I Was Rejected While Carrying His Baby, But the Alpha King Chose Me

The healer's hands were cold against my stomach.

"The heartbeat is there," she said. "Faint, but there."

I gripped the edge of the cot. "So my baby is alive?"

"For now." She pulled the blanket up to my ribs and wouldn't meet my eyes. "Luna, your body is very weak. You lost a lot of blood. If you fall again, or if you get too upset…"

She didn't finish.

She didn't have to.

I turned my face toward the door. Ethan stood just inside it, arms folded, his shoulder against the frame like he hadn't decided whether to come in or leave.

"Did you hear that?" I asked him. "Our baby is still fighting."

"I heard."

"Then stay." My voice cracked. I hated how small it sounded. "Just tonight. Please, Ethan. Sit with me."

He pushed off the frame. For one foolish second, I thought he was coming to me.

He stopped at the foot of the cot.

"The child can stay," he said. "But you don't get to use it to tie me down anymore."

The healer froze with a roll of gauze in her hand. Then she hurried out, eyes on the floor.

I stared at Ethan.

"Tie you down?" I laughed. It came out wrong, thin and shaky. "I'm lying here bleeding, and you think this is a trap?"

"I think you've learned what works."

"What works?" I pushed myself up. Pain bit into my belly and I sank back down. "Ethan, she pushed me. I watched her face when she did it. She *smiled*."

A soft sob drifted in from the hallway.

Isabella.

She stood just past the doorway, a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, her eyes red-rimmed and wet. Perfect tears. She'd always cried beautifully.

But above the handkerchief, her gaze moved over me. Slow. Careful. It stopped on my hands. On my stomach. On the bandaged spot on my thigh where the healers had drawn blood.

She wasn't grieving.

She was measuring.

"Ethan," she whispered. "May I come in? I just want to know she's all right."

"Get out," I said.

Isabella flinched like I'd slapped her. Ethan's jaw went hard.

"Aurora."

"She is the reason I'm in this bed."

"I tried to *catch* her." Isabella's voice wobbled. She stepped closer to Ethan, not to me. "I know she hates me. I know she's jealous because you and I grew up together. But I would never hurt a baby. Never." She drew a shaky breath. "Ethan, she's been doing this for months. Making scenes. Waiting for you to walk in at the right moment. You've seen it yourself."

He didn't answer her.

But he didn't defend me either.

I watched his face. I watched him weigh her words against mine, and I watched the scale tip. It took less than a second.

Two years.

Two years of swallowing every insult so he wouldn't think I was difficult. Two years of covering bruises with long sleeves. Two years of believing that one day he would see me.

He had never believed a single word.

"Get some rest," Ethan said. He turned, and Isabella fell into step beside him like she belonged there.

At the door, she glanced back.

The tears were gone.

---

My father came an hour later.

Marcus Vale didn't knock. He never had. He crossed the room in three strides and dropped a thick folder on my blanket.

"Sign it."

I didn't touch it. "What is it?"

"Your release from the Luna line of succession. And a transfer of your Vale family shares." He uncapped a pen and set it on top. "To Isabella."

My fingers curled into the sheet. "You came here to take things from me. Tonight. While I'm lying in a hospital bed."

"I came here to protect the alliance with the Blackwood Pack." He adjusted his cufflinks. "Ethan's council is restless. A wolfless Luna embarrasses them. Isabella would steady things."

"I'm carrying the Alpha's heir."

"Which is exactly why you'll stay comfortable. Nobody's throwing you out, Aurora. You just won't hold anything that matters."

I pushed the folder off the bed. Papers spilled across the floor.

"No."

He looked down at them. Then at me. His face didn't change at all.

"You have no wolf," he said. "You have no right to inherit the Vale name. You never did."

The words should have broken me. I'd heard them in a hundred different forms since I was twelve.

Instead, something in my chest went quiet and very cold.

"Then why?" I asked.

He frowned. "Why what?"

"Why have you used me all these years?" I sat up, ignoring the stab in my side. "You sent me to Ethan. You made me the payment for Mom's bargain. You paraded me at dinners and told me to smile. If I'm nothing, Dad, why keep me around at all?"

For a long moment, he said nothing.

His eyes moved to my thigh. To the white bandage.

Then back to my face.

"Because you're worth more than Isabella," he said.

That was all.

He bent, gathered the papers, and stacked them neatly on the chair by the window. "I'll leave these. You'll sign eventually."

The door clicked shut behind him.

I sat there, my hand over my stomach, and I didn't cry.

That scared me more than anything.

---

I couldn't sleep.

Near midnight, the pain finally dulled enough that I could stand. I needed water. I needed to move. I needed to stop seeing that silver drop every time I closed my eyes.

I shuffled into the dim corridor, one palm braced on the wall.

Voices came from the study at the end of the hall. The door was cracked open, a stripe of lamplight spilling across the carpet.

"—told you not to push so hard," my father said. "Elder Corwin saw everything."

"How was I supposed to know her blood would do *that*?" Isabella hissed. "You said a fall would be enough to scare her into signing."

I stopped walking.

"I said a fall. Not a funeral. We need that child."

"You need it. I need her gone."

"Patience." Paper rustled. A glass touched wood. "The stairs did their job. Ethan believes you. The servants saw her accuse you and they saw him turn his back. She has no one now."

Isabella laughed softly. "She looked so pathetic on the floor. Like a kicked dog."

My hand slid down the wall.

*The stairs did their job.*

It wasn't an accident. It wasn't jealousy. It wasn't even Isabella alone.

It was a plan.

My father had planned it.

I pressed my fist against my mouth. My knees shook. I should have run. I should have screamed. But I stood there, frozen in the dark, because some broken part of me still waited for him to say he hadn't meant it.

Ice clinked in his glass.

"Keep her calm," Marcus said. "Keep her fed. Let Ethan keep her at arm's length."

"And then?"

His voice dropped low and even, the way it sounded when he closed a business deal.

"Once she gives birth, we get rid of her for good."