His Rejected Mate, His Hidden Heir

Chapter 5 — The Weight of Secrets

I learned to count hours by the nausea.

Six AM — the first wave, hitting me before I could open my eyes. I'd roll sideways, grab the bucket, and let my body do what it had been doing every morning for three weeks now. By six-fifteen, I'd be done. By six-twenty, I'd be on my feet, splashing cold water on my face from the basin in the corner of my room, tying my hair back, covering the mark with my collar.

By six-thirty, I was in the kitchen, prepping breakfast for a pack that didn't know I was carrying their Alpha's heir.

The work was the same. Eggs, bacon, toast. Mountains of it. The pack ate like wolves even in human form — piled plates, second helpings, barely a word of thanks to the kitchen staff. I moved through the morning routine on autopilot, my hands working while my mind calculated.

Four weeks along. Maybe five. Morning sickness peaks at eight to twelve weeks. That gives me three to seven weeks before it gets worse. Seven weeks to save enough money. Seven weeks to find somewhere to go. Seven weeks to—

"Nova."

I flinched. Marta was watching me from across the prep table, her thick arms crossed over her chest.

"You're burning the toast."

I looked down. The bread under the broiler had gone from golden to black in the thirty seconds I'd spaced out. I yanked the pan out, dumped the ruined slices, and slid in new ones.

"Sorry."

"Sorry doesn't un-burn toast." She watched me for another moment, then turned away. But I saw it — the flicker of something in her eyes. Not concern, exactly. Suspicion.

I needed to be more careful.

* * *

The fatigue was the worst part.

Not the nausea — I could work through nausea. I'd worked through worse. But the exhaustion was a living thing, pressing down on my shoulders, wrapping around my bones, whispering *lie down, give up, you can't do this* every time I stood up too fast and the room tilted.

I started taking breaks in the supply closet. Five minutes here, ten minutes there. Sitting on an overturned crate, my head between my knees, breathing through the dizziness. No one noticed. No one ever noticed the hybrid in the corner.

Except someone did.

"Still alive, weak-blood?"

I looked up. Miranda stood in the doorway of the supply closet, her arms crossed, her dark hair pulled back in a tight braid that made her cheekbones look like weapons. She was in training gear — fitted black pants, a sports top that showed the defined muscles of her arms. Behind her, the sparring yard was visible through the window, wolves circling each other in the afternoon sun.

"Still breathing," I said, and reached for the shelf to pull myself up.

Miranda didn't move from the doorway. "You look terrible."

"Thanks."

"I'm not complimenting you." She tilted her head, studying me the way a wolf studies a rabbit — not with hunger, but with a lazy certainty that the prey wasn't worth chasing. "You've been like this for weeks. Throwing up. Passing out. Can't even stand up straight." Her lips curved. "What's the matter, Nova? Can't handle a little kitchen work?"

I didn't answer. Miranda wasn't asking a question. She was making a statement: *You are weak. You have always been weak. And no matter what happens, you will never be strong enough for this pack.*

She was right about one thing. I couldn't handle the kitchen work. Not the way I used to. But she was wrong about why.

"I'm fine," I said, and squeezed past her out of the closet.

Her eyes followed me down the corridor. I could feel them on my back — sharp, appraising, interested in a way that made my skin prickle. Not because she cared. Because she was watching.

And a watching wolf was a dangerous wolf.

* * *

That night, I couldn't sleep.

The mark on my neck was pulsing again — that slow, rhythmic throb that had started the day I took the test. Not painful. Not demanding. Just... aware. Like something inside me had woken up and was waiting.

I pressed my hand over it and stared at the ceiling.

The boarding house was quiet at night. The walls were thin — I could hear the omega in the next room snoring, the pipes groaning in the walls, the distant howl of a night patrol. But tonight, I heard something else.

Voices. Coming from the hallway.

I held my breath. The voices grew closer, then paused outside my door — not stopping at my door, but at the room next to mine, where two of the pack elders sometimes met for late-night conversations. The walls were so thin I could hear every word.

"—the Alpha needs to address the Mate situation."

That was Elder Bram. His voice was like gravel — rough, authoritative, accustomed to being obeyed.

"He's refused every match we've proposed." Elder Catherine, her tone clipped with frustration. "The boy is stubborn."

"Stubbornness is a virtue in an Alpha. But this... fixation on a mistake..."

My stomach clenched.

They're talking about me.

"The marking was a regrettable incident," Catherine continued. "The hybrid should have been removed from the territory immediately. Keeping her here—it's a distraction."

"Kane won't allow it. He says she's pack."

"He says a lot of things. The reality is that his wolf is unsettled. Unbonded Alphas are dangerous, Bram. You know this. The elders at the Council meeting pressed the point — IronClaw needs a Luna. A proper Luna."

A proper Luna.

Not a hybrid. Not a weak-blood. Not a mistake.

"Miranda has been mentioned," Bram said, and I heard the creak of a chair. "She's strong. Pure-blooded. From the Blackridge line on her mother's side. She's made her interest clear."

"She'd make a fine Luna. But the mark—"

"Can be broken. There are rituals. Painful, but effective. Once the bond is severed, Kane would be free to take a proper Mate."

