My Pregnant Escape From the Alpha Who Caged Me

The scent of lavender and crushed mint always calmed me, but tonight, even the strongest concentration of my Moon Elixir couldn't settle the trembling in my hands. My hidden laboratory, tucked away in the basement of the Blood Moon Pack house, felt colder than usual. I stared at the empty vial in my hand. It was the last of my "supplements"—the bitter, dark liquid Alpha Hayes insisted I take daily to manage my "condition."

"Barren," he called me. "Wolfless." A defect in the perfect lineage of the Blood Moon Pack. The only thing that kept me from being thrown out to the rogues was my nose. I could smell a shift in emotion before a wolf even growled. I could brew potions that brought feral warriors back from the brink of madness. But apparently, I couldn't carry a pup, and my inner wolf was too weak to ever surface.

I needed more supplements. If I missed a dose, the fever would start—a burning heat that Hayes said was my body trying to kill itself. I wiped my hands on my apron and crept up the narrow servants' stairs toward Hayes's office.

The hallway was dark, the pack house silent except for the distant hum of the generator. As I approached the heavy oak door of the Alpha’s office, a sound stopped me dead. A low, guttural moan. It wasn't pain. It was pleasure.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I should have turned back. A good Omega knows when to be invisible. But a scent drifted under the door, paralyzed me. It was the sharp, metallic tang of arousal mixed with cloying, artificial vanilla. Nicole.

My stepsister.

"Oh, Goddess, Hayes..." Nicole's voice was breathless, muffled by what sounded like skin slapping against skin. "She's going to hear us."

"Let her," Hayes growled. The sound of his voice, usually so cold when he spoke to me, was thick with lust. "The little defect is probably mixing herbs in the dungeon. That's all she's good for."

I couldn't breathe. I pressed my hand against the wall to steady myself. My mate. My fated mate, accepted by the Moon Goddess, was in there with the woman who had made my childhood a living hell.

"But the Council arrives in two days," Nicole whined. "What if she messes up the calming draughts? I need to present them as mine, remember? If the Lycan King finds out a wolfless Omega brewed them..."

Hayes laughed, a dark, cruel sound. "Don't worry, baby. She took her dose this morning. That wolfsbane cocktail keeps her brain foggy and her wolf comatose. She believes whatever I tell her. She thinks she's sick. She doesn't know she's actually a powerhouse."

Wolfsbane.

The word shattered my world. The room spun. The "medicine" to help my weak constitution... it was poison. They weren't treating me; they were suppressing me. They were killing my wolf slowly to steal my work.

A gasp tore from my throat before I could stop it. I stumbled