My Alpha Rejected Me for His Pregnant Omega

The great hall smelled like pine boughs and too many bodies.

Rows of chairs ran from the doors to the altar. Warriors sat in pressed black. Elders sat near the front. Allied Alphas and their Lunas filled the seats of honor. The Silverveil delegation stood apart by the east wall, in dark gray coats stitched with silver.

I walked in alone. That was the custom. The Luna-elect walks to the altar on her own feet, to show she comes by choice.

My hands were fists at my sides. I made them open. They closed again.

Halfway down the aisle, I felt someone watching me. The pack was watching too, of course. Curious, a little pitying, the way people look at a car crash before it happens. But this was different. Heavier.

I glanced left.

Theron stood at the far edge of the hall, beside the last pillar. He always stood at the edges. Ten years of gatherings, and I couldn't remember him ever taking a seat in the middle. He was tall and very still, dressed in Silverveil formal black, hands folded behind his back.

His eyes met mine. Something moved in them. Then his nostrils flared, just slightly, like he had caught a scent he wasn't ready for. His jaw went tight. His knuckles went white behind his back.

I looked away first. Deep inside me, that old sleeping thing turned over again.

I took my place at the altar. Calliope stepped up behind me in her Beta position, close enough that I could hear her breathing.

"You can still walk out," she murmured.

"No. I can't."

"My brother looks like he wants to burn the building down."

"He looks the way he always looks."

"Sloane." Her voice dropped. "He never looks like that."

I didn't get to ask what she meant. The double doors swung open.

Piper walked in wearing white.

Not ivory. Not cream. Luna white, the kind only the chosen mate wears on ceremony night. The gown was cut tight under her chest so the swell of her belly showed clearly. One hand rested on it. Her other hand was tucked into Grant's arm.

The hall went quiet, then started to hum.

"Is that the Omega?"

"Why is she in white?"

"Isn't Sloane already standing up there?"

Piper heard every word. I could tell. She slowed down so they had more time to say them. She smiled at the warriors' wives. She stopped beside old Martha from the kitchens and touched her shoulder.

"Thank you for coming," she said, sweet and soft. "It means so much."

Martha stared at her like she'd been slapped.

Behind me, Calliope made a sound low in her throat. I didn't have to turn around to see the muscle jumping in her cheek.

"I'm going to rip her throat out," she breathed.

"Not yet."

"*Yet?*"

"Stand still, Cal."

Grant left Piper at the foot of the altar steps and climbed up to face me. He wore the Alpha's black and gold. His hair was combed back. He looked handsome and rested, like a man who had slept well.

He looked at me the way you look at a box in the garage you've finally decided to throw out.

"You came," he said under his breath. "I wasn't sure you had the stomach."

"I always finish what I start."

Something flickered in his eyes. Annoyance. He had wanted tears. He turned to face the pack and raised his voice.

"I, Grant Collins, Alpha of the Ironcrest Pack, reject you, Sloane Brooks, as my mate and Luna-elect."

The words went into me like silver wire.

They didn't stop at my ears. They went through my chest and kept going. Something was pulled out of me, slow and jagged. Three years. Every morning I woke up thinking of him. Every treaty I signed in his name. Every night I told myself I was enough. All of it ripped free in a single line, dragging hooks behind it.

I staggered.

A smell filled the hall. Burnt copper, sharp and sour. The smell of a bond being torn apart. In the front row, two older Lunas flinched like they had been struck. One pressed her hand to her own mark.

My knees buckled.

I caught the edge of the altar with one hand. The stone was cold under my palm. My nails scraped it. My vision went white at the edges.

*Don't fall. Not in front of them.*

I counted. One breath in. One breath out. My teeth were clenched so hard my jaw ached. My face felt like paper.

I stayed on my feet.

Grant didn't even look at me. He was already turning away.

He walked down two steps to Piper. He took her chin in his hand and tilted her head to the side, gently, like she was something precious. Then he bent and sank his teeth into her neck.

The marking bite. Slow. Deliberate. In front of every wolf in Ironcrest, every allied Alpha, every member of the Silverveil Court.

Piper gasped. Then she smiled. Her fingers curled around his arm and held on.

When he lifted his head, the mark was already blooming on her skin. Red, then darker.

No one in the hall made a sound. Not a whisper. Not a breath.

Piper turned her head, just a little, and found my eyes over Grant's shoulder. *Victim*, she had called herself. To anyone who would listen. Now she wore his mark and my gown color and she looked at me like I was already gone.

I watched the mark on her neck.

Inside me, where the bond had been, something began to freeze. A thin skin of ice, spreading over the wound. It didn't stop the bleeding. It just covered it.

At my throat, the pendant turned cold as winter iron.

And under the ice, something that had been asleep my whole life opened its eyes.