Break the bond.

My hand flew to my neck. The mark pulsed under my fingers, warm and alive, and for the first time since I'd discovered the pregnancy, I felt it — really felt it — the thread that connected me to Kane. Not emotion. Not love. Just a thin, silver thread of *something* that had been pulsing quietly in the background of my life since the night he marked me.

They wanted to cut it.

They wanted to cut it so Kane could mate with Miranda, have proper pups, build a proper dynasty. And I — the hybrid, the mistake, the nothing — would be cast out. Or worse.

The ritual requires consent from both parties,* I told myself, clinging to the old teachings my mother had given me before she died. *He can't break it without me.

But I was a hybrid. I was packless by birth, powerless by circumstance. If the elders decided the bond was a threat to the Alpha's stability, how long before they decided my consent wasn't required?

I waited until their voices faded, until their footsteps retreated down the hall. Then I lay in the dark, my hand on my stomach, my other hand on the mark, and I let the fear settle into something harder.

They're going to erase you,* it said. *Eraser your bond, erase your mark, erase your child. You are nothing to them. You have never been anything.

Then I'll be nothing somewhere else,* I thought back. *And I'll take my child with me.

* * *

But first — one thing I had to know.

I told myself it was reconnaissance. That I needed to understand what I was dealing with. That if I was going to run, I needed to know what I was running from.

That was the lie.

The truth was simpler and more painful: I wanted to see him. Just once. Just a glimpse. Not to talk to him — I'd never be that stupid — but to understand. To see if there was anything behind the cold mask he'd worn at the rejection. Anything at all.

The Alpha's quarters were in the east wing, behind a set of heavy oak doors that I'd never had reason to approach. The corridor was empty at this hour — past midnight, the pack long asleep, the patrols on the perimeter.

I didn't knock. I stood in the shadow of an alcove across from his door, my heart pounding so loud I was sure the wolves on the third floor could hear it.

Voices. Low. Coming from inside.

"—should have controlled it." Kane's voice, rough and quiet. Not the commanding Alpha tone. Something stripped down. Raw.

"You were in a frenzy," Darius replied, steady and reasonable. "No Alpha has full control in a frenzy. You know this."

"I marked her." A pause. The sound of something hitting a wall — a fist, maybe. "I marked a hybrid. A *weak-blood*. And now I'm bound to her for the rest of my life because I couldn't keep my wolf on a leash for one goddamn night."

I pressed my back against the cold stone of the alcove.

"The marking was a mistake." His voice again, and this time it was quieter. Not angry. Something worse. "She deserves nothing from me. Nothing."

I waited for the rage. The tears. The howl of grief that a rejected mate is supposed to feel.

It didn't come.

Because he was right. He *was* right. The marking was a mistake — a frenzy-born accident that had bound two people who should never have been bound. And I didn't want anything from him. I didn't want his claim or his protection or his love. I wanted my child. That was all.

But hearing him say it — *She deserves nothing from me* — still felt like a hand closing around my throat.

I turned and walked back to my room. Quietly. Carefully. The way I did everything.

Behind me, I heard Darius say something else — something low and urgent that I couldn't make out. And then Kane's voice, barely audible through the oak door:

"I know what I owe her. And I know I can't give it."

I didn't stay to hear more.

* * *

Back in my room, I sat on the edge of my cot and pressed both hands to my stomach. Flat still. Unchanged. But beneath my palms, beneath skin and bone and willful denial, a tiny life was growing. A life that Kane IronClaw didn't know existed. A life that the elders would take the moment they discovered it. A life that Miranda would destroy if she became Luna — because no Alpha's mate would tolerate the offspring of a hybrid rival.

He didn't know.

The words repeated in my head like a drumbeat. He didn't know about the baby. He didn't know about the fear. He didn't know about the plans I was making in the dark hours between midnight and dawn, the cash I was hiding in the lining of my jacket, the map I'd stolen from the supply room that showed the bus routes out of pack territory.

And he never would.

That was my power. Not strength, not speed, not the faded mark on my neck. Just this — a secret he didn't know he'd lost. A child he'd never know he had. A future he'd rejected before it even began.

You don't get to know,* I told him, speaking to the bond that pulsed faintly in my chest. *You don't get to decide. You made your choice.

The bond went quiet.

I opened the small notebook I'd hidden under my mattress and added another line to the list:

Cash saved: $67.

Target: $500 minimum.

New moon: 18 days.

Eighteen days. Eighteen days until the darkest night of the month, when wolf senses were at their weakest. Eighteen days to save enough money, gather enough supplies, and find the courage to walk out of this territory and never come back.

I closed the notebook, slid it back under the mattress, and lay down with my hand on my stomach.

The mark pulsed once. I ignored it.

Eighteen days.

* * *

Eighteen days. That was my window. Eighteen days to become someone I'd never been — brave enough to leave, strong enough to survive, selfish enough to take my child and disappear into a world that didn't want hybrids any more than this one did. But first, I had to learn the hardest lesson a mother can learn: that sometimes protecting the one you love means becoming invisible to everyone else. Including the one who helped make them.