CHAPTER 1 – The Wrong Mate

I told myself it was nothing. Just Braxton Hicks. Just stress from the pack integration.

I'd been telling myself that for weeks now. Ignoring the way my wolf had gone silent, retreating so deep I could barely feel her. Ignoring the way Asher's touch had turned cold. Ignoring the way the mark on my neck – the crescent moon that should have pulsed with our bond – had begun to burn like a brand.

The blood came – wrong and hot, pouring down my thighs in a rush that could only mean one thing: I was losing my baby.

That's when I screamed.

"Asher!" His name tore from my throat as my knees buckled. I caught the edge of our bed, white-knuckling the sheets as pain rolled through me. The bedroom swam – soft grays and whites, his pack's colors. Eighteen months of living here. Five months of carrying his child.

The door crashed open. Asher was across the room in three strides, catching me as I fell.

"I've got you," he said, voice rough with fear. "The bond will – "

He pressed his hand over the mark on my neck. His Alpha power surged – a wave of heat that should have stitched me back together. Instead, it crashed against me and broke apart, useless as water on stone.

Nothing happened.

His hand trembled against my throat. I watched his face shift from determination to horror.

"Why isn't it working?" I gasped. The pain was getting worse, not better. I could feel the baby slipping away like water through cupped hands.

I'd felt her kick this morning. Just once. A flutter against my ribs like a question I'd never get to answer.

"I don't – it should be – " He pressed harder, the mark on his wrist beginning to smoke as he channeled more power. His eyes should have flashed gold with his Alpha dominance. They stayed brown. Powerless.

"Kira, stay with me!" His voice cracked. "Someone get the healer!"

Footsteps thundered in the hallway. I caught the scent of lavender and crushed sage before I saw her – the pack healer rushing in. But underneath the herbs, I smelled something else. Something that made my dying wolf stir.

Grave dirt. Copper. Rot.

"Too much blood loss," the healer said, her hands already moving over my body. Silver hair pulled back in a severe bun. "The baby's already gone. We need to stop the hemorrhaging, or we'll lose her too."

Already gone. The words settled into my chest like stones.

"Save her," Asher demanded. "Use the bond. Force it if you have to."

"I can't force a bond to work, Alpha." The healer's voice was clinical, detached. "If it's not responding, there's nothing – "

"Then FIX IT!" He was shouting now. My mate – my supposed mate – falling apart above me while I bled out on our bedroom floor.

Our bedroom. I'd moved into his pack house the day after our mating ceremony, leaving my father's territory behind. Leaving Lena behind. Leaving everything I'd known for this place that had never quite felt like home.

The room tilted. Sounds started to muffle, like I was sinking underwater. The healer's hands on me felt distant. Asher's grip was loosening as my body went slack.

This was it. I was dying.

And I'd never even held my baby.

"Kira, please." Asher's voice broke. I felt wetness on my face – his tears, not mine. I didn't have enough blood left for tears. "Why can't I save you?"

You were never supposed to save me.

The thought crystallized in my fading consciousness with the sharp clarity that comes right before death. My senses were heightening the way they did in a wolf's final moments, every detail becoming knife-edged and brutally clear.

I could smell the magic now. Not just on the healer, but on Asher too. Faint, woven carefully into his scent. The same magic. The same witch.

She'd touched us both.

My wolf whispered in my mind for the first time in months, her voice weak but certain: Wrong. Always wrong.

And somewhere, impossibly, I felt it – a pull I'd never felt with Asher. A bond calling to me from across the territory, too late to save me.

The real one.

Images flashed behind my eyes – rapid-fire moments I'd ignored, reframed by dying clarity:

The mating ceremony. His mark searing into my skin. I'd smiled through the pain, told myself all bonds felt like this.

My father, trying to tell me something important. Every time he tried, something stopped him.

The mark on my neck burned hotter. I understood with sudden, terrible clarity. It had always burned. I'd just thought that was what mate bonds felt like. I'd had nothing to compare it to.

"Let her go." The healer's voice seemed to come from very far away. "She's gone, Alpha. I'm sorry."

"No." Asher was cradling me now, rocking slightly. "No, she can't be – we're mates. The Moon Goddess chose us. She can't – "

The Moon Goddess doesn't make mistakes.

That's what everyone had told me. What I'd told myself, every time something felt off. Every time my wolf went quiet. Every time the bond felt more like an obligation than a blessing.

The Moon Goddess doesn't make mistakes.

But witches do.

My vision was tunneling, darkness creeping in from the edges. I could see Asher above me, his face twisted in genuine grief. He believed the bond was real. Whatever had been done to us, he believed it.

That made it worse, somehow.

The last thing I saw was his mark on my neck in the mirror across the room. The crescent moon that should have been silver, glowing with our bond. Instead it looked black. Dead. Like it had burned me from the inside out.

The last thing I smelled was grave dirt. The last thing I felt was my baby's absence, a hollow space where life should have been. The last thing I thought was: I loved the wrong man. Trusted the wrong bond. The witch won.

And my baby paid the price.

The pain stopped.

The world went dark.

And I died knowing the truth I'd learned too late.

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Then I woke up.