Ex Begs Back-After Letting Another Wolf Claim My Kid

"You're not my dad! Get your hands off me!" Ivy's shriek slices through the moonlit clearing, her tiny fists battering the forearm wrapped around her waist.

"Let go! " She twists violently

"My dad said you'd slink back, that you're a feral! A rogue with a hunger for cubs!"

My pup thrashes, her tiny fists swinging, her teeth sinking into my arm.

Blood trickles down, but I don't let go.

I can't let go.

I only get one day a year to see her, and every eight with her is worth the pain.

Ten years.

Ten damn years, and not a single day passes without me aching for her.

I don't blame her for hating me.

To her, I'm just a lowly wolf slaving for the Blake pack, a sinner in their eyes.

The pack's whispers follow me like a shadow-tales that me and my dad, Douglas, schemed to seduce the Blake she-wolf and her pup, all for their fortune.

It's a filthy lie, but lies stick like mud in this pack.

"You think you're slick, don't you?" Andrew Blake's roar shakes the pines

"Your dad went after my mom, and now she's dead, my dad's a husk, and you're happy with that?"

My fists clench at my sides, nails biting into my palms as I fight the surge of primal fury his presence stirs. "Andrew, it wasn't-"

"Save it! " He lunges forward, chest heaving.

"Your dad went after my mom, and now she's dead, my dad's a husk, and you're happy with that?"

Veronica, his sister, kneels by their father Kenneth's bedside, her eyes red from crying, glaring at me with a hatred that could burn through steel.

No matter how I plead, how I swear it's not true, she sees only a wolf who betrayed her pack.

They want to tear me apart, me and my dad, but then the healer drops a bombshell: Veronica's carrying my pup.

I beg her, tears streaming, to keep our pup. "

It's not the pup's fault," I say, my voice breaking. She looks at me like I'm dirt, then points to the eight-story window.

"Jump," she says.

"You jump, I'll keep the pup."

So I jump.

Break my rib in the fall, but I survive.

The day Ivy's born, I'm racing to the hospital, blood pouring that nearly ends me.

I'm barely conscious on the operating table when Veronica storms in, cradling our pup, her eyes cold as ice.

"Your dad killed my mom," she says.

"He turned my dad into a vegetable. You want this pup? Fine. She'll be the Blake pack's princess, but you? She'll never know you. You'll feel what it's like to lose family."

From that day, I've slaved for the Blake pack, doing the lowest, dirtiest work to stay near my pup and my dad, who's still trapped in that hospital bed, a shell of the wolf he was.

The torment never stops, each day a fresh hell.

But Veronica keeps her word-she doesn't take