My Alpha Rejected Me for His Fake Pregnant Beta

Thanksgiving night, the Starlight pack house smelled like roast turkey, cedar smoke, and too much cologne.

I moved down the serving line with a pitcher of red wine. Gray dress. Flat shoes. Hair pulled back tight. Nobody looked at me. That was the point.

My name is Kara Simmons. For four years, I had been the Omega who refilled glasses and scrubbed floors in this house. Nobody knew what I really was.

"To the Vanguard charter!" Marcus Thorne roared. He was a ranking wolf with a thick neck and a thicker ego. He raised his glass and I filled it before he finished the toast. He didn't say thank you. He never did.

The whole hall cheered. Tomorrow, Starlight would be sealed to the Vanguard throne. A broke little pack would become untouchable.

I touched my pocket. The pressed wildflower was in there, brittle and flat. Evan picked it on our first pack run, when we were sixteen. He tucked it behind my ear and blushed.

Evan Parker. Alpha of Starlight. The mate the Moon Goddess gave me.

He had no idea the charter existed because of me. Tonight, I told myself, he would finally see me.

Then I saw Carmen.

She stood at the front in Starlight's midnight blue, the Alpha's color. One hand rested on her flat stomach. Carmen Gray was our Beta, second in command. She smiled at me over the crowd like a woman checking on a claim she'd already filed.

My wolf stirred. *Something is wrong,* she whispered.

*I know,* I thought. The bond had been aching for days. A dull, hot pulse behind my ribs.

Evan took the stage. Tall, sharp jaw, a black suit that cost more than my whole year of work. He thanked the Council observers in the front row. Polite. Smooth.

"Before we celebrate," he said, "I have to deal with a rot in my house."

The screens behind him lit up.

It was me. Outside a hotel, at night. A man in a hooded jacket held me by the arms. My head was down. A timestamp blinked in the corner. The caption read: *Silverfang contact. Pack intel exchanged.*

My blood went cold.

I knew that jacket. I knew those shoulders. That was my brother, holding me up while the bond burned me with fever. The video had been twisted. Every second of it was a lie.

"Kara Simmons," Evan said, calm as a judge. "You sold our secrets to a Silverfang male. You did it for favors. You shamed this pack and you shamed the bond." He looked straight at me. His eyes were empty. "You're done. Your post is revoked. Effective now."

The hall hissed. Someone spat near my shoes.

"Evan," I said. My voice cracked. "That video is fake. Look at the lighting. Look at—"

"Quiet." The Alpha tone hit me like a hand across the face.

Then he said the words. Every wolf in the room went still.

"I, Evan Parker, Alpha of the Starlight Pack, reject you, Kara Simmons, as my mate and my Luna."

The pain was not a pain. It was a rope inside my chest, cut clean through.

My knees shook. I locked them. I would not fall in front of these people.

"I never wanted you," he said. "Not once."

He held out his hand. Carmen glided up the steps and took it, her lashes fluttering like she might faint. "At the next ceremony, Carmen Gray will be marked as my Luna. She is already carrying my heir."

The room exploded. Cheers. Stomping. Wolves howling for their new queen.

I was still holding the serving tray. My fingers had gone numb around it.

Something in me went very quiet.

"My name," I said, and the tray stopped trembling, "is Kara Simmons. Of the Vanguard Lycan line. This charter exists because of me."

Silence. One heartbeat.

Then the hall roared with laughter.

"Vanguard?" Marcus wheezed, slapping his knee. "The Omega who can't even hold her scent?"

"Princess Mop!" someone shouted.

Marcus wiped his eyes and stepped close. "Here's the real news, sweetheart. You signed our NDA. Defaming this pack is a five-hundred-thousand-dollar breach. Say that name again and I'll own your whole life."

A she-wolf from the kitchen staff picked up the cardboard box under the serving table. My box. My two sweaters, my toothbrush, my mother's old brush. She turned it over and dumped everything on the floor. "Trash goes out," she sang.

I looked up at Evan. I wanted one thing. One flicker of the boy who held me through the night I almost died.

He didn't give it to me.

My phone was in my hand. I had just touched the screen. Evan crossed the stage in three strides and slapped it away. It skidded under a table. Then he grabbed my laptop bag from the chair, pulled the laptop out, and smashed it against the table edge. Once. Twice. Plastic cracked. Keys flew across the floor.

"Whatever you're hiding in there," he said, low and cold, "it dies with this."

He was wrong. But I said nothing. My jaw was shut so tight it hurt.

"Get her out."

Two enforcers grabbed my arms. They dragged me through the hall while the pack jeered and flung dinner rolls at my back. The back doors slammed open.

Cold hit me like a wall.

They threw me onto the frozen gravel. No coat. Thin dress. The November wind cut straight through my skin.

The doors shut. The laughter went muffled behind them.

I lay there, breathing smoke, and the bond burned like a wound that would never close. Somewhere in my pocket, a dead wildflower crumbled.

I didn't cry.

I got up.