After My Alpha Rejected Me While I Carried His Heir

The bond broke at 10:14 on a Tuesday night.

I didn't know it yet. I was standing at the kitchen counter arranging wildflowers—purple asters Logan once said reminded him of my eyes—when his voice bled through the mind-link like a wound opening inside my skull.

"Four years, Marcus. Four years of playing the devoted mate to that wolfless Omega, and it's finally paying off."

My hands went still. The aster stem I'd been trimming slipped from my fingers and clattered against the tile.

The mind-link wasn't supposed to work like this. I was wolfless—an Omega who'd never awakened, whose connection to Logan had always been partial, unstable, flickering in and out like a bad radio signal. But tonight it was crystal clear, and I heard every word.

"You're really going through with it?" Marcus's voice, cautious. "At the Pack Banquet? In front of everyone?"

"That's the point." Logan's laugh was low and satisfied, nothing like the warm sound he used when he kissed my forehead in the mornings. "Carmen destroyed my mother. Now I destroy her daughter. Publicly. Completely. I reject Kaia in front of the entire pack, and then I mark Callie as my true Luna the same night. Carmen will watch her bloodline humiliated while I claim the woman I actually chose."

The kitchen floor tilted. I grabbed the counter edge, my pregnant belly pressing against the marble. Four months along. I'd been planning to tell him tonight—our fourth anniversary—that the healer confirmed it was a boy.

"And the pup?" Marcus asked.

A pause. Then: "Collateral damage."

The mind-link snapped shut.

I slid to the floor. My legs just stopped holding me. Wildflowers scattered across the tile in a purple-and-white spray, and I stared at them, my hand pressed flat against my belly where Logan's son was growing inside a lie.

Four years.

Four years of waking up beside him. Four years of pack members whispering that an Alpha shouldn't mate an Omega, and me shrinking myself smaller and smaller to prove I was worth it anyway. Four years of believing that Logan Parker had chosen me despite my flaws, that he saw something in me no one else did.

It was all revenge.

I wasn't his mate. I was his weapon. Aimed at my own mother.

Something hot and furious pulsed behind my sternum—not a voice, not words, but a raw, biological alarm that forced me upright before the grief could pin me down. My wolf. The one that had never spoken, never surfaced, never given me a name or a shape. She was there. She was awake. And she was screaming.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand and stood.

The anniversary dinner I'd spent all day preparing sat on the stove, untouched. The candles I'd lit were burning low. I looked at it all—the flowers, the food, the soft lighting I'd arranged like an idiot—and felt nothing.

No.

I felt one thing: I needed proof.

Logan's private quarters were across the pack house, in the Alpha wing I wasn't supposed to enter without permission. I'd always respected that boundary. Respected him. Believed the locked drawer in his desk was pack business I didn't need to see.

I crossed the hall in bare feet, my heartbeat loud in my ears.

The lock on his desk drawer was flimsy. I forced it open with a letter opener from his own pen cup, and the wood splintered with a soft crack that sounded like a bone breaking.

Inside: a small wooden box, plain and unadorned.

I lifted the lid.

Letters. At least two dozen, handwritten on cream-colored paper, tied with a ribbon that had once been white but was now gray from handling. I pulled one free and unfolded it, and the scent hit me before I even read the first line.

Lavender and pine.

Not my scent. Not the faint floral soap I used or the vanilla lotion I wore to bed.

Callie Allen's scent, thick and unmistakable, saturating every page.

My hands shook as I read.

*Logan,*

*I know we have to wait. I know the plan. But some nights I lie awake and imagine what it will be like when you finally mark me in front of the pack. When everyone sees that we were always meant to be together, no matter what the Moon Goddess tried to assign you.*

*I trust you. I've always trusted you, ever since that day I found you lost on rogue territory. You're mine, Logan. You always have been.*

*Yours,*

*Callie*

I dropped the letter. Picked up another. Then another.

They were all the same. Years of them. Love letters. Promises. Plans.

Logan had been inhaling her scent while he lay beside me every night.

My bond mark—the crescent-moon shape on my collarbone that I'd worn like a badge of honor for four years—throbbed once, sharp and hot. Then it went cold. Hollow. Like something inside me had just recognized the truth and stopped pretending.

I pressed both hands to my belly and felt my son move, a tiny flutter against my palm.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm so sorry."

But I wasn't apologizing for what Logan had done.

I was apologizing because I was about to make sure Logan Parker never got the satisfaction of watching me break.

I pulled the entire box of letters from the drawer, tucked it under my arm, and walked back to the kitchen. The anniversary dinner was still warm. The candles were still burning.

I blew them out one by one.

Then I went upstairs to pack.