After My Alpha Betrayed Me for My Sister

I should have knocked.

That's the thought that keeps surfacing, even now, even as I stand in the doorway of the Alpha suite with my hand pressed flat against my belly. I should have knocked. But this is my home. He is my mate. The mark on my neck has been there for over a year. I stopped knocking on my own doors a long time ago.

The scent hits me before anything else does.

His musk — warm cedar and dark earth, the scent that once made my wolf press forward with hunger — tangled with something floral and sharp. Something I have known my whole life. Jasmine soap and the particular sweetness of my sister's skin.

Sabrina's hands are in Dallas's hair.

His face is buried against her neck.

I don't move. I don't scream. My wolf slams into my ribs so hard I nearly stagger, but I plant my feet and I stand there, and I press my palm against the swell of my belly where his heir is kicking, and I wait for them to notice me.

Sabrina sees me first. Her eyes open over his shoulder, and for one fraction of a second I see her true face — the satisfaction in it, clean and cold and triumphant, like a woman who has been waiting years for exactly this moment.

Then Dallas pulls back. He turns around.

He doesn't flinch. That's what destroys something in me — not the embrace, not Sabrina's expression, but the complete, absolute absence of shame on his face.

"Evelyn." His voice is calm. Almost bored.

"Get out," I say to Sabrina.

Neither of them moves.

I open my mouth to say something else — something I haven't yet decided — and Dallas's Alpha tone hits me like a hand around my throat. Not loud. Not violent. Just there, sudden and total, pressing my voice flat, locking the words behind my teeth. I have felt his tone before, in pack meetings, directed at Deltas who stepped out of line. Never at me. Never at his Luna.

My wolf goes absolutely feral.

But she is five months tired and I am five months heavy and Dallas is already speaking inside my head through the mind-link, and his voice there is worse than the tone — because it is quiet, and measured, and it sounds like a man delivering a business summary.

*You were selected for your bloodline. A strong-blooded heir requires a strong-blooded vessel. That's what you were chosen for. Nothing more.*

The mate bond on my neck ignites. Not the warm pull I've always known — something else, something that feels like the mark itself is trying to crawl off my skin.

*Once the pup is born, Sabrina will take her place as my true Luna. The heir will be raised here, in this pack. You will be — accommodated.*

Accommodated.

I press two fingers against my wrist and feel my own pulse. Fast. Uneven. I focus on it.

Sabrina is watching from behind him with her hands folded, her expression arranged into something that might fool anyone who hadn't grown up watching her construct faces for an audience. Her eyes are soft. Her chin is slightly dipped. She looks like a woman who is sorry for something she is not remotely sorry for.

I leave without a word. Dallas lets me.

That night, I lie on my side in a guest room I moved into without telling anyone why, and I put my hand on my belly, and I talk to the pup. I tell them about the mountains. I tell them their father has a pack that will protect them. I don't tell them what he said. They kick twice, slow and steady, and I count the kicks in the dark until I fall asleep.

Three days later, Sabrina corners me on the upper landing.

I know she's been waiting for an opportunity. I know it, and I still turn around when she calls my name, because she is my sister and some part of me has not yet learned that this particular war has no ceasefire.

"You should leave," she says. Her voice is gentle. That's the knife edge — always the gentleness. "I'm telling you this because I still care about you. It would be easier for everyone."

"Easier," I repeat.

"Dallas has made his choice. You staying here only makes things—"

"Don't." I take a step toward the stairs. "Don't stand here and pretend this is kindness."

Her expression shifts. Just for a second. Just long enough.

She shoves me with both hands.

The world tips. The railing isn't there, or my hand misses it, and then I am falling — the hardwood steps brutal and fast against my shoulder, my hip, the back of my skull — and I hit the floor below with a sound I feel rather than hear, a crunch that is my own body failing, and then the pain comes in a wave so enormous it has no edges.

I howl through the mind-link. Not words. Just the raw, animal sound of a wolf whose body is breaking, screaming across the bond with everything she has left.

*Dallas. Dallas. Please.*

He appears at the top of the stairs.

He looks at me.

I am on the cold floor of our pack house, soaked in blood I can feel but cannot see, and the pup isn't kicking anymore, and Dallas stands there above me and looks at me the way you look at something that has become inconvenient.

Sabrina is hyperventilating behind him. One hand pressed to her chest. Her breath coming in theatrical, wrenching gasps.

Dallas turns away from me.

He scoops Sabrina up.

The pack healer arrives at a run, skidding to her knees beside me, and over her head I watch Dallas carry my sister down the hall. He doesn't look back. His voice drifts to me like smoke.

*"Deal with the mess."*

The healer's hands are on my face. Her eyes are bright with something that might be horror or might be fury — it's hard to tell, in my current condition, with the world narrowing down to a grey tunnel at the edges.

"Stay with me," she says. "Evelyn. Stay with me."

I'm not sure I want to.

But my wolf — barely a flicker now, barely a heartbeat — makes a decision before I do.

"I need you to do something," I hear myself say. My voice is strange. Too far away. "I need you to let me die."