Alpha's Regrets and Tears are Too Late

The world froze around me. Lose her again?

Callum’s words echoed in my mind, tearing at my sanity. My heart thundered in my chest as the air thickened, making it hard to breathe. I wanted to rush forward, to scream, to demand answers. But my body felt like stone, rooted to the spot. My wolf stirred inside me, howling in anger and confusion. What did he mean? How could he have lost her before? Was Riva more than just a passing fascination?

My hand trembled as I took a step forward, ready to confront him—ready to rip apart whatever fragile thread remained between us.

But then everything started spinning.

The world tilted violently, and I swayed, clutching at my stomach. A sharp, searing pain shot through me, doubling me over as my vision blurred. The voices of the festival, once so vibrant, became muffled, distant echoes. I could barely make out Callum’s voice calling my name, but it sounded so far away, so disconnected from the storm raging inside me.

My knees buckled, and before I could stop myself, I collapsed.

The ground rushed up to meet me, and then... nothing.

---

When I awoke, the scent of herbs and pine filled the air. My body felt weightless, as though I was floating in the aftermath of a nightmare. I blinked, trying to clear the fog in my mind. The soft crackle of a fire and the dim light of the healer’s quarters greeted me. The familiar scents of healing salves and dried herbs clung to the air, wrapping around me like a blanket.

I shifted, wincing at the soreness in my body. My head pounded, and my limbs felt heavy. For a moment, I thought I was dreaming—that everything I had seen and heard was just some twisted nightmare conjured by my doubts and fears. But the ache in my chest, the gnawing emptiness, told me otherwise.

“Luna... you’re awake.”

The soft voice pulled me from my thoughts. I turned my head and saw Eira, the pack’s healer, standing by the bed. Her eyes, normally warm and filled with hope, were now clouded with sorrow. She hesitated, her hands twisting together in front of her.

My mouth was dry, but I managed to rasp out a single question, my voice trembling. “The baby...?”

Her expression told me everything before she even spoke. My heart plummeted to a place I didn’t know existed, a pit of darkness so deep I wasn’t sure I’d ever crawl out.

“I’m so sorry,” Eira whispered, her voice thick with grief. “You lost the baby, Luna.”

Her words shattered me. It felt like the ground beneath me had disappeared, leaving me to free fall into an abyss of pain I couldn’t escape. I pressed a hand to my stomach, my chest heaving as a sob tore from my throat. The life I had been so desperate to hold onto, the hope I had clung to in the face of Callum’s betrayal—it was gone. Gone before I could even protect it.

“No...” My voice broke. “No, no, no...”

Tears blurred my vision as I curled in on myself, my hand resting over the now hollow place where my pup had been growing. I wanted to scream, to shift into my wolf and run until my legs gave out, until the pain inside me was nothing compared to the physical exhaustion. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything except drown in the overwhelming loss that swallowed me whole.

Eira knelt beside me, placing a gentle hand on my arm. “Your body went through too much stress, Luna. Your wolf did everything she could to protect you and the baby, but sometimes... sometimes even the Moon Goddess’s blessings can’t stop fate.”

The Moon Goddess. I had always believed in her plan for me—for Callum, for our pack, for the future we were supposed to build together. But now? Now, it felt like the Goddess had turned her back on me. What kind of fate was this? To lose my mate, to lose my child?

“Does Callum know?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper.

Eira’s lips tightened. “No…”

Something inside me snapped at that. Callum—the mate who had looked at another she-wolf with softness and love while I had carried his child, while I had planned our future—didn’t know, he didn’t care.

A growl built in my throat, low and dangerous. My wolf stirred, itching to be let out, to confront him, to make him pay for the agony he had put me through. But there was a part of me, the human part, that was too broken, too exhausted to face him. Not now. Not yet.

“I don’t want to see him,” I murmured, wiping the tears from my face. “Not now.”

Eira hesitated. “Luna... he’s your mate. He deserves to know—”

“I said no!” I snapped, my voice sharper than I intended. I clenched my fists, forcing myself to calm down. “I can’t... I can’t face him right now, Eira.”

The healer nodded, her face etched with sympathy. “I understand.”

As she left the room, I lay back down, staring at the ceiling. The emptiness inside me was suffocating, but it wasn’t just from losing the baby. It was from the realization that my bond with Callum was fractured beyond repair.

I had lost more than a child that night. I had lost everything that had once made me whole.

And now, all that was left was a hollow shell of what I used to be.