Chapter 1
I curled into the passenger seat, waves of cramping ripping through my abdomen; I knew in my bones the baby couldn’t be saved.
Warm blood soaked the leather of my Alpha’s luxury sports car. Pheromones and the metallic tang of blood tangled in the air, thick enough to choke.
I’d seen Alpha Jeff’s obsession with cleanliness too many times to count — I knew he would be furious.
Sure enough, the brakes screeched. His golden pupils narrowed to slits in the dark. His gaze landed on the stained seat, disgust furrowing his brow.
“Tess, can’t you control yourself? You’re always so disgusting when you’re on your period.”
This time what chilled me wasn’t that he wouldn’t bend his standards for me — it was that he’d misremembered my cycle...
I bit my lip. My werewolf body’s healing slowed the bleeding enough to stop it, but not enough to keep the foetus.
He threw the car door open and hauled me out with a single, efficient motion, like discarding a soiled coat.
A downpour was swallowing the Eastern Pack. Streetlights flickered through the rain; the world felt torn to pieces.
The disgust in the way he tossed me away was colder than the raindrops.
Water pummeled my chilled skin; the sound I squeezed from my throat was lost beneath the rain.
My Omega body trembled in the night; the wolf within was trapped in fragile flesh. Jeff slid back into the car and, the moment the door shut, was as indifferent as if he’d never known me.
At three in the morning, the heavy night wrapped me in cold as I dragged my limp body through the villa door. The motion sensor in the entryway clicked on, cold light cutting through the silence.
Jeff didn’t even look up. A thin black lace panty sailed across the room and landed on my trembling fingers. “Go wash up,” he said in that low voice Alphas used for commands — no room for argument.
My body reacted before my will; my fingers instinctively closed around the fabric.
Just then a cloying scent of jasmine invaded my nostrils — Emily’s pheromones, clinging thickly to the delicate cloth.
She was a Beta, but at certain times she had this way of naturally monopolizing my Alpha husband’s attention.
My phone screen flared in my palm, the cold light stinging. Emily had posted again: “My silly Alpha gets more nervous than I do every time I’m on my period~”
The attached photo showed Jeff in profile under the warm kitchen light, focused on a simmering clay pot.
Moonsilver herb broth — a restorative tonic the werewolf families prepared only for the most important people — and he was making it for his childhood friend.
A sudden, icy resolution surged through me. Without hesitation I dialed the encrypted line to the senior elder of the Western Pack. My voice steadied in a way that felt foreign even to me: “I’ll take the position of Liaison to the Western Pack.”
“Three years stationed there? But you just got engaged to the Eastern Pack’s Alpha—” the elder began.
“Precisely because of that,” I said. The call ended. At that moment Jeff carried the bowl of broth out from the kitchen.
The pressure of a top-tier Alpha made the air go still. His sharp gaze cut toward me. “Who were you just speaking with?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I turned to walk toward the master bedroom, seeking a temporary refuge.
The master bedroom door was ajar. When I pushed it open my blood froze — Emily was curled on our marriage bed, cheeks flushed, jasmine pheromones so thick they seemed tangible and sickening.
“Tess, your bed is so comfy~” she purred, eyes open, smug and unhidden, deliberately using our most intimate terms to provoke. “It really helps with my cramps.”
Jeff didn’t spare me a glance. His focus was entirely on the woman in our bed. The Alpha glands at the nape of his neck shone faintly — a signal of absolute command. “You’ll sleep in the guest room tonight.”
I slipped out quietly, like an extra shadow. Before the door closed, her saccharine coo slipped through the gap: “Jeff’s moonsilver broth works better than a suppressant~”
His reply was a tenderness I had never heard directed at me. “Next time I’ll stay with you.”
They had no idea what I’d been through at the hospital that morning.
The sting of antiseptic hung in my nose. When the pack doctor looked at the test results and shook his head, I caught the hushed regret: “If you’d come thirty minutes earlier, the pup might have been saved… Pure-blood Alpha offspring are so precious.”
Papers for project approvals smelled of fresh ink on the desk. When I signed my name, my claws betrayed me — they shot out and ripped the paper.
At 6:55 p.m., Jeff at last noticed the bathroom hadn’t been prepared to his preferred temperature — a duty an Omega wife was expected to perform for her Alpha husband every day.
He pushed open the study door while I was still finishing the last files on my computer.
“Tess...” he started, but Emily’s plaintive voice floated from the bedroom: “Jeff! My stomach hurts again!”
He turned and left. I saw the glands at the back of his neck glow again — this time a primal response to another woman’s need.
The next morning when I saw him come out of Emily’s room, the two of us froze in the hallway.
His neck was flecked with an unfamiliar jasmine scent — that cloying sweetness announcing something intimate enough to leave a mark.
“She had a sudden pheromone imbalance last night...” he tried to explain, his voice dry.
I cut him off gently. “I understand.” My Omega compliance hid the tearing pain underneath.
He followed me into the kitchen; his Alpha tone slipped into its habitual command: “Don’t make a scene with Emily later. She’s a Beta, but her pheromones are more sensitive than an Omega’s...”
I silently brought up my phone screen. Emily’s late-night post glared back: “My Alpha massaged me all night, he’s so tired now~”
In the photo Jeff’s hand rested on her lower belly; his wedding band flashed coldly in the moonlight.
Any explanation was already too late — I heard the boiling in my blood: the sign that, when a werewolf embryo is lost, an Omega mother finally wakes.
