I Accepted My Alpha’s Rejection While Carrying His Pup Chapter 08

I Accepted My Alpha’s Rejection While Carrying His Pup Chapter 08

At eighteen weeks, I had my second scan.

Silverpine’s healer, Dr. Amara Wells, was a wolf too. She’d seen more pups born than anyone in the territory. She turned the monitor toward me and smiled.

“Hear that?”

A fast, strong drumbeat filled the little room.

My baby’s heartbeat.

I pressed my hand over my mouth. Tears spilled out before I could stop them.

“Strong,” Dr. Wells said. “Very strong. Would you like to know what you’re having?”

I nodded.

“A girl.”

A girl. My daughter.

Grandma was crying so hard she had to sit down. “Your mother would be so proud, baby.”

Walking out of that clinic, the world felt bigger. Brighter. Sharper than it had in years.

Then my phone rang.

Unknown number. I answered without thinking.

“Ivy.”

My blood turned to ice.

Lydia.

“Don’t hang up. Please. I have to tell you something.”

“You poisoned me for three years. I have nothing to say to you.”

“Then just listen. Two minutes.”

Every instinct told me to end the call. But her voice was wrong. Shaky. Raw. Like she’d been crying for

hours.

“Talk.”

“My father made me do it.”

Silence.

“The tea. Every tin. He mixed it himself and made me hand it to you with a smile. I was sixteen the first time he hit me for disobeying him, Ivy. I learned fast.”

“Why? Why would Victor Crane care about me?”

A shaky breath.

“Because of your mother. She was moon-blood too. Moon-blood wolves can command other wolves. One silver wolf in the right pack could make an Alpha like my father powerless. He’s been hunting your mother’s line for twenty years.”

My knees went weak. I grabbed the side of Grandma’s truck.

“The rogues,” I whispered. “The night my parents died.”

“His. He paid them.”

The parking lot spun around me.

“When Kane found you in that wreck and claimed you, my father panicked. He couldn’t kill an Alpha’s mate without starting a war. So he sent me to put your wolf to sleep. Slowly. And to pull Kane away from you until he threw you out on his own.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

“No. Never. Kane’s an idiot-blind and selfish and so busy being Alpha he forgot to be a husband-but he never touched me. I wore his old cologne. I answered his phone when you called. I made sure you saw me at his side. Every piece of it was staged.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because I told my father I was done. And he did this.” Her voice cracked. “I’m calling from a hospital in Redmoon. And tvy-he knows your wolf woke up. He knows you’re pregnant. A moon-blood mother with a pup is the one thing he fears most in this world.”

My hand moved to my stomach.

“He’s coming for you. Both of you. I don’t know when. But he’s coming.”

The line went dead.

I stood in that parking lot, phone still pressed to my ear, hearing nothing but my own heartbeat and my daughter’s, tapping faintly beneath it.

My parents didn’t die in an accident.

My wolf didn’t just fail to show up.

And Kane never slept with Lydia.

The story I’d told myself for months-the two of them wrapped up together, laughing at me-wasn’t real.

But did it matter?

He still let her take my place at his side. He still couldn’t give me sixty seconds on a dance floor. He still left me eating dinner alone in a house full of everything except him.

The poison was Victor’s.

The loneliness was Kane’s.

Every empty chair. Every unanswered call. Every morning waking up alone in a king-sized bed.

That was real.

Grandma was watching me from the driver’s seat. “Baby? You’re white as a sheet.”

“Drive,” I said. “I’ll tell you at home.”

I deleted Lydia’s number.

But that night, for the first time in weeks, I didn’t sleep at all.

I sat by the window with my hand on my belly, watching the tree line, listening to Nova pace.

He’s coming, she growled.

“I know.”

Then we’ll be ready.