After My Mate Sold Our Child To A Rogue

The guest room was small. Smaller than I remembered. A single bed, a narrow window that looked out onto the pack's maintenance shed, and a desk that wobbled when I set my phone down too hard. I'd assigned this room to visiting healers, to temporary pack members waiting for permanent housing. I'd never imagined I'd be the one sleeping here.

I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed my thumb against the inside of my wrist until the pressure turned sharp. My wolf was still howling somewhere deep inside me, a sound I couldn't afford to let out. If I started crying now, I wasn't sure I'd stop.

I pulled out my phone instead. My hands were steady. That was something.

Daria picked up on the second ring.

"Hazel?" Her voice was careful, like she'd been expecting this call. "I heard—"

"I need you to do something for me," I said, cutting through whatever sympathy she was about to offer. "And I need you to do it without asking questions."

A pause. Then: "Okay."

"The mating registry. The archived records from ten years ago. And the birth certificates—all of them from that year. I need the physical files, not digital copies. Can you get past security?"

"Yes." No hesitation. "When?"

"Tonight. After midnight. Bring them here."

"Hazel—"

"Please."

Another pause, longer this time. Then Daria's voice came back, quieter but absolutely certain. "I'll be there."

I hung up and sat in the dark, watching the maintenance shed's security light flicker on and off through the window. My mind kept trying to circle back to the Luna suite, to the boy's face, to the word 'Mom' in his mouth like it had always belonged to someone else. I pressed harder against my wrist and made myself think about logistics instead. Files. Evidence. Things I could hold in my hands and prove.

Daria arrived at one-fifteen in the morning, slipping through the guest wing door with a canvas bag slung over her shoulder. She didn't turn on the light. Just crossed the room and set the bag on the desk, then pulled me into a brief, fierce hug that I couldn't return because if I softened even slightly I would shatter.

"I didn't look," she said quietly. "But Hazel—whatever's in there—"

"Thank you," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. "Go. If anyone asks—"

"No one's going to ask." She squeezed my shoulder once and left as silently as she'd come.

I waited until her footsteps faded completely. Then I turned on the desk lamp and opened the bag.

The mating registry was on top, a leather-bound ledger that smelled like old paper and formal pack ceremonies. I flipped to the year Wesley and I were bonded, my fingers moving automatically to the page I'd signed a decade ago. My name was there in careful script: Hazel Emerson, Luna of the Black Moon Pack, mated to Alpha Wesley Munoz.

I turned back three pages.

There it was. Wesley Munoz and Raelynn Simpson, bonded four years before me. And in the column marked 'Status,' where it should have said 'Dissolved' or 'Severed,' there was nothing. Just a blank space and a registrar's note in tiny handwriting: *Bond intact per Moon Goddess covenant. No formal dissolution filed.*

My wolf went silent.

I set the registry aside with hands that had stopped shaking and pulled out the birth certificates. There were dozens—every pup born to the pack that year, documented and filed. I found the boy's quickly. I'd seen it before, years ago, filed it myself in the pack's records system.

Except the version I'd filed had listed me as the mother.

This one—the original, the one pulled from the archive—listed Raelynn Simpson.

I read it three times. The ink didn't change. The names didn't shift. Raelynn Simpson, biological mother. Wesley Munoz, biological father. Date of birth, weight, length—all the details I remembered from the day I'd brought him home from the pack's birthing center, the day I'd thought I was bringing home my son.

I set the certificate down very carefully and stared at it until the words stopped making sense.

Then I stood up, gathered the files, and walked out of the guest room. The pack house was silent, the halls empty. I didn't care. I walked straight to Wesley's private study—not the public office, the one he used for actual work—and I didn't knock.

The door wasn't locked. It swung open under my hand, and Wesley looked up from his desk, annoyance flashing across his face before he saw what I was holding.

"Hazel—"

I slammed the files onto his desk hard enough that his coffee cup rattled. "Tell me the truth."

He didn't move. Just stared at the registry, at the birth certificate, and something shifted in his expression. Not guilt. Calculation.

"You went through the archives," he said slowly.

"Tell me the truth," I repeated, and my voice was so cold I barely recognized it. "About the boy. About Raelynn. About everything."

Wesley leaned back in his chair, and his Alpha aura rolled out—heavy, oppressive, designed to make me submit. I felt my wolf stir, felt the instinctive urge to lower my eyes, to back down.

I didn't move.

"Sit down, Hazel," he said, his tone all command.

"No." I planted my hands on his desk and leaned forward until we were eye-level. "You don't get to do that anymore. Tell me about my pregnancy. The one from years ago. The daughter I gave birth to. Where is she, Wesley?"

Something flickered in his eyes—surprise, maybe, that I'd made the connection. Then it was gone, replaced by something colder.

"That," he said quietly, "is complicated."

"Uncomplicate it."

He studied me for a long moment, his Alpha aura still pressing down, still trying to force my submission. When I didn't break, he exhaled slowly and folded his hands on the desk.

"She was sold," he said. "At birth. To a rogue contact who needed—"

"Her name," I interrupted, and my voice didn't shake. "Give me her name."

Wesley's jaw tightened. Then, very deliberately, he said: "Nylah Parker."

The room tilted. I gripped the edge of the desk and forced myself to stay upright, to keep breathing, to not let him see how completely those two words had just destroyed me.

"You sold our daughter," I said slowly, "to a rogue."

"I made a decision," Wesley said, his tone flat, "that was best for the pack. For our future. You were never supposed to know."

I looked at him—really looked at him—and saw a stranger. Someone I'd never actually known at all.

"Where is she now?" I asked.

Wesley's expression closed completely. "That's not your concern anymore."

I straightened, picked up the files, and walked toward the door. My legs felt distant, like they belonged to someone else.

"Hazel," Wesley called after me, his voice sharp with command. "We're not done."

I stopped in the doorway but didn't turn around.

"Yes," I said quietly. "We are."

And I walked out, carrying the weight of ten years of lies in a canvas bag, my daughter's name burning in my chest like a brand.