CHAPTER ONE

AVA’S POV

“Congratulations, you’re three weeks pregnant.” The doctor’s words rang in my ears as I stared at her.

“Pardon?”

“You heard me right, Luna Ava. You are three weeks along.”

I blinked rapidly as I could not believe this. Five years of trying and now finally…

I didn’t wait for anything else. My hand shot out, grabbed the result from her desk, and I was out of her office before she could say another word.

Outside, I pulled up my phone and made a voice message, “Hi mirabelle, this is Ava. I just want to tell you that I’m flying back home right now. Something urgent has come up. Please let Alpha Jason know I’m deeply sorry for the change of plans. I’ll send a formal apology message shortly, and I hope we can arrange another date for the alliance talks.”

I hit the send button and then walked toward my waiting car. Immediately Jane spotted me coming, she had the door open, dipping her head respectfully.

“Thank you,” I said as I slid in.

“Where to, Luna?” she asked once she was behind the wheel.

“Home.” The single word sent a rush of warmth through my chest.

To home.

To him.

I could barely contain myself.

Jane didn’t ask any questions. She simply kicked the engine to life and drove straight to the airport.

I watched the city blur past the window, the warm breeze kissing my face, and I had to press my lips together to stop myself from screaming into the open air.

The joy was almost too big to hold inside my body but I had to. I kept imagining the moment I would tell him, the way Cayden’s expression would shift, and the slow smile that would spread across his face when he finally realized what I was saying.

Cayden was the Alpha of the Dark Night Pack, one of the largest packs on the eastern side of America. With a vast territory, however, came dangerous borders that swarmed with rogues; wolves with nothing to lose and everything to take. That was why he had sent me on this trip to meet with Alpha Jason’s pack as he had been too consumed with other pack duties to leave himself.

I had never resented the responsibility. Being his Luna meant carrying his burdens alongside him, and I had always done so willingly.

Werewolves spend their entire lives searching for their destined mate. But for me, it was different. My love for Cayden had started as a quiet, stubborn crush from the moment I first saw him at my parents’ wedding anniversary. I was twelve that time and he was seventeen. And at the moment our eyes met across the room, I just had this feeling that he was the one.

I had tried for years to convince myself it was foolish of me to be dreaming of a future with him when I was just twelve, that I should wait for my fated mate and nothing else, but the feeling had never gone away.

And when I finally clocked eighteen, when he turned out to be exactly that, my fated mate, it felt like the universe was finally breathing.

We had married, and I had given him every part of myself—my loyalty, my patience, and my unwavering love. But for that same five years of our marriage, I had waited for the one thing that seemed to elude us.

A child.

An heir.

A sign that our family was growing into what I had always believed it could be.

And now, finally, we were going to have our pup.

The flight home took three long hours. I arrived at the airport alone, having already instructed Jane to remain there until she received further orders. As I stepped out of the terminal, instead of calling my driver, I hailed a cab and headed straight home.

Normally protocol dictated I announce my return, but I wanted every moment to be a surprise. I wanted to walk through the front door and see his face and before he had a moment to compose himself, I would break this amazing news to him.

The cab dropped me at the iron gates of our estate. I paid the driver, stepped into our home. But surprisingly, the house was empty. As if everyone went on a vacation.

Was something happening today?

I pulled out my phone and messaged Liam, Cayden’s beta.

“I dropped him home a couple hours ago,” came the reply.

So he’s in here?

I slipped my phone back into my bag and looked toward the staircase; the wide, modern floating steps that swept up to the upper floor. Our bedroom was up there.

I started climbing but just as I was nearly at the top, I heard it. A sound. Which a normal human ear would never have caught because of the soundproofed walls.

I thought I had heard wrong at first, but then the sound came again, more distinct and louder this time.

As I approached the door, the sound became clearer. It was that of a woman’s voice, breathless and urgent;

“Oh yeah, oh yeah, right there.”

I stood completely still as that voice felt familiar.

Natalie?

I blinked hard with confusion, and then I looked around the landing, as if I might have somehow walked into the wrong house. But this was my house. My bedroom. My bed.

So what the hell was happening? Why would she bring a man into my home?

Rage filled me.

I was about to barge in when a man’s voice answered her, low and rough: “You like that, don’t you? Tell me how much you want it.”

The sound hit me like a fist to the sternum as I heard Cayden’s voice, loud and clear. And the mate bond that had always hummed quietly between us suddenly twisted like barbed wire around my heart.

I shook my head, staggering back.

No.

No, this can’t be happening.

It can’t be what I am thinking.

