2 Million? No, Just 200! So I Fled With My Twins Chapter 01

I was pregnant, and my mate slashed my monthly allowance to two hundred dollars.

“The Alpha says the Nightstalker Group is going green and cutting waste, so as Luna, you need to set an example and spend less. Two hundred is plenty. Rogues out there can’t even get a decent meal. What more do you want?”

One look at the smug face of our Beta, Nyx Blackwood, and I was so mad that I packed up and walked out of Nightstalker Pack.

Three years later, a video of me and my twins selling grilled chicken skewers at the Riverside Food Truck Plaza went viral.

Influencers showed up from all over to interview me. “Word is you used to be the Luna of Nightstalker Pack. How’d you end up running a food truck?”

I kept brushing barbecue sauce on the chicken and didn’t even look up. “Luna, my ass. They tossed me two hundred bucks a month and expected a thank-you card. Talk about rock bottom!”

“If you ask me, the Nightstalker Group isn’t nearly as rich as it claims to be. They couldn’t even afford to feed one pregnant woman.”

That little sound bite cut the Nightstalker Group’s stock price in half.

The next day, I was standing by my truck, going over prices with the meat supplier who had come to make a delivery.

The cooler was stacked with portioned chicken, and my two little ones sat at a folding table behind the truck, sharing a small box of fruit.

Then the mate bond, which had been quiet for so long, stirred. My wolf’s head snapped up. She recognized that cedar scent before I did.

“You used to complain that twenty thousand a month wasn’t enough. Now you’re haggling with a delivery guy over twenty bucks? Morgana, didn’t you take 500 thousand dollars and run off to live large in another territory? What’s with the act?”

I turned around. Corin Nightshade, my mate and the Alpha of Nightstalker Pack, stood there in a sharp, tailored dark suit, with the family crest glinting on his cufflinks and a faint wolf-gold glow in his eyes.

I gave him a flat look. “First of all, delete the trashy romance novels off your phone. They’re rotting your brain.”

“Back then, Nyx gave me two hundred dollars a month. When the divorce went through, she shoved five hundred at me and told me to go end the pregnancy. Now you’re telling me I walked off with 500 thousand? In what universe?”

Corin looked stunned. Right on cue, his phone rang, and it was Nyx.

“Alpha, Morgana’s five thousand in child support for this month went out. But now she says the twins were diagnosed with a rare disease, and she wants 200 thousand for treatment!”

*****

Morgana’s POV

Corin’s face went dark. “Morgana, I knew you were shallow and money-hungry, but I thought you had some basic decency left.”

“You took all that money, and it still wasn’t enough? Now you’re wishing sickness on your own kids to squeeze out more? What kind of mother does that?”

He looked pained and outraged, as if he truly believed I had done something unforgivable. Watching him, I could have laughed out loud.

I whipped out my phone, pulled up my bank statements and shoved the screen in his face. “Open your eyes, Mr. Nightshade. Go ahead and find me one cent that came from you.”

Every dollar that had gone into my account over the past three years was right there on the screen. The record went back to the days right after I left Nightstalker territory, when I was scraping by on emergency assistance in the neutral town of Grayhaven.

After that, I worked odd jobs all over town and took any temp gig I could find, even the ones that paid eight to twelve dollars an hour.

Eventually, I saved up five thousand dollars, rented an old food truck, signed a lease for a spot at the plaza and made my money one order of skewers at a time.

Even the twenty-five dollars I once won on a scratch-off ticket was in there. But not one entry had anything to do with Corin.

Corin snatched the phone. “That can’t be right.” He scrolled through the entries one by one in disbelief, and the further he went, the worse he looked.

He was reaching for his own phone to call Nyx when she came hurrying over with a stack of photos. “Alpha, don’t take Morgana’s word for it.”

“She told me herself she was moving to a pack territory overseas. That’s why she wanted the 500 thousand settlement and the five thousand a month in child support paid in cash, in foreign currency.”

“Good thing I was careful. I took a picture every time I handed over the money, or she’d be dragging my name through the mud right now.”

In the photos, an open suitcase was packed with stacks of foreign bills. A woman with my face was bent over counting them, grinning with pure greed.

“Those pictures are fake. Somebody slapped my face on them with AI.” I had barely gotten the words out before Nyx cut me off, her eyes red.

“Morgana, how can you make things up about me like that? I begged you not to leave the pack, but you kept saying there was nothing left between you two.”

“After the kids were born, you demanded a fortune every month but never once let the Alpha see them. Who’d believe you have nothing to hide? Makes me wonder whose kids they really are…”

She trailed off there, as if her heart ached for Corin and she couldn’t bring herself to say the rest out loud. The crowd murmured, and people shot me looks of disgust.

I wasn’t going to waste my breath on Nyx. I turned to Corin, cold as ice. “So, who are you going to believe?”