The excuse

Seven's POV

I sat on the edge of the examination table, fingers locked around the thin paper gown, while the healer finished the last scan. 

Outside the window the pack moved like it always did—cars, wolves, noise—but inside these walls only pack blood mattered.

My phone lit up on the counter.

Isolde Dennis’s post.

Isolde Dennis—childhood friend of my husband, ranking female of the Oxford Pack, the woman whose wolf had once been considered the perfect match for the future Alpha. The almost-mate Harris’s wolf had reached for before the rogue attack scarred him and pack duty forced a different choice. Beautiful, charming, and still the presence that made ranking wolves turn their heads.

A photograph of a silver rejection token lying on black stone. 

«Bond dissolved. I am free.«

There were no hashtags, no explanation. But every ranking wolf in the network would understand.

I had waited two years for the words the healer was about to speak. Twenty four months of timed heats, of teas that tasted like bitter root and regret, of Harris’s back turned to me in our bed while his damaged wolf stayed silent. And Isolde chose *today* to announce she had cut her last tie.

The healer set the moonstone aside.

“Luna Seven.” Her voice was careful. “You are pregnant.”

The room tilted.

Joy hit so hard my vision narrowed. After two years of failure, after every quiet suggestion that the problem lived in Harris’s wolf—scarred by the rogue attack that nearly killed him three years ago—I was carrying the alpha’s heir.

My hand dropped to my stomach on pure instinct. Joy and disbelief twisted together. The child the entire pack had stopped hoping for had arrived on the exact day Isolde Dennis  decided to return from the dead.

The healer's maid who had drawn my blood every cycle squeezed my shoulder. “Tell the Alpha. This changes everything.”

I nodded, throat tight. “He’s been waiting a long time.”

“From now on he comes with you,” she added. “An heir after what happened to his wolf… the pack will want him standing beside you.”

I had come alone every single time. Harris’s wolf had been half-broken since the attack. Conception was supposed to be nearly impossible. I had never forced him to submit to the deeper tests. Alphas did not like being reminded of weakness.

I left with the thin confirmation slip and walked toward the car, already tasting the words I would say to him.

My phone rang. Mom.

I forced brightness into my voice. “Hi, Mom.”

“Seven. You said you and Harris were coming today. Your brother is already at the healing hall entrance.” Her voice was thinner than last week. The Waning did that—first it stole the shift, then the strength, then the will to stay. A slow unravelling of the wolf until only the human shell remained.

Ever since the diagnosis she had fixed on one thing: seeing the formal pack claiming. We had signed the human papers two years ago, but the werewolf ceremony under the full moon had been delayed when Harris’s father fell to the same sickness. In her mind the ritual still mattered more than any legal document. She wanted to leave knowing the pack had openly taken me as his Luna.

I had begged Harris for it. He had agreed. The preparations were already underway.

“We’re on our way,” I lied gently. “Don’t make anyone wait outside. We’ll call when we’re close.”

“If his wolf is restless… just come yourself. I only need to see you.”

“He promised, Mom. He won’t break it.”

I hung up, opened the car door, and told the driver, “The tower.”

He hesitated. “Luna… the Alpha prefers you don’t come to the executive floors unannounced.”

Of course he did. Harris’s preferences were still law, even when his wolf could barely rise.

I rested my palm over the place the healer had confirmed was no longer empty. “I have something he needs to hear.”

The driver still looked uneasy. “Perhaps call first…”

My phone rang before he could finish his sentence. Harris .

Joy spiked so hard I almost smiled. I answered on the first ring. 

“Harris , I…”

“I’m staying late.” His voice was calm, so distant. “Don’t wait for dinner.”

A soft female laugh threaded under his words closely. It was familiar. The kind of laugh that once made his wolf answer.

“Harris…”

“I am busy.” He half yelled and the line went dead.

I sat frozen while the city moved past the windows. Then, because some part of me was already bracing for the wound, I opened Isolde’s profile again.

I noticed that Harris had clicked a little red heart. He’s usually quite low-key and quiet on social media, and has never liked any of my posts before. I clicked on his profile; he follows very few people—including me, there were only five. Now there’s one more.

A new post with just two words.

«Home again«

Attached: a photo taken from behind. A tall man in a dark suit standing at a floor-to-ceiling window, phone pressed to his ear. Even from the back I knew the set of those shoulders. The exact way he held his head when he was dismissing someone.

