Chapter 1: Thirty days left.

Lyra POV

I used to think being rejected by my fated mate was the worst thing that could happen to me.

Then I got pregnant.

Three years ago, Alpha Asher Voss looked me in the eyes and refused to accept our bond. An Omega, he'd said. The future Alpha of one of the most powerful packs in the region, mated to a girl who grew up scrubbing floors in a Beta household.

The Council of Elders overruled him. They declared me the Luna chosen by the Moon Goddess, and Asher was forced to compromise. We entered a three-year contract marriage with no mark. No promises and no permanence.

That is how I became Alpha Asher Voss's invisible wife.

I shielded him from the Council's scrutiny, managed his alliances, ran his pack so smoothly he never had to wonder who was holding it all together. And the part I will never forgive myself for — I fell in love with him.

Now, with only thirty days left before the contract ended, thirty days before he would be free of me, thirty days before I lost the only man I had ever loved, I was sitting on a clinic examination table, staring at a monitor that had just rearranged my entire life.

"Congratulations, Luna," Dr Harmon said. But there was no joy in his voice. "You're approximately five weeks pregnant."

I stilled, my eyes darting up to look at the doctor. Pregnant? 

“W-what are you talking about?” I stuttered. “How can I be pregnant?”

“Well, that’s what the scan and the blood work says.” Harmon shrugged. “All the tiredness and fever you’ve been having was just your pup’s way of telling you that they’re about to be born.” 

My heart slammed in my chest as anxiety and joy flooded into my heart in equal measure. Unconsciously, my hand drifted to my stomach, pressing gently against the flat of my stomach. Nothing felt different, there was no sign that anything had changed at all, but something had. 

I was carrying Asher’s child. A man who had never held my hand was the father of the life growing inside me. 

I wanted to cry. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to run to his office, grab him by the collar, and say, look — look what we made. Look what exists because of us. Maybe this would be the thing that finally made him see me. Maybe this baby would do what three years of loyalty never could.

It was a dangerous thought. The kind of hope that would tear me apart if I let it in.

I let it in anyway.

The corners of my mouth lifted into a smile, but it barely had time to form before Dr Harmon removed his glasses and set them on the desk slowly, his face taking on a serious expression. 

"However," he said, "there's a complication."

My fingers tightened over my stomach, as the flutter of anxiety in my chest hardened into fear. "What kind of complication?"

"Alpha Asher has not marked you. Without a completed mate bond, the fetus isn't receiving the energy it needs to develop properly and is responding to the deficiency."

“What?” I murmured, the fear spreading to every part of my body.

He turned the monitor toward me and pointed to a cluster of numbers I didn't understand. "If nothing changes, you're looking at four to six weeks before your body will expel the pregnancy via a miscarriage.”

The smile died on my face.

Four to six weeks. My contract expired in thirty days. My baby might not survive long enough to see the end of my marriage.

"So what you're telling me," I said quietly, "is that Asher has to mark me. Or I lose this baby."

Dr. Harmon held my gaze for a long moment. "I'm sorry, Luna. But yes. That is the only way."

I walked out of the clinic and stood in the corridor for a long time. The hallway was empty, washed in pale afternoon light from the high windows. From somewhere beyond the eastern courtyard came the faint thud of sparring and the sharp bark of a drill sergeant's command.

The whole world was moving as usual. Only mine had stopped.

I had to tell Asher.

The thought terrified me. The quiet, humiliating knowledge that I was about to go to a man who could barely tolerate my presence and ask him for the one thing he had refused to give me for three years.

But the baby needed his mark. And for this baby, I would beg if I had to.

I opened the mind link before I could talk myself out of it. Asher, I need to see you. It's important.

There was a few seconds of silence. Then his voice came through, flat and soaked in irritation. I'm in the middle of something. Whatever it is, it can wait. Don't bother me with trivial things, Lyra.

Then the link went dead.

I stood there staring at the opposite wall, one hand still pressed against my stomach, and laughed. A small, broken sound that didn't resemble laughter at all.

Trivial.

That was the word he always reached for. To Asher, nothing about me was important enough to put a second of his life on hold.

To Asher, my worries were trivial. My feelings were trivial: even my place in his life was.

It didn't mean anything. I knew that now. But knowing it and feeling it were two different things, and right now, the only thing I could feel was the tiny, terrified heartbeat growing inside me that didn't care about my pride.

I straightened up and started walking. If he wouldn't come to me, I would go to him.

Perhaps if he saw me standing in front of me, if he heard the news from my mouth, his heart might soften. Perhaps, this child could become the one thing strong enough to form a real bond between us.

It was a small foolish hope, but I held on to it anyway and for the first time in three years, I headed to the Alpha floor.

The Alpha floor was on the fourth level of the main hall, a part of the compound I had never set foot on. Technically, as Luna, I had every right to be there. In practice, Asher had made it clear from the beginning that the floor belonged to him, his officers, and the pack officials he trusted. I had never been included in that list.

I climbed the stairs anyway.

The first person I passed was a senior warrior near the landing. He looked up and did a visible double take, eyes darting from my face to the stairwell behind me as if he expected me to turn around and leave. When I kept walking, he straightened into a stiff bow.

"Luna."

I nodded and continued past him. Two more pack members stood near the corridor ahead. Their conversation died the moment they saw me. One recovered quickly and bowed. The other looked away too fast, pretending to study the notice board beside him.

On the surface, I was the Luna of this pack. The woman chosen by the Moon Goddess. Everyone bowed. Everyone used the title. Everyone treated me with just enough respect to avoid being accused of disrespecting the Council's decision.

Underneath that, I was still the orphan. The girl who had drifted into this pack as a child with nothing — no parents, no name that mattered, no rank worth acknowledging. Gerald and Diane Hartley had taken me into their household, but only because they had no children of their own at the time.

When their real daughter, Vivienne, was finally born, I became something between a servant and a charity project. Fed, clothed, tolerated, and quietly reminded that gratitude was the only thing expected of me.

I reached Asher's office and stood outside the door. Inside, the low murmur of his voice filtered through the wood. I knocked and pushed the door open gently.

Asher was behind his desk, surrounded by stacks of documents and territorial maps. Two officers flanked him. He didn't look up, his pen continued to move across the page.

"I told you not to interrupt me."

My face burned. The officers glanced at each other. I could feel their discomfort, or maybe it was pity, which was worse.

I forced myself to step fully inside. "I came to ask you to mark me. Formally."

The pen stopped.

Asher looked up slowly. His dark eyes found mine, and for one treacherous second, my heart did the thing it always did when he looked directly at me — it leapt. Three years of coldness, three years of silence, and my body still hadn't learned that his attention was never a gift. It was a warning.

"Don't get greedy, Lyra." His voice was quiet. Cold. Final. "You know exactly how you came to hold the position of Luna."

The words made my heart squeeze with pain. I didn’t need to be reminded that I was not his childhood sweetheart. Still, I had to think about the baby.

I drew a shaky breath. My hand almost went to my stomach. I stopped it just in time.

"Asher, I'm—"

The door slammed open behind me.

One of the patrol captains stood in the doorway, breathless, eyes wide. He looked past me as though I wasn't there and addressed Asher directly.

"Alpha." He swallowed hard. "She's alive. She's back and at the eastern gate." His voice was filled with something between shock and reverence. "Vivienne has returned."