After My Alpha Left Me, I Became a White Wolf

The hallway blurred through my tears. I pressed one hand against the wall, the other still cradling my stomach like I could protect the tiny life inside from the words that had just shattered my world.

Then the alarms screamed.

The sound pierced through my grief, sharp and urgent. Red emergency lights flooded the corridor, turning everything the color of blood. Somewhere below, glass shattered. Voices shouted. The building groaned like a wounded animal.

"Rogues! Rogues at the perimeter!"

I stumbled forward, trying to orient myself. The servant stairs—I needed to get to the servant stairs. My feet tangled in the hem of my stupid dress, the one I'd bought thinking tonight would be different.

The explosion hit before I could reach the stairwell.

The world turned sideways. The floor buckled beneath me, and I was falling, arms flailing for something, anything to grab. My shoulder slammed into the wall. Then something massive crashed down from above.

Pain exploded across my back and legs as a wooden beam pinned me to the floor. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Dust filled my lungs, choking me as I tried to scream.

The beam was crushing me. I clawed at the floor, trying to drag myself forward, but my legs wouldn't respond. Panic flooded through me, cold and sharp.

The baby. Oh god, the baby.

"Help!" My voice came out as a rasp, barely audible over the chaos. "Someone—please!"

Footsteps pounded down the hallway. Fast. Inhumanly fast.

Sebastian appeared through the smoke, his Alpha speed making him blur at the edges. His eyes found me, widened. For one heartbeat, I saw something human there—horror, maybe even regret.

"Sebastian." I reached out, my fingers stretching toward him. "Please."

He took a step forward.

Then Arielle's scream cut through the air.

I watched his head snap toward the sound. Watched him calculate. Watched the moment duty won over whatever flicker of feeling he might have had left.

"Sebastian, I'm pregnant," I gasped out. "Your child—"

But he was already moving. Away from me. Toward her.

He scooped Arielle into his arms like she weighed nothing, her perfectly styled hair barely mussed, her designer dress still pristine. She wasn't even injured. Just scared.

I was dying, carrying his child, and he chose her.

"Sebastian!" The word tore from my throat, raw and desperate.

He didn't look back.

The ceiling groaned above me. Chunks of plaster rained down, and I threw my arms over my head, trying to protect my stomach. The beam shifted, pressing harder. I felt something warm and wet spreading beneath me.

No. No, no, no.

I don't know how long I lay there. Seconds? Minutes? Time stretched and compressed, marked only by the sound of my own ragged breathing and the distant screams of pack members fleeing.

Then I heard footsteps again. Lighter this time. Careful.

Hope flared in my chest. "Help—"

Arielle's face appeared through the smoke.

She looked down at me, and there was nothing in her expression but cold calculation. She crouched beside me, close enough that I could smell her expensive perfume mixing with the acrid smoke.

"You know," she said conversationally, like we were discussing the weather, "I could smell it on you. In Sebastian's study. That mate bond." Her lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "It clings to you like cheap perfume."

I tried to speak, but only managed a wheeze.

"There can only be one Luna," she continued, standing. Her heel crunched on broken glass as she moved past me, toward something I couldn't see. "And it's going to be me."

Metal scraped against concrete. The smell hit me a second later—sharp, chemical. Gas.

She'd severed the line.

"No—" I choked out. "Please—"

But she was already walking away, her silhouette disappearing into the smoke. The gas hissed louder, filling the hallway with its poisonous promise.

I was going to die here. Alone. Crushed and bleeding, with Sebastian's child still inside me.

The mate bond I'd felt earlier—that beautiful, terrible recognition—now felt like a noose around my neck, pulling tighter with every breath.

I closed my eyes.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard more footsteps. Running. Shouting. But they were too far away, and I was so tired.

The last thing I thought before the darkness took me was that I hoped, somehow, my baby wouldn't feel any pain.