After My Alpha Chose His Pregnant Mistress Over Me

This Road Has No Return

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It had been five years since the marking ceremony that made me Javier Wagner’s mate, Luna of the Iron Peak Pack. He walked through the front door of our pack house and stopped right in front of me, a woman with a swollen belly tucked neatly at his side.

“Eileen’s father saved my life during the rogue incursion ten years ago,” he said, his voice steady, righteous, that deep Alpha tone pressing down on my chest like a stone. “He entrusted her to me before he died. I have to do right by her.”

His broad shoulders were squared, as if he expected me to snap and snarl, to throw the full weight of my Luna status at this Beta female who’d wormed her way into our home. I knew what was coming next. I’d lived this moment once before, after all.

He pulled the official rejection paperwork from his inner jacket pocket and held it out between us. The paper crinkled at the edges, crisp and final. “I swore to her father she would never be anything less than my chosen mate. I, Javier Wagner, Alpha of the Iron Peak Pack, reject you, Lyric Wilson, as my mate and Luna of this pack—for now. Once Eileen and I complete the marking, I will reinstate you as my second chosen mate. You will keep your title as Luna, nothing will change for your status beyond a temporary separation.”

In my past life, I’d screamed at him. I’d cried, I’d clutched his arm and begged him to see reason, to remember the mate bond that the Moon Goddess had tied between us. When I’d found out I was carrying Willow just weeks after that, I’d run to him with the positive pregnancy test, only for Eileen to tilt her head and murmur that I’d always had irregular cycles, that I was probably just faking a pregnancy to turn him against her. Javier had believed her. He’d believed I’d faked the pregnancy, that I’d let another wolf touch me to ruin the Alpha bloodline. He’d locked me in the old hunting cabin by the frozen lake, and when he came back a week later to confront me, the cold had already seeped into my bones and stopped my heart.

I opened my eyes again this morning, and I was back here, standing in the entryway of the pack house, the scent of Eileen Murray’s jasmine cloying in my nose, the rejection paper held out between us.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t beg. I reached out and took the paper from his hand, my fingers brushing his calloused knuckles. The familiar pull of the old mate bond tugged at my chest, faint and aching, but my wolf stayed quiet, huddled in the back of my mind, cold and still.

I picked up the pen off the entry table, signed my name at the bottom of the form without a single tremor in my hand.

Javier’s dark brows pulled together, just like I knew they would. He’d expected a fight. He’d expected me to grovel, the way I did last time. For a split second, his sharp Alpha aura wavered, confused, before it settled back into that cold, domineering weight it always held when he looked at me now.

I folded the paper neatly and handed it back to him. The rejection burned the back of my throat, a sharp, soul-deep ache, but I swallowed it down. It was nothing compared to the cold of that frozen cabin, nothing compared to the weight of drowning in ice water while Eileen laughed from the bank.

“Done,” I said, my voice steady. “The rejection is final. I don’t want to be your second anything. I’ll leave the pack territory at dawn.”