This Road Has No Return

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It had been five years since the marking ceremony that made me Javier Wagner’s mate, Luna of the Iron Peak Pack. He walked through the front door of our pack house and stopped right in front of me, a woman with a swollen belly tucked neatly at his side.

“Eileen’s father saved my life during the rogue incursion ten years ago,” he said, his voice steady, righteous, that deep Alpha tone pressing down on my chest like a stone. “He entrusted her to me before he died. I have to do right by her.”

His broad shoulders were squared, as if he expected me to snap and snarl, to throw the full weight of my Luna status at this Beta female who’d wormed her way into our home. I knew what was coming next. I’d lived this moment once before, after all.

He pulled the official rejection paperwork from his inner jacket pocket and held it out between us. The paper crinkled at the edges, crisp and final. “I swore to her father she would never be anything less than my chosen mate. I, Javier Wagner, Alpha of the Iron Peak Pack, reject you, Lyric Wilson, as my mate and Luna of this pack—for now. Once Eileen and I complete the marking, I will reinstate you as my second chosen mate. You will keep your title as Luna, nothing will change for your status beyond a temporary separation.”

In my past life, I’d screamed at him. I’d cried, I’d clutched his arm and begged him to see reason, to remember the mate bond that the Moon Goddess had tied between us. When I’d found out I was carrying Willow just weeks after that, I’d run to him with the positive pregnancy test, only for Eileen to tilt her head and murmur that I’d always had irregular cycles, that I was probably just faking a pregnancy to turn him against her. Javier had believed her. He’d believed I’d faked the pregnancy, that I’d let another wolf touch me to ruin the Alpha bloodline. He’d locked me in the old hunting cabin by the frozen lake, and when he came back a week later to confront me, the cold had already seeped into my bones and stopped my heart.

I opened my eyes again this morning, and I was back here, standing in the entryway of the pack house, the scent of Eileen Murray’s jasmine cloying in my nose, the rejection paper held out between us.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t beg. I reached out and took the paper from his hand, my fingers brushing his calloused knuckles. The familiar pull of the old mate bond tugged at my chest, faint and aching, but my wolf stayed quiet, huddled in the back of my mind, cold and still.

I picked up the pen off the entry table, signed my name at the bottom of the form without a single tremor in my hand.

Javier’s dark brows pulled together, just like I knew they would. He’d expected a fight. He’d expected me to grovel, the way I did last time. For a split second, his sharp Alpha aura wavered, confused, before it settled back into that cold, domineering weight it always held when he looked at me now.

I folded the paper neatly and handed it back to him. The rejection burned the back of my throat, a sharp, soul-deep ache, but I swallowed it down. It was nothing compared to the cold of that frozen cabin, nothing compared to the weight of drowning in ice water while Eileen laughed from the bank.

“Done,” I said, my voice steady. “The rejection is final. I don’t want to be your second anything. I’ll leave the pack territory at dawn.”

“Lyric, you have my word. Once Eileen gives birth, I’ll bring you back to the pack as my chosen second mate. Everything will be fine,” Alpha Javier said, wrapping his large hand around mine, his voice soft with the practiced coaxing he’d always used on me.

I sat in the Luna’s chair of the Iron Peak Pack’s main hall, my gaze cold as I watched Eileen Murray’s tears drop one after another onto the floorboards.

“Lyric, I don’t want this either, but my father was Gamma of this pack, and he died saving Alpha’s life. His last wish was that I never be anyone’s mistress,” she sobbed, her shoulders shaking. “I know this is wrong, but I can’t go against my father’s dying wish. I beg you, just give us this chance. I won’t ever fight you for the Luna title, I swear.”

Javier’s face crumpled with pity, and he stepped forward to lift her up, his scent flaring with the fondness he’d never given me in years.

“Eileen, don’t cry. This is my fault, not yours. But you have my word—now that you carry my child, I’ll give you the proper title. You won’t have to live in the shadows.”

Eileen pressed a hand to her barely rounded stomach, leaning into his chest obediently, soft and yielding. The picture they made turned me into nothing more than a stranger watching from the sidelines.

Javier turned back to me, and I could already taste the impatience rolling off him in waves, sharp and heavy with Alpha pressure that made my wolf shrink back instinctively.

“Lyric, you should know that coming to you to talk this through is me showing you respect. Don’t be unreasonable about this,” he said, his voice dropping into the low, commanding Alpha tone that made every wolf in the pack flinch. “If you force my hand, there are a dozen ways I can push this through to rejection anyway.”

He must have noticed how his tone cut, because he squeezed my hand and softened his voice again. “Eileen’s condition is already known all over the pack. We can’t wait any longer. You know how important reputation is to our line, Lyric.”

My clenched fist finally relaxed at my side.

I knew he wasn’t lying. After all, in my past life, when I refused to accept rejection, he slipped a sedative into my drink and left me in a rogue’s cabin to ruin my reputation, then threw my half-dead body into the frozen river outside the pack territory. The cold, the choking, the utter despair of drowning still cling to me some nights, even now, reborn and awake before any of this was final.

Eileen lifted her tear-streaked face to look at me, her voice wobbly. “Lyric, I just want to have this baby with Alpha. Even if he rejects me later, and you claim the baby as your own, I won’t say a word of complaint.”

Before I could answer, Javier let go of my hand and turned to cradle Eileen against him, like she was already fading from crying too hard. “What nonsense is that? You’re the mother of my child, you’re a credit to this pack. No one is going to send you away. Not over my dead body.”

He glanced up at me then, and the irritation in his aura was impossible to miss. “Lyric, you’ve been my mate for five years and you’ve never carried a child to term. You’ve shamed the Alpha bloodline, and you must know your place here.”

I huffed a dry, bitter laugh and held up a hand to stop whatever cruel words he was going to say next. My voice was cool, distant, like I was talking about the weather instead of the mate bond that had tied me to him for half my life.

“I accept the rejection.”

I paused, lifting my eyes to meet his, and added my condition. “But I need you to promise me you won’t set foot outside of Iron Peak territory for three years.”

These days, the border is quiet, there’s no rogue incursion to lead the warriors against. Three years cooped up inside his own territory is no great hardship for him.

Javier frowned at me, clearly confused why I’d demand such a thing after years of fighting to keep my mate title.

“Alpha,” Eileen whispered, squeezing his hand and pressing it tighter to her stomach, her sweet vanilla scent wrapping around his arm like a noose.

Javier’s face cleared, and he nodded, no hesitation left. “I agree.”

But that wasn’t enough. I pulled the pre-written rejection statement I’d typed that morning out of my bag and held it out to him.

Javier’s dark eyes scanned the page, and his expression turned complicated. “Do you really have to do this?”

I didn’t answer him. I just leaned forward and signed my name at the bottom of the paper, where it said “Rejected Mate”.

Javier sighed, and didn’t argue anymore. He scrawled his signature: I, Javier Wagner, Alpha of the Iron Peak Pack, reject you, Lyric Wilson, as my mate and Luna of the Iron Peak Pack.

When I folded the paper and tucked it into my pocket, a strange calm settled over my chest, the tight knot of grief and rage I’d carried for a whole lifetime finally loosening. I smiled, for the first time in years, real and unforced.