Alpha Abandons Dying Mate

The cabin's wooden walls pressed in around me like a coffin, and maybe that's exactly what this place was—a tomb where I'd been left to die alone. Every breath felt like swallowing glass, the pain in my stomach twisting deeper with each shallow inhale. My fingers trembled as I reached for the medical documents scattered across the rough-hewn table, the papers that had arrived three days ago with a courier who'd looked at me with the kind of pity reserved for the already dead.

*Terminal gastric adenocarcinoma. Stage IV. Estimated survival: 3-4 weeks.*

The words blurred together through my tears, but their meaning had already carved itself into my bones. Less than a month. I had less than a month to live, and I'd been rotting away in this godforsaken cabin for two weeks already, waiting for a rescue that would never come.

The rogue attack replayed in my mind like a broken record. The snarling faces, the claws that had torn through my flesh, the way my blood had painted the forest floor crimson. I'd called out for him through our mate bond, screaming Nathaniel's name until my throat was raw. But he never came. He never even looked for me.

"Lyra," I whispered to my wolf, but she remained silent in the depths of my mind, as quiet as she'd been for months. The grief had stolen her voice just as surely as it had stolen mine.

I pressed my palm against my abdomen, feeling the hard mass that had been growing there like a malignant secret. How long had it been eating me alive while I'd been focused on trying to carry Nathaniel's children? How many nights had I attributed the pain to heartbreak when my body had been staging its own rebellion?

The irony wasn't lost on me. I'd spent seven years failing to create life, and now death was growing inside me instead.

A sharp knock on the cabin door made me flinch. The elderly woman who'd been caring for me—a rogue's widow who'd found me bleeding out in the woods—shuffled inside with a bowl of thin soup that I wouldn't be able to keep down anyway.

"There's news from the pack," she said quietly, her weathered hands setting the bowl down with careful precision. "A celebration."

My heart stopped. "What kind of celebration?"

She pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her apron pocket, smoothing it out on the table beside my medical files. The Silvermoon Pack's official seal gleamed at the top of what was clearly an invitation.

*Alpha Nathaniel Hughes and the Silvermoon Pack cordially invite you to celebrate the birth of our future heir, Finn Stewart Hughes. Join us in honoring this blessed addition to our pack family.*

The date on the invitation hit me like a physical blow. Three weeks ago. The exact night I'd been fighting for my life against the rogues, Nathaniel had been celebrating the birth of his son. His son with another woman.

My hands shook