My Alpha Used Me as His Mistress's Surrogate

The altar smelled like burning sage and something older—copper, iron, the faint sweetness of blood that hadn't been spilled yet.

Mine.

I stood at the center of Blackmoor Pack's sacred temple, my bare feet cold against the stone floor, a ceremonial blade resting in my open palm. Candles ringed the altar in a perfect circle, their flames unnaturally still despite the drafts that crept through the old stone walls. Everything felt deliberate. Arranged.

Ryker had called it a blessing.

"The Blood Rite," he'd explained three nights ago, his voice warm, his hand cupping my face like I was something precious. "It's how we ensure our child inherits the purest Alpha lineage. Your blood, my blood—woven together before conception. It's ancient, Ivy. Sacred."

I'd believed him.

I always believed him.

I curled my fingers around the blade's handle and lifted my wrist. The temple elder stood across the altar, his eyes closed, lips moving in a low chant I didn't recognize. Behind me, heavy velvet curtains separated the main chamber from the preparation room where Ryker had stepped away minutes ago—just for a moment, he'd said. He'd be right back.

Then I heard it.

A voice, low and careful, sliding through the gap in the curtains like smoke.

"You're certain she won't find out?"

Ryker's voice. Unmistakable.

I didn't move. Didn't breathe.

"She believes every word." A second man—older, measured. One of the elders, I thought. "She thinks she's preparing her body to carry your heir."

"And the transfer?"

"Proceeding exactly as planned. Each rite draws more of it out. Her bloodline is extraordinary—even she doesn't know what she carries. By the final ceremony, enough will have been extracted to fully stabilize Victoria's child. The Alpha resonance in that fetus has already doubled since we began."

A pause.

"And Ivy's child?"

Silence stretched between them like a held breath.

"The one in her womb is essentially a vessel. A conduit. There's almost no vital energy left in it. By the time she realizes something is wrong—"

"She won't." Ryker's voice was flat. Final. "She never does."

The blade slipped from my fingers.

It hit the stone floor with a sound like a gunshot, and the elder across the altar snapped his eyes open. I didn't look at him. I couldn't look at anything except the curtain, those heavy red folds of velvet, while the words rearranged themselves inside my skull into something I could not unhear.

Victoria.

Of course it was Victoria.

My half-sister. My father's favorite. The woman I'd found tangled in the sheets with my then-fiancé, Marcus, on the morning of what was supposed to be my wedding day. The memory surfaced fast and vicious—white dress, broken champagne glass, the way Marcus hadn't even looked ashamed. Just inconvenienced.

Ryker had been there. He'd seen everything. He'd stepped forward in front of the entire pack, taken my hand, and said quietly, "Marry me instead. Let me give you something real."

I thought he'd saved me.

Three years. Three years of his careful tenderness, his patient hands, his voice telling me I was enough. He never marked me—I'd asked once, and he'd smiled and said he wanted to wait until the time was right, until we'd built something solid. I'd accepted it. I was an Omega. My blood was ordinary. I'd told myself I was lucky he wanted me at all.

Lucky.

I pressed my palm flat against my stomach.

Something cold moved through me, slow and terrible, like ice water filling my chest cavity from the bottom up.

I walked to the curtain.

I don't remember deciding to move. My body simply went, quiet and automatic, while my mind stayed somewhere far behind, still trying to catch up. I pushed the velvet aside just enough—just a sliver—and looked through.

Ryker stood with his back half-turned, broad shoulders rigid beneath his dark shirt. Beside him, Elder Cain held a tablet, its screen glowing blue-white in the dim room. Two ultrasound images side by side.

Two children.

The image on the right pulsed with visible energy—waves of it, rippling outward from the tiny curled form like heat rising off summer asphalt. Strong. Alive. Radiant with something that made even the screen seem to vibrate.

Victoria's child.

The image on the left was nearly still. A shape. A suggestion of life, but barely. Like a candle flame in a windstorm, guttering down to nothing.

Mine.

Ryker tapped the screen. "How much longer?"

"One more rite. Possibly two." Elder Cain's voice was clinical. Detached. "Victoria is concerned about the delivery. The power transfer will significantly ease the process—reduce the physical toll on her body."

"And if Ivy miscarries before we finish?"

"Then we've lost the remaining resonance. It's why we need her calm and compliant through the final ceremony."

Calm and compliant.

I let the curtain fall.

The elder at the altar was watching me now, his expression carefully blank in the way of someone who has been carefully blank for a very long time. He knew. Of course he knew. They all knew.

I was the only one who hadn't.

I bent down and picked up the ceremonial blade. My hand was steady, which surprised me. Everything inside me had gone very quiet—not peaceful, but the kind of quiet that comes right before something breaks. I set the blade on the altar with deliberate care, like I was setting down every version of myself that had stood in this room and believed in the man behind that curtain.

Then I turned to leave.

I made it three steps toward the temple doors before I saw her.

She stood just inside the entrance, half in shadow, wearing a traveling cloak with a silver crescent moon emblem stitched at the collar—the mark of Silver Moon Pack, two territories north of here. She was older, maybe fifty, with sharp eyes and a stillness about her that felt nothing like calm. It felt like coiled wire.

Her gaze found me immediately. And then it dropped—not to my face, not to my hands—but to the back of my neck.

I watched the color drain from her face.

"That mark." Her voice came out fractured, barely above a whisper. She took one step forward, then stopped herself, like she was afraid moving too fast would make me disappear. "The totem on the back of your neck—"

I reached up instinctively, fingers brushing the small birthmark I'd had my entire life. A shape I'd never thought much about. Crescent and flame, interlocked.

The woman was shaking.

"Who are you?" I asked.

Her eyes filled with something raw and desperate and twenty-five years deep.

"You're her," she breathed. "The Silver Moon heir. The child we lost—" Her voice broke. "We've been searching for you since before you could walk."