[2]

He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even pause to wonder why his mate was calling.

With one careless swipe of his thumb, he silenced the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket while the phone kept ringing.

Aiden never looked at it again. Instead, he bent over the newborn and pressed a tender kiss to the baby’s forehead.

My breath caught in my throat. For five years, I had waited for that kind of tenderness from him. I had waited for him to look at me like I was something precious.

He never did.

Yet now, he was looking at another woman’s child as though the little boy was the most precious thing in the world.

My eyes shifted to Sarah.

She was beautiful. Even after giving birth, she looked almost untouched by the hours of labor. Her long blonde hair fell loosely over her shoulders. Her skin was pale and smooth, and her blue eyes were bright enough to make people look twice.

She had always been beautiful and maybe that was why everyone had once believed she would become Aiden’s Luna.

Sarah wasn't just another woman in his life. She was his childhood sweetheart in all but the title—the woman everyone expected him to mate before the Goddess chose me instead.

She had smiled with us at our mating ceremony, congratulated me on becoming Luna, and stayed right by his side as his best friend. At first, I had tried to accept it since Aiden had told me there was nothing between them. So I believed him because I had no reason not to or perhaps I simply wanted to believe him. At least, that was what I told myself until it turned into late-night visits and secret comfort.

The sickening reality ripped through me, seeping into my bones like ice.

I didn't know how long I stood outside that room. I only knew that eventually, my legs moved, my hand wrapping around the door handle.

I pushed it open.

The door’s soft click made Aiden turn.

His eyes met mine.

For a moment, I saw a hint of surprise in his eyes, but it was short-lived. His face hardened, settling back into that icy, distant mask I had known for five years.

Beside him in the bed, Sarah looked at me next. Her bright eyes widening slightly, a soft smile spreading her lips into a thin line.

“Luna.” Her voice was soft, almost soothing.

She looked at me as if she had done nothing wrong. As if giving birth to my husband’s child was simply an everyday favor.

“Aiden,” I muttered, my voice barely sounding like mine. Neither of us spoke at first when our gazes met. The heavy silence at that moment already explained everything that happened.

Sarah glanced between us, her expression shifting into one of polite understanding.

“You came to see Aiden?” she asked. My breath caught in my throat immediately I heard her question. I couldn't believe her audacity to ask such a question.

“I came to see my husband,” I asserted, holding her gaze.

But I couldn’t stand there for another second.

The air in that room had become too toxic to breathe in. Watching Aiden cradle the newborn while Sarah looked at me with that gentle, polished pity was more than my heart could bear.

I turned on my heel and walked out.

“Wait.” Aiden’s sharp voice followed me from inside the room. “Elena.”

I didn’t stop. I didn’t trust myself to look back.

I went straight to my room in the Alpha’s suite, shut the door behind me, and leaned against it. My whole body trembled as if I were bracing for a storm that had already destroyed everything in its path.

Seconds later, the door opened.

Aiden stepped inside and closed it firmly behind him. His eyes were dark with quiet irritation, not concern.

“What was that back there?” he demanded. “Running out in front of Sarah like a child?”

I pushed myself away from the door, still clutching the medical report to my chest. “Is he your son, Aiden?”

“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. That single word hollowed me out.

“How could you?” My voice cracked despite my attempt to hold it steady. “How could you do this to me?”

Aiden let out a slow, impatient breath and waved a dismissive hand, as though I had brought him nothing more than a minor inconvenience. “It was surrogacy. That’s all. Sarah agreed to carry an heir for the pack.”

Surrogacy.

He said it so casually, as if he were discussing some ordinary arrangement rather than calmly laying the final stone on the grave of our marriage.

A sickening realization washed over me. For five years, I had shared a bed with this man. I had prayed for his child and mourned four babies I never got to hold. Yet, all this time, he had been making plans for another woman to give him what I could not.

I had been his mate in name and his wife in public. But Sarah had held the part of him I had spent years reaching for—his heart. To him, I had only ever been the woman who satisfied his sexual urges.

“A surrogacy?” Tears began to roll down my cheeks before I could stop them. “Without my consent? Without even telling your Luna?”

“You couldn’t give me an heir,” Aiden said flatly as he stepped closer. “The elders have pressured me for years. I needed a successor, and you failed at the most basic duty expected of a Luna. I had to secure the future of this pack by any means.”

His words landed one after another, cruel in their simplicity.

I raised the medical file between us, my hands shaking so badly that the papers rustled. “I’m dying, Aiden. I just came from the doctor. I have eight months left.”

His gaze dropped to the file then back at my pale face, and a cold, mocking sneer touching his lips.

“Eight months?” he scoffed. “Is that the best story you could come up with? Sarah gave birth to our son this morning, and suddenly you have a terminal illness?”

“It isn’t a story,” I whispered.

“Stop it.” Aiden’s voice cracked through the room like a whip, his brows drawing together into a dangerous frown. “It’s pathetic. You’re so desperate for attention that you would fabricate a death sentence just to steal the spotlight from the day our heir is born.”

“There are rules, Aiden!” My chest heaved as I forced the words out. “The three rules of the Blood Moon Pack. A Luna must be marked within seven days of the mating ceremony. You broke that rule five years ago. You left our bond incomplete. You left my wolf dormant, and now my body is failing because of it.”

Something dark flickered across his face. It was there and gone in an instant, replaced by the hard, unreadable mask he wore so well.

He knew the old laws. Every Alpha did. But accepting the truth would mean admitting that his neglect had helped destroy me.

“You are weak because you are weak,” he said, his tone utterly devoid of remorse. “Don’t blame failures on ancient pack rules.”

My hand moved instinctively over my stomach.

For one desperate moment, I wanted to tell him. I wanted to throw the truth in his face and make him see that I was carrying his child too but those words never made it past my throat.

If I told him now, he would not mark me out of love. He would not choose me. He would keep me alive only long enough to take my baby from me.

“If I am so useless to you,” I said softly, my voice trembling, “then give me a choice. Mark me now, so my wolf can awaken and I have a chance to survive… or reject me. Let me go.”

I held my breath, waiting for him to decide whether I was worth saving.

Aiden stared at me, his posture rigid and his expression dark with possession.

“You know I won’t do that," he asserted.

A foolish spark of hope fluttered in my chest.

“Then mark me.”

He didn’t move.

He didn’t reach for me. He didn’t lift a hand toward the place on my neck where his claim should have been.

“You are the Luna of the Blood Moon Pack,” Aiden said, his voice lowering into a cold, uncompromising murmur. “I will not let you walk away, cause a public scandal, and ruin my reputation on the day our heir is born. You will stay exactly where you are.”

Then he turned his back on me and walked away, dismissing my tears as if they meant nothing.

A chilling horror settled deep in my bones as his figure blurred through my tears.

My hand froze over my stomach as the truth finally sank in. I couldn’t tell him about our child. Not yet. Even if he knew, he would never choose to save me. What if he locked me away and simply waited for my eight months to run out? What if, once I was gone, he took my child away from me?

The thought sent a shiver down my spine.

I had to protect my baby. Perhaps this was my last chance at becoming a mother, even if it meant keeping the truth from its own father.

Then Sarah would step into the place I had fought so hard to keep.

Worse, the realization hit me even harder—I was trapped, doomed to die in eight months while carrying the child of the very man who was destroying me.