Carrying the Alpha’s Heir, Claimed by the Vampire King Chapter 01

Carrying the Alpha’s Heir, Claimed by the Vampire King Chapter 01

I rejected my mate at our own anniversary ball.

He was slow-dancing with his first love when the bond snapped.

He felt it. I watched him rub his chest.

Then he pulled her closer and kept dancing.

I was six weeks pregnant with his heir.

Three years as Luna of the Blackwood pack, and I had just discovered I was invisible in a ballroom full of three hundred wolves who bowed every time I walked past.

It started at ten o’clock. I’d slipped away to the powder room, and on my way back I passed Kieran’s private study. The door was cracked. Elder Voss, the pack’s keeper of law, was inside, murmuring into his phone.

“Yes, the dissolution is drafted. He’ll perform the rejection after tonight. Clean break. Selene has been briefed.”

The champagne glass went still in my hand.

Rejection.

Planned before our anniversary ball had even begun.

When Voss left, I walked into that study. The Luna Dissolution Accord lay on the desk, heavy parchment, silver ink. Small red marks showed every place I was meant to press my thumb in blood.

He hadn’t even planned to tell me first.

So I didn’t wait for him.

I pricked my thumb on the letter opener and sealed every page. Every mark. Every clause that read Elara Blackwood, née Hale, surrenders her title, her bond, and her place within the pack.

Then I whispered the words no Luna in Blackwood history had ever spoken first.

“I, Elara Hale, reject you, Kieran Blackwood, as my mate and my Alpha.”

It felt like swallowing broken glass. Something ripped loose behind my ribs, a golden thread I’d felt humming for three years, torn in half.

I walked back into the ballroom, bleeding on the inside, and looked for him.

He was at the center of the floor with Selene Ashford. His lips were at her temple. His hand rested on the small of her back. Her silver dress matched his tie. I had picked that tie.

He winced, just once, and pressed his palm to his chest.

Selene tilted her head. “Kieran?”

“It’s nothing,” he said.

Nothing.

Then he drew her closer.

Three hundred wolves could smell my grief. Every one of them looked away.

I picked up my clutch and slipped out through the kitchens.

January hit me like a slap. New York at midnight, all steel and cold. I stood coatless on the curb in a twelve-thousand-dollar gown, mascara running, and pressed my hand to my stomach.

Still flat. Not for long.

A cab slowed. The driver took one look at me in the rearview mirror.

“You okay, lady?”

“Never better. Grand Central, please.”

I dialed the only number I had left.

“Aunt Maeve? It’s Elara.”

“Sweetheart, it’s midnight. What’s wrong?”

“I need somewhere to go. Somewhere they can’t follow.”

A pause. Then, very softly: “What did he do?”

That question broke me. Three years, and no one had asked me that. Not once.

“He was never mine,” I whispered. “I think I always knew.”

“I’m checking trains now. Don’t you dare argue.”

“Okay.”

“And Elara? You come to Hollow Creek, and you never go back to those wolves. Do you hear me?”

I ended the call and watched the city blur through my tears.

Behind me, in a ballroom full of predators and silk, my husband was dancing with the woman he’d loved before I existed.

He had felt our bond break.

And he hadn’t stopped the music.

What he didn’t know yet: I had just walked out the door with the one thing he wanted more than Selene, more than the Ashford alliance, more than anything.

His heir.