My Alpha Rejected Me for His Pregnant Mistress

Nine fifty-two. That's the time on the brass clock above the ice sculptures when Sterling Grant threw his head back and laughed, and my mark went cold under my collar like someone had pressed a shard of ice flat against my throat.

I kept pouring. My hand didn't shake. Ten years of practice taught me that much — how to hold a bottle of Cabernet steady while something inside my chest tried to fold in on itself.

Across the ballroom, Khloe Jenkins had one palm resting on her belly, tilting her face up at the pack members clustering around her like she was already Luna. "Just a few more months," she was saying, honeyed and soft. "Sterling's so protective, he barely lets me lift a finger." Sterling stood beside her with his jaw set in that permanent, unbothered pride I used to mistake for strength.

I pressed my palm flat against my sternum and smoothed it down my apron like I was just straightening the fabric. Nobody looked twice. I was an Omega server. Nobody looked at all.

That was the plan. Invisible. Safe.

Until I circled back to refill his table and my sleeve rode up an inch too far.

"Oh." Khloe's voice caught, delighted, private. Her eyes fixed on the raised, silvery burn scars threading up my wrist — scars she had watched happen, close enough to smell the smoke ten years ago. "Come here a moment, sweetheart."

I shouldn't have stepped closer. I did anyway, because refusing a ranked wolf's summons draws more eyes than obeying one.

The goblet in her hand tipped. Wolfsbane-laced wine sheeted across my forearms, and the burn was instant, chemical, alive — worse than fire because fire at least stops. I bit through my bottom lip. I did not make a sound.

"Clumsy thing," Sterling said, not even looking at my face, only at the wine soaking into the white tablecloth. His voice carried that flat, absolute Alpha weight that made three enforcers move before he finished the sentence. "Get her out of my sight. Toss her in the snow to cool off."

A young enforcer near the door — Tobias Reed, I'd learn his name later — flinched and looked away as they dragged me past him, my cloak torn off my shoulders in the hallway. He didn't stop it. Nobody ever does.

Outside, the cold hit harder than the wolfsbane. I knelt in the snow in my thin under-shirt and pressed my burning palms flat into the ice until the sting dulled to something bearable. I did not cry. I did the math instead — tonight's tips, minus the spilled goblet's wine I'd be docked for, minus the salve I'd need for my hands, and I came up forty dollars short of June's appointment in three days.

Somewhere under my ribs, my wolf stirred — not submission, something closer to a growl with nowhere to go. I pushed her back down before she could reach my skin.

June was awake when I got home, counting her breaths under her blanket the way she does. She saw my hands and didn't ask questions. She just brought the salve, small fingers careful over my blistered palms, and I hummed the lullaby I don't remember learning until her breathing evened out. Then I opened my tin of receipts and did the arithmetic one more time. It didn't change. I needed better money, fast.

The next morning I found it on the work board — bottle service, VIP lounge, rogue-run territory in the entertainment district, triple the banquet rate. Dangerous clientele. Degrading work. I took it without blinking and pocketed the advance before I could think twice.

That afternoon June's healer gave me the rest of it. "The wolfsbane residue has thickened," she said, not unkindly, just tired of saying hard things. "Regional medicine can't stop this progression. Without something beyond what we have here, she won't reach adulthood."

I walked out onto the street and stood there until my skin cracked with heat I couldn't explain, fur threading just beneath the surface before I forced it back under. Grief has a shape. Mine looked like silver fur trying to break through my own arms.

I went home. I measured June's evening dose into the little cup, watched her drink it, kissed her forehead.

Then I put on the only black dress I own and walked into the lounge that night for my first shift.

The manager barely glanced at me as she handed me an apron and a tray. "VIP room's booked solid tonight," she said, already turning away. "Big spender. Regular Alpha crowd. You'll want to keep your head down."

I already knew how to do that.

I just didn't know whose name was on the reservation yet.