My Alpha Rejected His True Mate

My mate, Alpha Damien, was holding a sacred naming ceremony for his heir.

The only problem? He was celebrating a pup he had with Lyra, a rogue he brought into our pack. And I, his true mate, four months pregnant with his actual heir, was the only one not invited.

When I confronted her, she clawed her own arm, drew blood, and screamed that I had attacked her.

Damien saw her performance and didn't even look at me. He snarled, using his Alpha's Command to force me to leave, the power of our bond twisted into a weapon against me.

Later, she attacked me for real, making me fall. As blood bloomed on my dress, threatening our child's life, she tossed her own pup onto a rug and screamed that I had tried to kill him.

Damien burst in, saw me bleeding on the floor, and didn't hesitate. He scooped Lyra's screaming pup into his arms and sprinted away to find a healer, leaving me and his true heir to die.

But as I lay there, my mother's voice echoed in my mind through our own link. My family's escort was waiting for me just beyond the territory border.

He was about to find out that the Omega he threw away was actually the princess of the most powerful pack in the world.

Chapter 1

Elara POV:

My fingers, trembling, held the cold chassis of the telephone to my ear—a useless, human contraption. The true conversation unfolded in the silent theatre of my mind, a shimmering thread of thought connecting me to my mother, who was hundreds of miles distant.

“I am resolved to do it, Mother. I am leaving him.” The thought was a pained whisper in the vast, quiet expanse of our Mind-Link. This link, a gift from the Moon Goddess, was meant to be a comfort, a means for the pack to feel as one. Tonight, it felt more like a lifeline I was preparing to sever with my own hands.

My mother, Luna Seraphina of the Silver Moon Pack, answered in the space of a heartbeat. Her mental voice was a soothing balm of moonlight and ancient power. “It is past time, my sweet girl. We have been consumed with worry. That boy, Damien… his ambition carries a fouler stench than his pack’s territory. The Bloodstone Pack is built on precarious ground.”

“I know,” I sent back, a great wave of relief washing through me. I had so feared her disappointment. “I simply… I wished to believe he was the one. The Goddess’s gift.”

“The Goddess grants us choices, Elara, not chains. We await you. The pack awaits you.”

I severed the link, and the sudden silence that descended in my head felt at once cavernous and liberating. My back came to rest against the cold stone of the great hall’s archway; its coarse surface grated against the thin fabric of my dress, and a cellar-like dampness crept up my spine, making me shudder involuntarily. From this vantage point, cloaked in shadow, I could observe all.

In the heart of that great chamber, bathed in the candelabra's glow, stood my mate, my Alpha, Damien.

He was holding an infant. A pup, not yet a month old, swaddled in the ceremonial furs of the Bloodstone Pack. And beside him, beaming as if she were the anointed queen of this very hall, was Lyra.

A rogue she-wolf he had brought into our territory a year ago.

The pack members were cheering. They raised their glasses to Damien, to the pup, to Lyra. It was a naming ceremony, one of the most sacred rituals a pack could hold. A celebration for the Alpha's heir.

And I, his true, fated mate, four months pregnant with his actual heir, was the sole person who had not been invited. The entire pack knew; their shared thoughts were a low, excited hum I could feel at the edge of my senses, yet they had all conspired to conceal it from me.

The memory of our first meeting, a cruel phantom, rose unbidden. I had been at the art academy, and he had entered the gallery like a force of nature, an Alpha whose ambition burned with the heat of a forest fire. It was his scent that struck me first—a staggering compound of pine after a thunderstorm and the richness of dark, upturned earth. It was a scent my very soul seemed to recognize. A frantic, unfamiliar drumbeat had started up somewhere deep in my ribs, and a possessive roar, ancient and absolute, echoed through the marrow of my bones.

"Mine!" my inner wolf had screamed.

He had felt it as well. His eyes, the precise color of molten gold, had found mine across the room, and for the space of a single breath, the clamor of the gallery, the very press of the air around me, ceased to exist. The Moon Goddess had blessed us.

Or so I thought.

Now, watching him with another woman and her child, that memory felt like a cruel joke.

A flicker of unease rippled through the Mind-Link from Damien's Beta, his second-in-command. I could intercept the public channels if I focused.

"Alpha, she is still your mate. To do this…" the Beta's thought was laced with worry.

Damien’s attention remained fixed on the child. His own mental voice cut through the channel, sharp and devoid of any warmth. "She has been hostile towards Lyra. It is merely a ceremony. She need not know."

"And if she finds out?"

The response came, sharp and cruel, a shard of ice piercing the bond that still connected us. "We'll hide it as long as we can. If it comes to it, I'll just formally reject her."

A gasp escaped my lips, and I pressed a hand to my mouth. Reject me? He would sever the sacred bond gifted to us by the Goddess herself? For them?

The pack members around Lyra were fawning over her. "Our Alpha is so merciful, taking in a poor rogue and her orphaned pup," one she-wolf cooed.

Another laughed. "Don't worry about Elara. Even if she finds out, where would she go? A pregnant Omega can't survive without her Alpha's protection. She'll never leave him."

The churning acid in my stomach suddenly went still. It was replaced by a strange and profound numbness, a quiet that seemed to slow the very blood in my veins. I could feel the slow, heavy beat of my own heart, like a sexton ringing a funeral bell.

They were all about to find out just how wrong they were.