Alpha, She Is Done With You

Chapter 1Sora's POV "Spread your legs wider." The man behind me thrusts hard, slamming deep like a merciless invasion. I should crave my mate's mark. Instead I feel only sharp heat and the steady knowledge that none of this is for me. He flips me onto my back and folds my legs up against my chest. The position is humiliating. Wide open. Exposed. "Hold them yourself." His voice is cold. His hips don't stop. "Ethan… I can't…" My lungs burn. "You don't like this position?" His voice slides through the dark like silk. Dangerous. Tempting. "Your body is more honest than your mouth." Shame floods my cheeks. My core clenches around him anyway. He growls and drives in harder. The room fills with the wet slap of skin against skin and my broken moans. When I come, white light bursts behind my eyes. I reach for his shoulders like a drowning woman, desperate for one second of warmth. He pulls out fast. No tenderness. None. Another monthly "duty" ends in suffocating dark. I force my aching body onto its side. Doctor's instructions. The best position to conceive. Ethan, my Alpha, my fated mate, stands by the bed and refuses to look at me. "Can you… hold me?" I whisper. The lights snap on. He turns his back and buttons his expensive shirt. His powerful shoulders disappear under the fabric. I lie there and tell myself the truth. Slowly. The way you press down on a wound. What just happened between us was not intimacy. It was the Bond. The Bond and an ovulation chart. His body needed mine because biology is louder than will. If I had no womb, if I could not carry his children, this monthly arrangement would not exist for a single second. It was real. None of it was faked. And none of it was for me. I let the warmth fade. I let myself know it. "Track your ovulation this month and let me know. " His tone is flat. The voice of a man closing a meeting. I've heard this sentence before. Four times in three months. The same words, almost word for word. I could mouth it with him. I don't answer. I haven't answered in two months. "The day after tomorrow is our seventh anniversary." The words come out before I can stop them. "You missed last year." His shoulders tense for half a second. He looks like a cold Greek statue. Beautiful. Untouchable. "Once you give me an Alpha heir, we'll talk." The door closes behind him. I lie still. Warm seed slides down my thigh and goes cold. I curl into the sheets the way the doctor said. I do not cry. It's okay, Sora. He is Alpha Ethan Blackwood. You are a wolfless, disabled Omega. This was always an unequal bargain. You knew that on the day of the mating. You forgot for a while. That is your mistake. Not his. At lunch the next day, I scroll through Lyra's account in the hospital corridor. The one I never follow but know by heart. Her latest post shows piles of flowers banked at the front of a concert stage. The camera lingers on one bouquet. There is a small card tucked into the white roses. The handwriting slants to the right. Confident. Specific. The Moon Saw Us First. I know that handwriting. I have known it for seven years. Lyra. His first love. The woman who was supposed to be gone. She is back. "A nurse playing on her phone in the hallway. Is this our pack's standard?" Violet's voice cuts the air like glass. My mother-in-law stands behind me in an expensive tailored suit, looking at me the way she looks at things that need to be removed. "Sorry, Madam." I lower my head. She has never let me call her Mom. Obedience is the fastest way to make her go. When she does, I straighten up. I have a job to do. A code comes in twenty minutes later. Border patrol wolf. Silver to the chest cavity. The attending isn't picking up his phone. They need whoever can scrub in now. I scrub in. For the next forty minutes every decision is right or it isn't. I work at the pace the work demands. Exact. Without margin. The resident across the table makes a sound at some point, surprise in it, and I don't look up to see what surprised him. The patient stabilizes. I close. I write the notes. Walking back into the corridor, I catch the resident saying something to the charge nurse. She turns and looks at me. It is not the look she gave me this morning. Seven years of being looked at like a liability has taught me not to notice when a look shifts. But I notice this one. I tuck it away. Quietly. Somewhere it can grow. After my shift I make Violet's coffee. Dark roast. Two sugars. The way she likes it. I have carried her coffee to her office every evening for seven years because this is what the Luna does, and I am still the Luna, whatever this household has decided about that fact. A few steps from the door I hear his voice inside. My feet stop. Ethan. He came home. He came home for our anniversary, two days early— "Seven years of marriage. One daughter who hasn't shifted yet." Violet, low and tight. "The council is watching. That crippled little Omega spreads her legs once a month. How exactly is she supposed to get pregnant again?" "Mother. Watch your words." Ethan, calm. My heart skips. Is he— "If it weren't for stabilizing your Alpha position, I would never have accepted that disabled wolfless as your luna." She sighs. "Now that Lyra is back. Why not let her give you a child?" A pause. "No," Ethan says. "Have you forgotten what happened when Sora gave birth to Yuki? The amniotic embolism?" My eyes sting. He remembers. He remembers I almost died. I finish his sentence in my head. I have heard him think it before. She almost died. I'm not putting her through that again. I wait for him to say it. “Childbirth is too dangerous. Sora has experience. ” The coffee in my hands cools by a degree. "Lyra is different. After everything she's already survived—I won't let her take that risk." The corridor tilts. I stand outside the door and understand. He's not afraid of the danger. He's afraid of it reaching Lyra. I am the part of the equation that absorbs the risk. I am the body that survived once and can therefore survive again. The math is clean. He did the math years ago. Violet laughs. A short, satisfied sound. She mentions the child Lyra once lost. The night seven years ago that the whole Pack still talks about. "Exactly," she says. "When Yuki was born—if I hadn't told the doctors to save the baby instead of the mother, that little thing might not have made it. It's an Alpha's child. As for the vessel—" She pauses. "If it breaks, it breaks." Save the baby. I think of Yuki being born. The bleeding that wouldn't stop. The cold metal. The feeling of drowning on dry ground. The voice over my head, his, saying my name. Sora. Stay with us. Sora. I always thought that voice was telling them to save me. I set the coffee down on the ledge beside the door. Quietly. I take my hand back, one finger at a time. I turn. I walk. I do not remember the drive home. The moment I open the front door, a small body collides with me. "Mommy!" Yuki throws her arms around my neck. She smells like soap and the small floral perfume she has loved since she was four. I bend down and pull her in and bury my face in the warm crook of her neck. I am not just hugging my daughter. I am pulling strength out of her with both hands so I can survive the rest of tonight. She squirms. I make myself let go. She pulls back and looks up at me. Her father's eyes in a softer face. Bright. Honest. Six years old and certain about everything. "Mommy." "Yes, baby." "Everyone says Lyra is back." She tilts her head. "Are you and Daddy getting a divorce?"