Chapter 1: The Broken Vessel

Liora

Eight months pregnant!

I chuckled, tracing the tight, swollen curve of my belly. I raised my chin and looked at myself in the rearview mirror, a massive smile spreading across my cheeks. 

I was finally giving an heir to my mate. I was finally going to be a true Luna for the Alpha. Kaelen was finally going to love and cherish me!

"Luna Liora, we have arrived," the pack driver announced calmly as the car rolled to a halt in front of the mansion.

I exited the vehicle, practically buzzing with excitement as I made my way to the packhouse steps. After years of miscarriages, endless bruising injections, and agonizing fertility treatments, I finally got to break the news: our pup was strong, and ready to be birthed in just a few weeks.

I soon made it into the foyer. But something seemed off. Where was everyone? The maids? The guards? Beta Thorne? Where was my mate? Why was the packhouse eerily empty? After being quarantined in the pack’s clinic for over two weeks, shouldn't someone be here to welcome their Luna?

Confused, I waddled up the staircase, taking one heavy step at a time, rubbing my lower back to soothe the dull ache of the extra weight. ‘He must be inside,’ I thought to myself.

I finally reached our bedroom, eager to push the heavy oak door open. If Kaelen was asleep, I'd risk waking him up —something I usually never dared to do. He would normally yell at me, calling me a wolfless, barren burden. But no more! There would be no need for him to say hurtful words ever again. I was about to break the best news to him.

As my hand grabbed the brass handle, I noticed the door was already cracked open a fraction. Hmm… Strange. But even stranger was the suffocating smell that suddenly wafted into my nose.

Pheromones.

And then, a wet, rhythmic slapping sound echoed from the dim darkness inside. Curious, I pushed the door open. The heavy hinges gave a slight creak.

My body instantly froze. My heart stopped beating. Bile rose hot and fast in my throat.

"Oh, Kaelen.. yes… oh yes, please don’t stop!"

My thumb went completely numb against the handle. My eyes confirmed what my ears were desperately trying to deny.

It was him. Right in the center of the tangled silk sheets. My mate. My Alpha.

His broad, muscular back was slick with sweat and what looked like baby oil. His hands gripped bruisingly tight around a woman's waist as he drove into her with a savage, primal desperation.

I tried to swallow, but my throat was completely dry. Beneath him, her perfectly manicured fingers tangled in his dark hair, was a face I knew too well. Selena. His late brother’s wife.

"Oh my fucking God! You're so... uuh... fucking... deep, Alpha," she whimpered, arching her back to take more of him.

My brain stalled. My mate was fucking another woman.

I was no longer able to hold back the agonizing pain. Tears began trickling down my eyes. I tried to stay silent, but a choked, ragged gasp tore its way out of my throat.

Kaelen instantly stopped his rhythmic movement. He turned his head, his eyes locking onto me. I tried to speak, but the words wouldn't form. The betrayal seared through my veins, putting a hard stop to my brain.

"K.. Kaelen, wha… what are you doing?" I finally choked out, my voice trembling violently.

"What the fuck does it look like I’m doing?" Kaelen barked, not even bothering to pull out of her. "I am fucking Selena. The woman who will actually be my true Luna!"

Before I could even process the cruelty of his words, a violent, excruciating pain suddenly ripped through my abdomen like a jagged blade.

I screamed, my hands flying to my swollen belly as a warm gush of fluid soaked through my maternity dress, splattering loudly onto the floor.

My water!

I collapsed to my knees, blinding agony radiating down my spine. "K- Kaelen..." I sobbed, clutching my stomach. "The baby... something's wrong.. it’s too early!"

Kaelen stared down at me. He wasn’t rushing to my side. For a moment –just a second or more, I sensed a flicker of sympathy from him. I felt an impulse in him, as if he wanted to ignore everything he had become and pull me to my feet. I could feel his internal struggle.

“Oh Kaelen, what is going on? Why is she making a mess everywhere?” Selena's voice suddenly interrupted. 

Almost immediately, I could feel the warmth of Kaelen’s sympathy disappear. The smell of tulips was now being replaced with decay, rot. His eyes met mine, now narrowed with absolute, freezing disgust. 

"Fuck," he groaned, wiping a hand down his face. "Are you kidding me, Liora? Right now?"

"Please... help me..." 

"You couldn't have waited five more fucking minutes?" I heard him sneer, but the pain I felt was louder than his words. 

I watched in agony as he finally got out of the bed and over the puddle of my amniotic fluid as if I were a diseased rat. 

"You just had to sneak around and ruin my high. I was just about to cum, and now look what you've done. You're making a mess everywhere."

"Kaelen!" I shrieked as another contraction tore me apart, dropping me fully to the floor. I couldn’t take it no more.

