I Accepted My Alpha’s Rejection While Carrying His Pup Chapter 01

I Accepted My Alpha’s Rejection While Carrying His Pup Chapter 01

On the night of my mating anniversary, I found my Alpha’s rejection decree on his desk.

His signature was already on it.

The wax seal was still warm.

So I picked up his pen and signed my name beneath his.

Then I whispered the words that would break our bond forever.

Downstairs, my husband flinched.

And then he pulled his first love closer on the dance floor.

Three years as Luna of Blackridge Pack. Three hundred wolves in that ballroom tonight, in silk and diamonds, drinking the moonwine I’d ordered, dancing under the silver garlands I’d hung with my own hands.

Not one of them looked at me.

I’d only gone upstairs to fix a broken strap on my dress. Kane’s office door was open a crack. Inside, his Beta, Rhett, was laughing into his phone.

“Yeah, the decree’s ready. He reads it at dawn, in front of the whole pack. Lydia’s Luna by the full moon.”

A pause.

“Ivy? Please. She’s wolfless. She won’t even feel the bond break. Honestly? She’ll probably thank him.”

I stood frozen in the hallway, my champagne going warm in my hand.

A rejection decree.

Drafted before our anniversary party even started.

When Rhett left, I walked into that office. The parchment was sitting on the desk like it was nothing. Like I was nothing. Kane’s handwriting, bold and familiar:

I, Alpha Kane Ashford, reject Ivy Hale as my mate and my Luna.

Below it was an empty line. Waiting.

In our world, a rejection only becomes final when the other mate accepts it. Kane wanted to do it in public. At sunrise. With an audience.

I wouldn’t give him the audience.

I signed. Then I pressed my palm to the parchment and said it out loud, my voice barely shaking.

“I, Ivy Hale, accept your rejection.”

Pain hit me like lightning. It tore through my chest, stole my breath, and dropped me to my knees on his expensive rug. It felt like someone had reached inside me and ripped out a thread that had been sewn into my heart.

For three years, everyone had told me I couldn’t feel things the way real wolves did.

They were wrong. I felt every inch of it.

When I could stand again, I went back to the balcony and looked down at the ballroom.

Kane was in the center of the floor with Lydia Crane. His hand was on her waist. His lips were at her temple. Lydia’s red dress glittered under my chandeliers.

Suddenly he stiffened. His hand flew to his chest.

Lydia whispered something in his ear.

He laughed, shook it off, and kept dancing.

That was it. Three years of marriage. One flinch.

I picked up my clutch and slipped out through the kitchen door.

The January air hit my bare shoulders like a slap. Snow was falling over the pine trees. Behind me, the music swelled.

I pressed my hand to my stomach. It was still flat.

It wouldn’t be for long.

Six weeks pregnant.

Nobody in the pack could smell it on me. Nobody ever smelled anything on me. I was the wolfless Luna. The human-scented girl their Alpha had picked up out of pity.

I walked two miles in heels to the bus station in town. The man behind the ticket window stared at my ruined mascara and my three-thousand-dollar gown.

“You okay, miss?”

“Never better. One ticket to Silverpine.”

His eyebrows shot up. Silverpine sat on the edge of the Lycan King’s territory. Pack wolves didn’t go there. Kane had forbidden me to visit my own grandmother because of it.

I sat on a frozen bench and dialed the only number I had left.

“Grandma? It’s Ivy.”

“Baby girl, it’s two in the morning. What’s wrong?”

“Can I come home?”

A pause. Then, very softly:

“What did he do?”

That was the question that broke me. Because after three years of nobody asking me anything at all, someone asking with love in her voice felt like a knife and a blanket at the same time.

“He never really wanted me,” I whispered. “I think I always knew.”

“I’ll be at the bus stop. Don’t argue with me.”

“Okay.”

“And Ivy?”

“Yeah?”

“You are never going back to that pack. Do you hear me?”

I hung up and watched the snow fall through my tears.

Somewhere behind me, my husband was dancing with the woman he’d loved since before I existed.

And the worst part?

He hadn’t felt me leave. Not really.

He wouldn’t understand until dawn—when he stood before his pack with a rejection decree in his hand and realized his wolfless wife had already signed it.