When My Alpha Accused Me of Bearing a Rogue’s Child

I found out I was five months pregnant on a Tuesday.

The pack healer's clinic smelled like antiseptic and dried lavender. I sat on the paper-covered table and stared at the ultrasound image she pressed into my hands, and I thought: five months. Five months, and I hadn't known. I'd been so busy — Kingston's meals, the pack house schedules, the quarterly supply orders — that I'd mistaken exhaustion for routine and silence for peace.

I drove back to the pack house with the image tucked inside my jacket, against my chest, and I let myself have exactly ten minutes of something that felt almost like hope.

Then Kingston's Beta, Marcus, was waiting at the front door.

"Alpha wants you in his office," he said. He didn't meet my eyes.

I should have known then. Marcus always met my eyes. He was one of the few wolves in Silver Ridge who did.

I followed him down the hall.

The office door was open. Kingston stood behind his desk, and Lylah — my sister, my younger sister, who had been gone for three years without a single word — stood beside him like she'd never left. She was wearing a cream blouse I didn't recognize. Her hair was down. She looked rested and radiant and completely at ease, and the sight of her hit me somewhere below the ribs.

On the desk between us sat a neat stack of papers.

I knew what they were before Kingston opened his mouth.

"Luna." His voice was flat. Businesslike. The same tone he used when he was reviewing supply invoices. "Lylah has returned. She is my fated mate. I'm sure you understand what that means for your position here."

I looked at the papers. Formal rejection documents. Pack seal at the top. His signature already on the bottom line.

"I never completed the marking bite," he continued. "Which means the bond was never fully established under pack law." A pause. "As for the child —" his eyes dropped briefly to my midsection, then away, like he couldn't stand the sight of it — "I have no way to verify paternity. Given the circumstances, I have to assume —"

"Don't." My voice came out quieter than I intended. "Don't finish that sentence."

He finished it anyway.

"— that you were with a rogue."

Lylah made a small sound. Not quite a laugh. Something worse.

Marcus, standing near the door, went very still.

Kingston slid the papers across the desk toward me. "Sign them. It's cleaner for everyone."

I looked at my sister. She looked back at me with the careful blankness of someone who has rehearsed this moment. Three years. She had been gone three years, and she came back to this — to standing beside a man while he called her sister a rogue's whore — and she had nothing on her face but composure.

I picked up the pen.

And then it hit me.

Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. It hit me like a