I Carried the Alpha's Seed,He Begs on His Knees After My Awakening

I was nothing more than a human-born, yet I had lived for hundreds of thousands of years.

All because the Supreme Alpha had gazed into the Moon Goddess's Vision and divined that I was his fated mate. If he and I were to bond, we would bring forth a prophesied Alpha pup capable of ruling all Six Great Packs.

Fenris Voss brought me from the human world into Shadowfang territory, feeding me his Alpha blood essence each night to keep me ageless and undying.

But conceiving with a human-born was nearly impossible for a wolf of his bloodline. Night after night, for hundreds of thousands of years, he lay with me, and only then did I finally quicken with the prophesied pup.

Fenris was overjoyed. He crowned me Luna Queen on the spot, treating me and the child in my womb as his most precious treasures.

When his own sister accidentally brushed against my belly during a moment of play, he ground her bones to dust and scattered them to the wind. She had been the only princess of the entire Shadowfang bloodline.

To safeguard the pup, Fenris arranged for me to rest and nurture the pregnancy in the Sacred Den.

Cadmus Wilder, drunk and lost, once stumbled past the blood-ward boundary by mistake. Fenris killed him where he stood, then led his Shadowfang wolves into Silvercrest territory and slaughtered until rivers ran red with blood.

To end the war, the Silvercrest Alpha had no choice but to offer the most beautiful she-wolf in all the Six Great Packs, Seraphina Crystalis, as an arranged mate to the Supreme Alpha.

Seraphina, emboldened by her status as the Silvercrest Alpha's daughter, answered to no one. She forced her way past the blood-ward into the Sacred Den with her handmaidens at her back:

"What filthy human-born dares hide in the Sacred Den? Bedding Shadowfang guards and getting herself pregnant?"

"Today, I'll clean house for the Supreme Alpha myself!"

She ordered her handmaidens to hack off my limbs, then tore open my belly with bare hands and ripped the pup from my womb.

As I lay dying, Fenris arrived with the Alphas of the Six Great Packs to witness the birth of their future sovereign.

Seraphina dragged me before him and held up the infant she had tortured to death, her face bright with triumph:

"I discovered a filthy human-born whoring herself out to your Shadowfang guards. This is the bastard she was carrying!"

"I humbly beg the Supreme Alpha to find the wretch who fathered this thing and grind his bones to ash, so the dignity of the Shadowfang Pack remains unsullied!"

——

Three full years I had carried the child. The moon itself had turned strange colors, and wolves across every territory had howled without knowing why.

The movements in my womb had grown fiercer by the day, the unborn stirring with signs that its arrival was imminent. Some nights I could feel the pup's wolf already pushing against my skin, restless, eager.

I was lying in the den, preparing for the birth, when a commotion broke out beyond the doors.

"The Supreme Alpha keeps coming here every other day. Today, I'm going to see for myself what precious little secret he's hiding!"

"But, my lady, I've heard that the Abyssal Den is part of the Sacred Den grounds. No one is permitted to enter without leave!"

"That's right, Seraphina. They say that when Cadmus Wilder merely wandered past the blood-ward by accident, the Supreme Alpha executed him on the spot and it sparked the Pack War. Barging in like this... isn't it a bit reckless?"

"Reckless? I am the only she-wolf in all the Six Great Packs worthy of the Supreme Alpha's attention. He would never blame me."

Listening to the noise outside, I frowned. A cold sense of dread settled in my chest.

Fenris guarded me and the child with obsessive devotion.

After the incident where someone had accidentally touched my belly, he had dismissed every last soul from the Sacred Den.

Proud and untamable as he was, he came here himself each day to care for me. He would press his forehead to my swollen stomach and stay there, silent, breathing slow, as though listening for the pup's heartbeat with his own ears. The scent of ancient cedar heartwood and smoldering iron would linger on the furs long after he left.

Cadmus Wilder had once been an honored guest, on friendly terms with the Supreme Alpha.

Yet a single drunken misstep past the blood-ward was enough for Fenris to kill him without hesitation, igniting the war between the Silvercrest and Shadowfang Packs.

Mountains of corpses. Seas of blood.

If those she-wolves outside made it in here, another massacre was all but certain.

I hauled myself out of bed and hurried into the courtyard, hoping to warn them away before it was too late.

But the moment I opened the door, a face stared back at me. A face that looked seven-tenths like my own.

A scent hit me before her hand did. White jasmine and fresh snow and something underneath that made my skin prickle, sharp and chemical, like polished silver held too close to bare flesh.

Before I could utter a word, a hand cracked across my cheek.

"Where did this wretched little servant come from, wearing my face in the Supreme Alpha's Abyssal Den? What, are you trying to steal his favor from me?"