I should have turned around, gone back down those stairs, and gotten as far from that door as my legs could carry me. Instead, with a trembling hand, I pushed the door open and the scene burned through my eyes like a brand pressed to the skin.

There, in the middle of our bed, was Cayden, flat on his back, his muscular body glistening with sweat. Natalie straddled him completely naked, her full breasts bouncing heavily with every shameless rise and fall of her hips. One hand braced on his heaving chest, nails digging into his skin as she threw her head back, lips parted in a throaty moan that echoed through the room.

She rode my husband with raw, hungry rhythm, her slick pussy sliding up and down his thick, veined cock, swallowing every inch of him deep inside her.

The world did not spin. It simply stopped.

My wolf howled—a sound of pure anguishedness that echoed through every corner of my soul. She wanted blood. She wanted to rip Natalie apart. And it took everything I had to keep my claws from bursting through my fingertips.

“Oh, yes, fuck me harder,” Natalie moaned.

A sob tried to claw its way up my throat but I

pressed it down, my hand covering my mouth, trying to muffle the sound.

How could they both do this to me? My husband… and the woman he had introduced as his sister.

I still remembered the day he introduced Natalie to me. The day he walked right into the house, with a smile on his face as he told me she was his sister, explaining how they had grown up together and asking me to treat her like family, as my sister-in-law.

And since that day, I had always shown her respect despite her constant rudeness and the way she loved to boast about how much Cayden adored her. I kept enduring it. Never letting it bother me. After all, there was nothing strange about a brother being kind to his sister.

But this…

Was this what they called sibling love?

A single drop of tear finally slipped down my face, my heart shattering with every passing second.

How long has this been going on? I couldn’t really tell. But I could guess one thing…this didn’t start recently.

“Oh fuck, you are so damn tight,” Cayden groaned, arching back, and slapping her ass.

My hand shot out, gripping the doorframe for balance and just then my gaze landed on the heavy flower vase on the side table and for one fleeting, furious second, I imagined grabbing it and smashing it over both of them.

But I wasn’t that person.

From the moment I was born, I had been groomed to lead my father’s pack. When I married Cayden, I had felt complete, like I needed nothing more than this man who had become my whole world. So I had turned down my inheritance, stepped back from everything I was raised for. Even now, even here, I was still that woman.

So instead of violence, I raised my phone. The camera flash lit the room like a struck match.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

The shutter sound cut through the moaning, through the creak of the bed, and the wet slap of flesh and the room went instantly, completely still.

Cayden’s head snapped up from the pillow.

For a single suspended second, his eyes met mine.

“Fuck! What the hell are you doing?” He quickly shoved Natalie off his body, his wet cock slipping off her filthy cunt as he grabbed the sheet to cover his naked form.

But still I didn't stop taking the pictures.

As Natalie scrambled across the bed, pulling a blanket over her naked body, my camera followed her. Her face was filled with shock, as if she had just seen someone returning from the dead.

Of course they would be surprised, after all I came home to give my husband a surprise but instead I was welcomed with a grand one. A live scene from a B-graded movie.

From the pack alpha and his sister.

What an honor.

“Taking evidence.” I said.

I surprised myself with how calm I sounded. Inside, I was shaking apart. Inside, I wanted to pull the sheets from them, throw the vase, drag Natalie by the hair. But what would any of that accomplish? What would any of it give back to me?

“What?! Are you crazy?”

“Tell me, which wife wouldn’t, at this moment?

I came home only to find my husband's claimed sister riding on his cock! Which woman will still be in her right state of mind after such scene?!”

Something flickered across his face, I can’t name it but then quickly replaced by anger.

“What are you even doing at home today? You are supposed to be back in two days” His voice carries the unconscious edge of an Alpha command. Any ordinary wolf would have instinctively answered compelled by generations of submission.

But I didn’t.

We are both Alphas!

My wolf bared her teeth inside me, and I met his gaze without flinching.

“Is that really the question you want to lead with?”

“The question I want answered is why you’re here at this time of day!” he demanded. As if catching him in bed with another woman wasn’t humiliating enough. As if I was the one who had done something wrong by walking in on them.

I lowered my phone and stopped taking pictures, staring directly into his blue eyes, searching for even the slightest trace of guilt.

“Do you even feel an ounce of guilt?” My voice trembled as I looked at the man I loved from the bottom of my heart. “You cheated on me, and the only…”

“Leave.” He looked away as he climbed out of bed and reached for his trouser.

“Telling her to leave now isn’t going to change anyth…”

“I’m talking to you, not her.”