My Alpha Let Me Die in Labor for His First Love

The contractions hit like lightning, tearing through my body with a violence that left me gasping. I clutched the marble countertop of our kitchen island, my knuckles white as another wave of pain crashed over me. The fluid pooling beneath my feet was warm against the cold tile—my water had broken over an hour ago.

"Brandon," I whispered to the empty house, my voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings of our hillside mansion. The storm outside rattled the floor-to-ceiling windows, rain lashing against the glass like angry claws.

My phone screen glowed mockingly on the counter: fifteen missed calls to my mate. Fifteen times I'd heard his voice, smooth and professional, telling me to leave a message. The Luna of Silver Lake pack, reduced to begging a machine for her Alpha's attention.

Another contraction seized me, and I doubled over, my vision blurring at the edges. Something was wrong—terribly wrong. The pain was too sharp, too early. I was only thirty-six weeks along.

"Please," I breathed into the phone as I dialed again, my fingers trembling. "Brandon, I need you. The baby—"

Voicemail. Again.

Tears mixed with the sweat on my face as I scrolled through my contacts. The pack doctor was at a conference in Portland. The midwife lived two hours away. In desperation, I called 911, my voice cracking as I explained my situation to the dispatcher.

"Ma'am, we're sending an ambulance immediately. Can you get to the front door?"

Each step down our grand staircase felt like climbing a mountain in reverse. The chandelier above swayed with my unsteady movements, casting dancing shadows on the walls lined with Brandon's achievements—Alpha of the Year awards, photos with pack dignitaries, everything that mattered more to him than the woman carrying his child.

The ambulance arrived thirty minutes later, its red and blue lights painting our pristine white exterior in violent colors. The EMTs, both human, worked with professional efficiency, but I could see the concern in their eyes as they loaded me onto the stretcher.

"How far to the hospital?" I managed between contractions.

"Twenty minutes in this weather," the female EMT said, checking my vitals. "Try to stay calm. We've got you."

But I wasn't calm. Terror clawed at my chest as we raced through the winding mountain roads toward Silver Lake General. Each bump sent fresh agony through my abdomen. My wolf was restless, pacing anxiously in the back of my mind, sensing the danger to our pup.

We were halfway down the mountain when the headlights appeared behind us.

At first, it was just another vehicle on the road. But as we approached the main thoroughfare, the black SUV behind us accelerated aggressively, its engine roaring through the storm. The ambulance driver glanced in his mirror, his jaw tightening.

"What the hell is this guy doing?"

The SUV pulled alongside us in the oncoming traffic lane, its tinted windows reflecting our emergency lights. For a moment, it paced us, as if the driver was making some kind of decision. Then, without warning, it swerved directly into our path.

"Hold on!" the driver shouted.

The ambulance lurched violently to the right. I felt the moment we left the asphalt, the sickening sensation of weightlessness before we slammed into the metal guardrail. The impact threw me against the restraints, and a scream tore from my throat as pain exploded through my abdomen.

The world spun. Metal groaned. Glass shattered.

Then, silence.

I tasted copper in my mouth. Blood. My vision swam as I tried to focus on the EMT beside me, her face pale with shock as she worked frantically over my body.

"We're losing her," she said to someone. "The impact—there's internal bleeding. We need to move now."

But through the ringing in my ears, I heard something else. An engine. Powerful, distinctive, with that particular rumble I'd heard countless times in our garage.

Brandon's Porsche Cayenne.

The sound grew fainter as the vehicle sped away, leaving us broken on the side of the road. My mate—the Alpha who'd sworn to protect me, to cherish me, to put me above all others—had just driven away from the wreckage he'd caused.

"Why?" I whispered, though I wasn't sure if the word made it past my lips.

The EMT's face blurred above me. "Stay with us, honey. We're going to get you help."

But I could feel it—the life draining from my body, taking my unborn child with it. The pup I'd loved from the moment I'd seen those two pink lines. The baby I'd spent months preparing for, decorating a nursery in soft yellows and greens, reading stories aloud to my growing belly.

"My baby," I managed, my hand moving to my stomach. It came away red.

"We're going to do everything we can," the EMT promised, but her eyes told a different story.

As darkness crept in from the edges of my vision, one question echoed through my dying mind: What had we done to deserve this? What had my innocent child done to earn such a fate?

The last thing I felt was the cold—bone-deep and absolute, seeping into my soul as my heart stuttered to a stop.

But death, I discovered, was not the end.

I found myself floating above the wreckage, watching as more emergency vehicles arrived. My body looked so small on that stretcher, so broken. The EMTs worked with desperate efficiency, but I could see it was too late. The woman who had been Cynthia Vanderbilt was gone, taking her unborn child with her.

Yet somehow, I remained.

A pull, strong and inexorable, drew me away from the crash site. I drifted through the storm-lashed night, past the familiar landmarks of our territory, until I found myself at Silver Lake General Hospital. The building rose before me, all glass and steel, a monument to modern medical excellence.

I passed through the walls like smoke, following that invisible thread that seemed to tug at the very essence of what I'd become. It led me to the VIP wing, to the obstetrics department where I should have been, where Brandon had promised I would deliver our child in comfort and safety.

Outside one of the private rooms, I saw him.

Brandon stood in the hallway, his usually perfect hair disheveled, his expensive suit wrinkled. He was pacing—three steps one way, three steps back—like a caged wolf. In his hands, he clutched something small and delicate.

Another woman's hand.

She sat in a wheelchair, her belly round with pregnancy, though not as far along as I had been. Her blonde hair fell in perfect waves around her shoulders, and even in a hospital gown, she managed to look ethereal, fragile. Everything I had never been.

Ashley Morrison. Brandon's college girlfriend. The Delta from the neighboring Crescent Moon pack who had somehow found her way back into my mate's life.

"It's just a precaution," Brandon was saying, his voice gentle in a way it hadn't been with me in months. "The doctor said some spotting is normal, but I wanted to be sure. I couldn't bear it if something happened to you or the baby."

Ashley smiled up at him, her blue eyes shimmering with unshed tears. "You're so good to me, Brandon. I don't know what I would have done without you tonight."

I watched, invisible and voiceless, as my mate—my husband, the father of my dead child—pressed a tender kiss to her forehead. The same man who had ignored fifteen desperate calls from his dying wife was here, holding vigil over another woman's pregnancy scare.

The pieces fell into place with sickening clarity. The late nights. The phone calls he'd taken in private. The way he'd grown distant as my pregnancy progressed. The reason he hadn't answered when I'd needed him most.

Brandon hadn't been at pack business tonight. He'd been here, with her. And when my calls had interrupted their time together, when the inconvenience of his actual mate had threatened to intrude on his perfect evening, he'd made a choice.

He'd chosen her. Even if it meant letting me die.