My Mate Rejected Me While I Gave Birth

They assigned me to the banquet service rotation on a Wednesday.

Miriam had cleared me for light duty three days prior—light being a relative term when you're an Omega with a newborn strapped to your chest and a wolf that hasn't woken since the night your mate spoke a vow through someone else's skull. But I could stand. I could carry things. That made me useful.

The great hall smelled like roasted venison and beeswax when I entered through the service door. Twenty-six pack members at the long tables. Ranked wolves at the head. And Kendall Moore in the Luna's chair, wearing a high-collared silk blouse that didn't quite cover the fresh scar on her throat.

I kept my eyes on the water pitcher in my hands.

"Omega." Her voice carried across the hall, light and pleasant. "Refill the head table first, please."

Not Blair. Omega.

I crossed the stone floor with the pitcher balanced against my hip, Adley's weight a warm pressure on my sternum. The sling kept her quiet. I'd learned to move without jostling her—small steps, even rhythm, the kind of gait that doesn't wake a sleeping child or draw a dominant wolf's attention.

I poured water into Brandon's cup first. Protocol. He didn't look up from his plate.

Then Kendall's. She watched me the entire time, her smile fixed and sweet.

"Thank you," she said, and her fingers brushed mine as I lifted the pitcher away.

I said nothing. Moved to the next cup.

But I was counting.

Two household staff at the service door. One in the prep corridor. The kitchen omega—Lydia, I remembered her name—hovering near the far archway with a tray of bread rolls, eyes down, shoulders tight. She'd been the one plating my meals separately for three years. The one who wouldn't meet my gaze.

I refilled six more cups and made three passes behind Kendall's chair, each time scanning a different section of the room. Where the supply crates entered. Which staff carried them. Who reported directly to Judith.

Mental map. I was building it piece by piece, one water pitcher at a time.

By the time I returned to the service corridor, I had thirteen new data points and Adley was starting to fuss.

---

Brandon found me in the hallway outside the banquet hall an hour later.

I was carrying the empty pitcher back to the kitchen. He stepped out from the corridor junction and I stopped, automatically, because an Omega does not walk past an Alpha without acknowledgment.

He looked at me for a long moment. Not at Adley. At me.

"You should be grateful," he said.

I kept my gaze on the middle of his chest. The third button of his shirt. It was easier that way.

"My mother convinced me to let you stay," he continued. His voice was even, matter-of-fact. "She said you'd served the pack well enough as Luna. That expelling you as a rogue would be... excessive."

He paused, like he expected me to respond.

I didn't.

"I could have sent you out the gate with nothing," he said. "No pack. No protection. A newborn and a dormant wolf." He shifted his weight, shoulders squaring. That tell again. "You understand that, don't you?"

*Grateful.* The word came out wrapped in Alpha tone, a pressure that slid down my spine and pressed between my shoulder blades like a hand.

My arms tightened around the pitcher. Adley made a small sound against my chest.

I lifted my eyes just enough to meet his. "Understood, Alpha."

I stepped aside. He walked past.

I stood in the empty corridor for thirty seconds after his footsteps faded, breathing through my nose, counting the beats until the pressure in my spine released.

Then I went back to the kitchen and added three new discrepancies to my mental inventory: the sealed crate Lydia had carried into the prep room that morning, labeled *cleaning stock* but smelling faintly of glass and rubber. The household account book Judith had been holding when I passed her office door at dawn. The specific omega—always Lydia—who prepared Kendall's morning tea.

I didn't sleep that night until the sky went grey.

---

Two weeks into my Omega assignment, Kendall decided to make a point.

I was in the banquet hall, clearing plates from the midday meal. She'd been watching me all morning with the particular attention of someone planning something. When the last Delta warrior pushed back from his table and left, she stood.

"Omega," she called. "The floor."

I looked at her.

She gestured at the stone underfoot. "It's filthy. Scrub it. Now."

Two Omega staff were still clearing the far tables. Both of them went very still.

I set down the plate stack. Crossed to the supply closet. Pulled out the bucket, the brush, the rag. Filled the bucket at the service sink.

Kendall settled back into the Luna's chair and watched.

I knelt.

The stone was cold through my skirt. Adley stirred in the sling but didn't wake. I dipped the brush, pressed it to the floor, and began.

Small circles. Even pressure. The water turned grey almost immediately.

Kendall let me work in silence for five minutes. Then she stood, walked across the hall, and crouched beside me.

Her perfume hit first—something floral and expensive, the kind that comes in a crystal bottle. She leaned close, her voice dropping to a murmur meant only for me.

"You should thank me," she said. "He was never going to keep something like you forever."

I kept scrubbing.

But then I caught it.

Beneath the perfume. Beneath the floral top notes and the warm base. A faint chemical smell. Cold. Synthetic. Sharp in a way that made my sinuses ache.

The exact same note I'd been pulling from baseboards and prep room corners for two weeks.

My hands paused on the wet stone. One breath. Just one.

Kendall was still talking, something about Brandon and loyalty and knowing one's place, but I wasn't hearing the words anymore.

She'd been dosed too.

Not to suppress her bloodline. She didn't have one worth suppressing. But to mask her scent. To keep Brandon from recognizing that the bond pulling him toward me—his fated mate—was being chemically interfered with every time Kendall stood close enough to confuse the signal.

Judith hadn't just suppressed me. She'd *enhanced* Kendall.

I started scrubbing again. Small circles. Even pressure.

Kendall stood, satisfied, and walked back to the Luna's chair.

I worked the rest of the floor in silence, wrung the water out grey, and carried the bucket back to the supply closet.

That night, I added a new entry to my mental map: Kendall Moore was not Judith's pawn. She was Judith's co-conspirator. She'd known. She'd accepted it. She'd worn the chemical mask willingly.

And somewhere far beneath the fog that had muffled my wolf for twenty-three years, something stirred.

Not a voice. Not a howl.

Just a low ember, catching.

I pressed my palm flat against the cot frame and held it there until my hand stopped shaking.

Then I pulled up the loose floorboard and counted the vials in the dark.

Seven now.

I needed more.