Rejecting the Alpha Who Used My Womb

Five years ago, I bound my life to Charles Sterling, the golden wolf of Ferralon Town, in a sacred ceremony that felt like a dream.

Now, I'm standing in the ashes of that dream, trying to set up a bank deposit as a gift for my twin pups, Adrian and Ivy.

I thought it'd be a simple gesture, a way to secure their future.

But the clerk she wolf at the office shakes her head, her eyes cold as she slides my documents back across the counter.

"Sorry, ma'am," she says, "this account can only be handled by the pups' parents."

I blink, confused.

" I'm their mother."

Her gaze sharpens, almost pitying.

"The registry scrolls don't lie-Charles sired them, true enough. But their dam? Colette Fontaine. Not a drop of your blood in those cubs."

I go rigid, mind dissolving into static.

Colette-my own kin, Charles's fated first, the she-wolf his lunar core still thrums for.

The Sterlings and Fontaines? Blood feuds older than the moon, their claws rent through generations, ties severed long ago.

Yet these cubs-mine, after ten moons of carrying, after nearly bleeding out to birth them-are hers?

I head straight for Sterling council offices. My fingerprint gets me into the top-floor office, but the door's cracked open, and voices spill out. It's his Beta, his tone casual but sharp.

"Charles, Colette's slinking back into town tonight-you really think a welcome feast's wise? Your packs have been snapping at each other's throats. "

"I understand," Charles replies, his voice carrying a faint, imperceptible hoarseness,

"The Sterling code forbids binding with a Fontaine she-wolf. I'm bound now, a family wolf. Colette's just a friend."

"Friend?"

His beta laughs, bitter.

"When she fled overseas, you howled till your throat bled-moon-mad, vowing love died with her. "Settle," you grunted. But Isabel? Not kin. You chained her to your shadow because her scent mirrored Colette's, used moon-cursed science to plant your bloodline in her.  She's so devoted to them, she'd never suspect they're not hers."

I grip the edge of the table, my fingers digging into the polished wood until my knuckles burn.

"Honestly, I can almost summon a shred of pity for her," the beta drawls, his voice low enough to rattle like gravel in a hollow skull.

""She orbits you like a star caught in your gravitational pull, her devotion carved into her very bones-thinks you're the axis the pack's world spins on. If she ever sniffs out the truth? That she's nothing but a vessel to carry your bloodline, a warm body to tend your cubs without so much as a claim mark to her name? Her spirit'd shatter like a mirror under a full moon. "

Charles's voice drops, heavy with something like regret, but it's cold, too.

"I'll never let her find out. As compensation, she'll live as my Luna, envied by every she-wolf in the pack."

The world spins.

I reel from the building, sleet slashing my face like shards of ice.

The storm's