My Pregnant Escape From the Alpha Who Caged Me

The nightmares started two nights ago. At first, I thought it was just the stress of the looming Summit, but when I woke up screaming with the phantom sensation of silver burning my wrists, I knew it was something else. The bond. Even frozen, even rejected in my heart, the mate bond was a two-way street. I was feeling Hayes's unraveling.

Across the border, in the Blood Moon Pack, Hayes Miller was drowning.

He woke with a gasp, his sheets soaked in cold sweat. For months, his mind had been a comfortable fog, a hazy narrative where he was the firm but just Alpha dealing with a weak, defective mate. But tonight, the fog didn't just lift; it shattered.

He sat up, clutching his head. The memory wasn't a dream. It was real. He saw my face, not as the defiant woman he told himself I was, but as the terrified girl begging for mercy while he poured wolfsbane down her throat. He felt the vibration of his own voice using the Alpha Command to force me to my knees. He smelled the acrid scent of fear—*my* fear—that he had ignored for years.

"No," he rasped, stumbling out of bed. "That wasn't... I didn't..."

But the memories kept coming, a relentless tide. The time he locked me in the cellar during a thunderstorm because I dropped a plate. The way he laughed when Nicole burned my journals. The look in my eyes when he marked Nicole in front of me.

He staggered into the hallway, his breathing ragged. "Maeve?" he called out, his voice cracking. "Maeve, are you there?"

Silence answered him. The pack house was asleep, save for the guards. But then, a scent hit him. Lavender and mint. My scent. It was faint, ghostly, drifting from the end of the hall.

"Maeve!" He ran toward it, hope and horror warring in his chest. He burst into the library, his eyes wild. "I know you're here! I can smell you!"

Empty. Just dust motes dancing in the moonlight. He fell to his knees, clawing at his chest as if trying to rip his heart out. The potion Nicole had been slipping him—the one that smoothed over his cruelty, that made him forget the monster he was—had worn off. And now, he was left with the truth.

The next morning, the Blood Moon pack meeting hall was suffocated by a heavy, angry aura. Hayes sat on his throne, but he didn't look like a king. He looked like a man haunted. His eyes were dark pits, his skin gray.

Nicole stood before him, dressed in one of her flashy silk dresses, a smug smile plastered on her face. She didn't notice the warriors flinching away from the dais.

"Alpha," she purred, "the new batch of elixirs is almost ready. I just need access to the vault to—"

"Silence!" Hayes’s roar shook the stained-glass windows.

Nicole froze. "Hayes? Baby?"

"Do not call me that," he snarled, standing up slowly. Every movement was predatory. "You told me she was sick. You told me the medicine was to help her. You told me... I was saving her."

Nicole’s smile faltered. "She *was* sick, Hayes. We did what we had to do."

"Liar!" He descended the steps, grabbing her by the throat. The pack gasped, but no one moved to help her. "You drugged me. You slipped forget-me-not into my whiskey. You made me forget that I... that I tortured my own mate."

He didn't take full responsibility, of course. His ego wouldn't allow it. It was easier to paint himself as another one of her victims than to admit he enjoyed the cruelty. But his rage was real.

"You are a parasite, Nicole," he hissed, tightening his grip until her face turned purple. "You have no talent. You have no wolf worth speaking of. You are nothing without her recipes."

He threw her to the stone floor. She scrambled back, coughing, mascara running down her cheeks. "You can't do this! I'm your future Luna!"

"You are a traitor," Hayes announced, his voice booming through the hall. "Strip her of her rank. From this day forward, Nicole Bryant is Omega. She will scrub the floors she hoped to rule. She will eat the scraps she tried to deny Maeve."

Nicole screamed as two warriors grabbed her arms, dragging her toward the servants' quarters. "Hayes! You need me! The King is coming! You have nothing without me!"

"If the Lycan King is not appeased at the Summit," Hayes shouted after her, his eyes manic, "I will offer him your head on a spike as an apology!"

***

While Hayes’s world crumbled into madness, mine was expanding.

The moon hung heavy and full over Silver Creek, a giant pearl in the velvet sky. My skin felt tight, itchy. The fever that usually accompanied the full moon was gone, replaced by a restless energy that hummed in my blood.

"It's time," Sage whispered, leading me out to the clearing by the river. Wes walked beside me, his presence a steady anchor.

"Don't fight it, Maeve," Wes said softly. "Let her out. She's been waiting a long time."

I closed my eyes and reached deep inside, past the fear, past the trauma. I found the lock that the wolfsbane had kept shut for so long. It was rusted and brittle. I pushed.

The snap was audible. Pain, sharp and exquisite, tore through my body. Bones rearranged, muscles stretched, fur burst through skin. I threw my head back and screamed, but the sound shifted into a howl that vibrated through the trees.

When I opened my eyes, the world was sharper. Colors were more vivid. I could hear the heartbeat of a mouse under the snow. I looked down at my paws. They were massive, covered in shimmering, silver fur that seemed to glow in the moonlight.

I wasn't just a wolf. I was huge. I towered over Wes, who had shifted into his russet-brown wolf form. I was bigger than any Alpha I had ever seen.

Sage gasped, dropping her staff. She fell to her knees in the snow, her head bowed low.

"By the Goddess," she whispered, her voice trembling with reverence. "Look at her eyes."

Wes trotted over, nudging my snout gently. I looked into the reflection of the river. Staring back at me wasn't the golden eyes of a common wolf, or even the red of an Alpha. My eyes were a brilliant, piercing violet.

Purple. The color of royalty.

"I knew your mother had secrets," Sage murmured, standing up slowly. "But I never suspected this. Maeve... your mother didn't just have a tryst with a powerful wolf. She was the mate of the Lycan King."

The realization hit me harder than the shift. The King. The most powerful wolf in existence. The man Hayes was terrified of. He was my father.

I wasn't a defect. I wasn't a barren Omega. I was a Princess of the blood royal. And I was coming for my throne.