While I Carried His Pup, My Mate Chased Her

The bond broke at 10:14 on a Tuesday night, right in the middle of the Pack Banquet.

I felt it happen before I understood what I was seeing. The mark on my neck went cold—not painful, just suddenly empty, like a door closing in a room I'd never noticed was open. I pressed two fingers against it without thinking, the way I always did when I needed to ground myself, and that's when I looked up and saw her.

Ava Evans stood in the doorway of the banquet hall, backlit by the corridor lights, wearing a dress the color of fresh blood. She didn't walk in. She didn't need to. She just released her scent.

It rolled across the hall like a wave—something floral and cloying, engineered to pull every unmated wolf's attention. But it wasn't aimed at them. It was aimed at Colt.

I watched my mate's body turn toward her before his mind caught up. His wolf surfaced in his eyes—gold bleeding through the brown—and his entire frame went rigid. He stood from the Alpha's seat beside me, the chair scraping loud against the stone floor, and every conversation in the hall died.

He crossed the room in six strides. Pulled her close. Buried his face in her hair.

The bond transmitted everything.

His relief. His hunger. The way his wolf was reaching for her, howling for her, like she was water and he'd been dying of thirst for five years. I tasted it all—sharp and metallic, like blood in my mouth.

I sat very still in the Luna's seat. My hands were folded in my lap. My face was calm. I had spent five years learning how to keep my face calm.

Around me, the hall had gone silent. Allied delegates stared. Pack members looked away. Dara Holt, the senior she-wolf who'd always smiled thinly at me during pack meetings, leaned toward the elder beside her and whispered something behind her hand.

I rose from my seat. No one stopped me. No one said a word.

I walked out of the banquet hall with my spine straight and my hands steady, and only the wolves watching closely would have seen the tremor in my left hand as I pressed it flat against my thigh.

---

I made it to the Luna's quarters before my knees gave out.

I sat on the floor beside the bed, my back against the mattress, and waited for the bond to stop screaming. It didn't. It kept transmitting—his desire, his focus, the way every cell in his body was oriented toward her and not me.

I had felt this before, in smaller doses. Moments when his attention drifted during conversations. Nights when he turned away in bed. The coldness that seeped through the mark when he was anywhere but here.

I had told myself it was stress. Alpha responsibility. The weight of leadership.

I had been wrong.

After an hour, I stood. Pulled the leather-bound journal from the drawer in my desk. Opened it to a blank page.

I wrote the date. The time. Ava Evans's arrival. Colt's response. The bond's transmission.

I did not write how it felt. I wrote what happened.

The orphan who survived by keeping records knew that feelings were not evidence. Facts were evidence.

I pressed my fingers to the mark on my neck. It was measurably colder than it had been this morning.

I added that to the page.

---

Colt came back to our quarters just before dawn. I heard his footsteps in the corridor—slow, hesitant, like he was deciding whether to enter.

He opened the door. Stood in the doorway.

I was sitting at the desk with the journal closed in front of me. I didn't turn around.

"Sophia," he said quietly.

I waited.

"I didn't mean for that to happen."

I pressed my fingers to the mark. Still cold. I turned to face him.

"What did you mean to happen?" I asked.

He looked exhausted. His hair was disheveled. His shirt was wrinkled. He smelled like her—that floral, cloying scent layered over his own.

"She's… she was my first love, Sophia. Before I became Alpha. Before—"

"Before you marked me," I finished.

He flinched.

I stood. Walked toward him. Stopped three feet away.

"I felt what you felt tonight," I said. "Through the bond. I felt your wolf reach for her."

His jaw tightened. He didn't deny it.

"I need time," he said finally. "To figure this out."

I looked at him for a long moment. At the man I had spent five years building a home inside.

"Take all the time you need," I said quietly.

I walked past him, out of the quarters, down the corridor toward the healer wing.

I had an appointment to keep.

---

The collapse happened in the corridor outside the healer's office.

One moment I was walking. The next, the floor tilted and my knees buckled. I caught myself against the wall, my vision swimming, my stomach lurching.

Miriam Cole, the head healer, found me there. She helped me into the examination room, her hands steady and professional.

"When was your last cycle?" she asked.

I blinked at her. Tried to remember. "Six weeks. Maybe seven."

She nodded slowly. Pressed her hand to my abdomen. Her wolf surfaced briefly in her eyes—a diagnostic technique I'd seen her use a hundred times.

She pulled her hand back. Looked at me.

"You're pregnant, Luna."

The words didn't land at first. They hovered in the air between us, impossible and inevitable all at once.

"How far?" I heard myself ask.

"About six weeks," Miriam said gently. "The bond will have transmitted the news to the Alpha already. His wolf will know."

I pressed my fingers to the mark on my neck.

Still cold.

But somewhere, through the thin thread of the bond, I felt something shift. A flicker of attention. Awareness.

Colt was coming.

I closed my eyes and began counting the minutes until he arrived to perform devotion for an audience he couldn't afford to lose.