side, reaching out to touch his shoulder. "I heard a noise—"

"Get off me!" Lucas roared, his voice laced with such a terrifying, raw Alpha Command that Chloe was violently knocked back two steps, her face turning pale with shock.

Before she could speak, Lucas’s chief tracking officer, Beta Marcus, sprinted into the room, his face pale and dripping with snow.

"Alpha!" Marcus gasped, his voice trembling violently. "Border patrol just reported a massive explosion at Deadman’s Ravine!"

Lucas snapped his head up, his icy blue eyes flashing blood-red with sudden, terrifying panic. "What explosion?!"

"An abandoned truck plunged off the two-hundred-foot cliff and detonated," Marcus whispered, his head bowed in dread. "We... we found scorched remnants of a silver dress and fresh blood on the rocks. The tracking team confirmed the scent profile before the river carried the wreckage away."

Marcus swallowed hard, unable to look his Alpha in the eye.

"It was Jane Reed, sir. She... she didn't survive."

The room seemed to lose all air, all sound, all light.

Lucas stood up slowly, his tall frame shaking violently. He stared at Marcus, his mind refusing to process the words. Dead? Jane? The fragile girl who used to smile at him under the starlight? The girl he had promised to protect?

"No..." Lucas whispered, his voice cracking into a raw, hollow sound he didn't recognize.

"Lucas, darling," Chloe spoke up, stepping forward carefully, trying to inject soothing pity into her tone. "It's a tragedy, truly, but she was unshifted and emotionally unstable after the rejection. You shouldn't blame yourself—"

"SILENCE!"

The sheer force of Lucas’s Alpha aura detonated throughout the room like a bomb. The heavy glass windows shattered outward into the storm, and the wooden furniture cracked down the center. Chloe let out a terrified shriek, falling to her knees under the crushing weight of his fury.

Lucas didn't look at her. He didn't look at anyone.

He lunged out of the broken window, shifting mid-air into a massive, jet-black wolf with glowing, blood-red eyes.

Shadow hit the snowy ground below with a thundering crash and sprinted toward Deadman’s Ravine at terrifying speed, throwing his head back to throw a long, agonizing, heartbroken howl into the black storm—a sound of pure despair that shook the entire Silver Moon territory to its core.

At the bottom of the snowy ditch near the ravine, I pulled myself out of the freezing drift.

Listening to that distant, heartbroken wolf howl echoing from the high peaks, I didn't feel a single drop of pity. The Jane who loved Lucas Vance had died in that ballroom.

I turned my back on the Silver Moon Pack forever, staggering through the blinding storm toward the frozen southern river that led to the human world.

I pressed my hand firmly against my belly, feeling those two tiny, warm hearts pulsing stubbornly against my palm.

"We made it, my darlings," I whispered into the freezing wind, my eyes flashing with a fleeting, golden light against the dark. "From now on... it's just us."