 "Oh, Alpha, she's being so dramatic. She's ruining the mood." I heard Selena pout.

"I know," Kaelen sighed, looking at my writhing form with dead eyes. "Guards!"

Two pack warriors rushed into the hallway, freezing when they saw their naked Alpha, the widow in his bed, and their pregnant Luna bleeding out on the floor. 

"Get this pathetic creature to the clinic before she stains the floorboards more," Kaelen ordered, turning his back on me. "And don't bother me unless the pup survives. I don't care what happens to her."

*****

The blinding fluorescent lights of the pack clinic stung my tear-filled eyes. I writhed on the cold metal table, my frail hands gripping the side railings so hard my knuckles turned bone-white. I looked around, there was no one to comfort me, not the Beta, not the Alpha. I was all alone, about to experience a very painful childbirth.

“Ah…” I screamed helplessly as the first contraction compressed my spine so violently I choked on my own screams. Another came, and then another. My mind flooded with questions; was this how painful childbirth is? Or was it because I had a weak wolf with no supernatural healing, and so my body was completely refusing to cooperate?

The head pack surgeon stepped into the light. He didn’t look at my face. He didn't look at my tears. His eyes were locked dead on my swollen stomach as he snapped a pair of latex gloves onto his wrists.

"The pup's heart rate is dropping," he muttered to the nurses, his voice completely flat. "We have to take him out now."

"Please," I sobbed, thrashing as another violent contraction hit. "It hurts... please, give me an epidural. Anything."

He finally looked at me, his eyes devoid of any pity. "No painkillers," he ordered a nurse, dismissing my pleas entirely. "We will not risk sedating the Alpha's heir to ease your discomfort because of your wolfless state."

Before I could even process what he was saying, rough hands pinned my wrists to the freezing metal table. Thick leather straps buckled over my arms. I couldn’t move.

Cold iodine swabbed my stomach. Then, sharp cold steel pressed against my skin. Amidst my pain, I was trying to understand what they were going to do. Were they really going to…

“Ahhhh..!!” I suddenly shrieked with the last energy i had left as a blinding, white-hot fire sliced straight through my flesh. I was fully awake.

I screamed until the taste of copper flooded my throat. I thrashed against the restraints, my vision going completely black as the monitors beside my head began to emit a steady, terrifying flatline tone.

The last thing I heard before the darkness swallowed me was the tiny, fragile wail of my pup. I tried to find it, but my head was too heavy to bear the pain anymore. My tired eyes finally shut close.

******

Two hours later

A steady, irritating beep dragged me back into my body.

My eyelids felt glued shut. The harsh clinic lights stabbed my eyes, and the air tasted like industrial bleach. I tried to shift my weight, and a scream caught dead in my throat.

Fire. Pure, searing fire ripped across my lower stomach. Thick thread pulled taut against my raw flesh, threatening to tear my abdomen wide open if I breathed too deeply. How long had I been out? I wondered through the pain. Hours? Days? 

Suddenly, I felt a tiny, warm pressure resting right over my heart. Fighting the blinding sting in my gut, I forced my heavy chin down.

Water fell from my eyes as I saw him. He was there. My trembling hands curled instinctively around the small bundle on my chest. Wrapped in a scratchy clinic blanket, his little face was red and bruised. He was impossibly small.

But his tiny chest was rising and falling.

The door to my room suddenly flung open.

I looked up, my throat raw. It was Kaelen. He walked in, fully dressed in his pristine Alpha leathers.

"Kaelen," I breathed, a desperate smile trembling on my lips. "Look. Our baby. Your heir, Kaelen."

But Kaelen didn't smile. He didn't even look at the surgical monitors charting my erratic heart rate. He walked straight to the edge of the bed, leaned over, and took a deep, sharp sniff of the baby in my arms.

His nose wrinkled. His lip curled into a sneer.

"He smells human," Kaelen spat, stepping back in disgust as if my child carried a plague. "Not a single drop of Alpha blood. Just a weak, premature mistake. Like its mother!"

I pulled the baby tighter against my chest, my fresh stitches burning as I curled around him. "B-but he's your son," I whispered fiercely.

"He is a burden. And so are you," Kaelen said, his voice echoing off the sterile tiles. "I need a Luna who can lead, Liora. Not a defective incubator who ruins my bed and produces useless offspring."

"What the fuck... what are you saying?" I managed to retaliate, tears finally spilling hot over my cheeks. “How dare you say such horrible words to my pup?”

He wiped his hands on his thighs, his icy eyes locking onto mine.

"Get up. They're wheeling you to the pack square," he ordered coldly. "It's Slave Trade Day. And I’ve found a buyer for my trash."