Chapter 1

Bella POV

I still remember the moment I found out I was pregnant, because everything around me suddenly felt strange.

The hospital room was quiet and cold, and I sat nervously on the small examination bed while the doctor looked over my test results.

After a short moment, he looked up and said simply, “Your results are back.”

My hands tightened together in my lap.

“Is something wrong?” I asked quietly.

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Nothing is wrong. But you should know something.”

I frowned slightly, confused, and before I could ask another question he added calmly, “You’re pregnant.”

For a second I just stared at him, completely frozen.

“Pregnant?” I repeated softly, like the word didn’t even belong to me.

He nodded once and handed me the paper with the results.

“You can take this,” he said.

But I barely heard the rest of what he said after that, because my attention was already locked on the single word written clearly on the page.

My mind felt blank for a moment because it didn’t make sense.

“That… that can’t be right,” I said quickly, shaking my head while confusion filled my voice. “I’ve been taking contraceptives every day.”

The doctor only shrugged lightly.

“They work most of the time,” he replied simply.

But I was no longer listening.

My eyes slowly dropped to my stomach.

It looked exactly the same as always, flat and normal, yet suddenly it felt different to me.

There was a baby inside me.

The thought made my chest tighten, and a thousand emotions rushed through my mind at the same time.

Shock came first, because I had never expected something like this to happen.

Then confusion followed, because I had been so careful that I truly believed pregnancy was impossible.

But slowly, another feeling started rising quietly inside my heart.

A small, fragile happiness.

Before I even realized it, my hand had moved to rest gently over my stomach, and my eyes began to sting with tears.

Because whether I had planned for it or not…

I was going to have a baby.

And not just any baby.

It was Ethan’s baby.

The thought of Ethan made my chest tighten in a complicated way, because while this baby should have been something that filled my heart with nothing but happiness, the reality of my marriage made everything far more complicated.

Ethan Wade was my husband.

He was also the Alpha of the Blackridge Wolf Clan, a man respected and feared by nearly everyone in the pack because of his strength, leadership, and powerful wolf blood.

I, on the other hand, was just Bella Hart.

A human girl who had grown up inside the wolf pack but never truly belonged to it.

My parents had been the clan’s herbal healers, and they had spent their entire lives studying plants, roots, and natural remedies that could help wolves recover from injuries after battles or transformations. They were known for creating powerful herbal tonics that strengthened wolf bodies, healed wounds faster, and soothed the pain that sometimes came after shifting.

I inherited that knowledge from them.

But when I was eight years old, everything changed.

There was an accident during a clan expedition in the mountains, and my parents never came back.

After that, I was taken in by a distant relative within the clan, and even though I continued learning herbal medicine and helping injured wolves, I always knew I was different from everyone else around me.

They had wolves inside them.

I didn’t.

And then there was Ethan.

The man who had never truly chosen me.

Our marriage had been arranged by the clan elders to protect the name of the alpha bloodline.

But everyone knew that Ethan’s heart had always belonged to someone else.

Clara was the woman after his heart.

Clara was everything I wasn’t.

She was a pure-blooded wolf, confident, beautiful, and powerful in a way that made it obvious she belonged beside someone like Ethan.

Before my marriage was arranged, the entire pack had expected Ethan and Clara to become mates someday.

Even now, people still whispered about it.

And I knew Ethan had never stopped caring about her.

That was the painful truth I lived with every day.

Still, there was something I remembered clearly from a conversation months ago.

Ethan had been speaking with the elders in the meeting hall, and I had been standing outside the door with a basket of healing herbs in my hands when I heard him say something that stuck in my mind.

“I want an heir,” he had said firmly.

The clan needed a future Alpha.

A child who would inherit the strength and leadership of the pack.

At the time, those words had made my chest ache because I knew he probably imagined that future child with someone like Clara.

Not me.

And yet somehow…

Here I was. Pregnant with his baby.

The doctor’s voice gently pulled me out of my thoughts.

“Are you alright, Miss Hart?”

I nodded slowly, even though my emotions were still spinning in circles inside my chest.

“Yes doctor,” I said quietly.

After finishing the rest of the checkup, I eventually left the hospital and stepped outside into the cool afternoon air, where gray clouds had begun gathering across the sky like a storm might start soon.

As I walked slowly down the path toward the pack grounds, my hand drifted to my stomach almost without thinking.

There was a baby inside me.

A tiny life that belonged to both Ethan and me.

Part of me felt incredibly happy about that fact, because I knew how much Ethan had always wanted a child, even if he had never said those words directly to me.

But another part of me felt nervous and uncertain, because I had no idea how he would react when he found out.

Would he be happy?

Or would he only see this as another responsibility tied to a marriage he never wanted in the first place?

The large pack house slowly came into view in the distance, standing tall against the darkening sky.

Ethan was probably inside right now, dealing with clan matters or training younger wolves in the courtyard like he often did.

My heart started beating faster with every step I took.

I stopped walking for a moment and took a deep breath, trying to calm the storm of thoughts inside my head.

It still looked completely normal, flat like it had always been, but somehow it didn’t feel the same anymore. The doctor’s words kept repeating in my head.

You’re pregnant.

The thought made my heart start beating faster, but underneath all of that, there was also a small feeling of happiness that I couldn’t ignore.

There was a baby inside me and it’s Ethan’s baby.

That thought alone made me nervous again, because I had no idea how he was going to react when he heard the news.

Still, he had the right to know.

Later that evening, when I stepped into the pack house, I saw Ethan standing near the long table looking at something on his phone like he always did whenever he was busy with pack business.

“Ethan,” I called.

He looked up at me with a slight frown.

“What is it?” he asked.

My heart started pounding again, but I forced myself to walk closer.

“I need to tell you something,” I said.

He sighed a little like he was already impatient.

“Then say it.”

I took a small breath before finally speaking.

“I went to the hospital today.”

Ethan looked at me for a second.

“And?”

My fingers slowly curled together as I forced the words out.

“I’m pregnant.”

The moment the words left my mouth, the room suddenly felt very quiet.

I looked at him and repeated softly,

“I’m pregnant, Ethan.”