The Alpha, my husband.

I told the driver to keep going.

The oxford tower rose out of the wolf's district like a black blade, but the real power lived in the scent markers woven through every floor. On the massive screen wrapping the lower levels, Isolde Dennis’s face turned slowly—pack princess returned, the new face of the oxford fragrance line.

I stepped out of the car. Twelve years standing beside him, two years since we made it official and I could still count on one hand the times I had walked into this building without an invitation. 

No one had thought to tell me she had been given a public role. Or maybe they had all decided I didn’t need to know.

Upstairs, Harris’s Beta intercepted me before I reached the private wing.

“Luna. The Alpha is in council. I can take you to the waiting rooms…”

“I’ll wait in his office.”

His face flickered with panic, carefully smoothed. I walked past him.

I pushed the door open and found Isolde already there, perched on the wide windowsill like she belonged. Fresh from a shoot, makeup perfect, a dress the color of fresh blood. She looked up, surprised for half a second, then smiled the soft smile that had once made half the pack follow her.

“Seven. You’re here for Harris? He’s still in a meeting”

I didn’t answer her. I looked at the second. “How long?”

“Twenty minutes.”

I crossed to Harris’s desk and sat. Isolde watched me with mild interest, then returned to scrolling on her phone, completely at ease. The air around her carried the clean, bright scent of a wolf who had never been forced to dim herself.

The door opened again. Harris walked in, still in the dark suit that made every other male in the room look unfinished. His eyes found me and narrowed the smallest fraction.

“Why are you here?”

I stood, slid my hand into the crook of his arm the way a Luna should, and kept my voice light. “I missed you.”

He glanced down at my fingers and said nothing. But his wolf—scarred, half-sleeping—stirred once, then went quiet again.

Isolde’s gaze flicked to the place where I touched him. Her eyes became sharp, a brief movement of anger rested behind her eyes, then vanished.

I drew a breath, ready to give him the only good news I had carried in a year.

“Harris , I…”

Isolde rose in one smooth motion.

She stepped close enough that her scent—ozone and night-blooming flower and old pack earth—wrapped around both of us. Then she tipped her head, bared the side of her throat in the old gesture of trust between childhood wolves, and spoke in the soft voice that used to make Harris’s wolf answer without thought.

“My wolf is still unsettled from the rejection. I need the Alpha’s calm for a moment. Just until it settles.”

It was a request no ranking male could ignore without looking weak. Especially not an Alpha whose own wolf had been damaged and who still carried the old, unfinished bond like a scar.

Harris’s entire body changed.

He stepped away from me so fast my hand was left hanging in empty air. His palm settled at the base of Isolde’s neck, thumb brushing the place where a mate mark would have gone years ago. His voice dropped into the low register that once belonged only to me in the dark.

“Breathe. I’ve got you.”

Isolde’s eyes fluttered half-shut. A soft sound left her throat—relief, or performance, I couldn’t tell. The damaged bond between Harris and me stretched thin and painful as his attention locked completely onto her.

I stood there with my hand still raised, the ghost of his sleeve under my fingers, watching the man who had not touched me in comfort for months pour calm into another wolf like it cost him nothing.

Isolde opened her eyes and smiled at me over his shoulder, bright and almost kind.

“Don’t mind us, Seven. He’s been doing this since we were pups. You know how he is witoh pack.”

I did not know that version of him.

The version who looked at me across the breakfast table with polite distance. The version whose wolf had never once pressed against mine after the attack. The version who answered my calls like I was an appointment.

Isolde stepped back, collected her bag, and left with a cheerful, “I have a fitting. Don’t let me interrupt the newlyweds.”

The second closed the door. The office suddenly felt too large and too quiet.

Harris turned to me. The calm he had given her was already gone from his face.

“You’re actually jealous?”

The scent of her still clung to him so bright, strong, unscarred. My stomach turned hard.

I spun, made it to the private bathroom, and folded over the sink as the first wave of nausea tore through me. Not just the pregnancy. An older and uglier taste rose with it: the quiet certainty that my wolf had felt the moment his attention left me, and had flinched.

Behind me, Harris’s voice changed.

“Seven…”

He pause. Then, quieter, almost careful:

“Are you pregnant?”