He Traded His Pregnant Luna to the Enemy Alpha

Chapter 1

Thirty seconds. That was how long my mate had to choose which woman his enemy would take. His first love. Or his Luna. He didn't need ten. And he never knew I was carrying his heir. The neutral clearing at the edge of Silver Creek smelled like wet pine and gun oil. My knees were bleeding through my silk dress where the Nightfang warriors had forced me down into the mud beside Selene Crane. Twenty feet away stood Damon Ashford in his long black coat. Alpha of Silver Creek. My mate for three years. He looked at Selene first. He always looked at Selene first. "Your wolves burned my supply house and killed two of my men," said the Alpha of Nightfang. Kael Draven. The Blood Alpha. His voice was low and almost bored. "Moon Law, Ashford. A she-wolf of your house stays under my roof until your debt is paid. Thirty days. Untouched. You have my word." He tilted his head toward us. "Choose which one goes home." Selene was sobbing. Mascara everywhere. Shaking so hard her diamond earrings clicked. I wasn't crying. I was thinking about the test in my clutch. Two pink lines. I'd taken it that morning. I'd planned to tell Damon tonight, after the Moon Ball, in the car, with my hand in his. Damon crossed the clearing. For one stupid, beautiful second, I thought he was coming to me. He walked past me. He knelt in front of Selene, wrapped his coat around her shoulders, and lifted her into his arms. "I've got you," he murmured into her hair. "I've got you, Sel." Something inside my chest went very, very quiet. Then, finally, he turned to me. "Ivy." He said my name like an apology he'd already decided not to mean. "She panics. She'll break in there. You're strong. You'll be fine. Thirty days, and I'll bring you home." You're strong. Three years as his Luna, and that was his reason. Not because he loved me less. Because I had never made it hard enough for him to leave me behind. "Damon," I whispered. "Please. I have to tell you something—" "Not now." He was already carrying her toward the cars. "Draven, if one hair on her head is hurt, I'll burn your pack to the ground." Kael's gray eyes moved slowly from Damon to me. "Which her?" he asked. Damon didn't answer. Car doors slammed. Engines roared. Tires tore through wet gravel. And then it was just me. On my knees. In enemy hands. In a silver dress I'd bought because Damon once said silver was his favorite color. He'd been talking about Selene's car. I realized that now. Polished boots stopped in front of me. Kael Draven crouched until we were eye to eye. Up close, he was younger than the stories. Thirty-four, maybe. A scar cut through one eyebrow. His eyes were the color of a frozen lake. "You're shaking, Luna," he said. "Are you afraid of me?" "No." "Then what?" I looked at the road my mate had just disappeared down. "I'm afraid of how little I feel." Something flickered across his face. Then he stood and held out his hand. Not a grab. Not a grip. An offer. I didn't take it. I stood up on my own, bleeding knees and all. The corner of his mouth moved. "Good." At the Nightfang estate, a silver-haired pack healer was waiting to check me for injuries. Kael's rule, apparently. He did not return damaged tribute. The healer cleaned my knees. Pressed two fingers to my wrist. Then he leaned close and breathed in, slow, the way wolves do. He went pale. He stepped into the hall and spoke to Kael in the old tongue. I didn't understand the words. But I understood the silence that followed. Kael walked back in slowly. He looked at my face. Then at my hand—still pressed flat over my stomach. "Does Ashford know?" My throat closed. "No." He was quiet for a long moment. "Then tonight," Kael Draven said softly, "your mate didn't just hand his enemy his Luna." His eyes flashed gold. "He handed me his firstborn."

Chapter 2

I became Luna of Silver Creek because Damon Ashford nearly died in my arms. I was the pack's lowest healer. Twenty-two. An orphan nobody bothered to notice. He staggered into my clinic at three a.m. with silver poisoning burning black up his ribs and two warriors shouting at me to hurry. I told them to get out of my room. Damon laughed through the pain. "Do what she says." I drew the silver out with my own hands. He sent wildflowers every day for a month. Then he held my hand at my mother's grave and stood between me and the world like a wall. "You'll never be alone again, Ivy," he said the night he marked me. He meant it. Right up until Selene Crane came home. His first love. The girl he'd been promised to at nineteen, before her family took her north. She came back beautiful and fragile and grieving her father, and Damon decided she was his responsibility. "She's family, Ivy. She has no one." I had no one either. He just never noticed. Late nights. Phone calls in the hallway. Dinners I cooked and ate alone at a table set for two. His warriors stopped meeting my eyes. The pack stopped calling me Luna when he wasn't in the room. And tonight—at the Moon Ball I'd planned for six weeks—he'd danced with her twice. He hadn't danced with me once. Now I sat in a guest room at the top of the Nightfang house, in a borrowed cashmere sweater, holding the phone the enemy had let me keep. Kael said I could call anyone. The only person I wanted to call hadn't called me. At two a.m., it finally buzzed. Damon. My heart leapt like a fool. "Behave. Don't provoke him. Selene's in shock, I'm staying with her tonight. We'll talk in a few days." A few days. I read it four times. Then I pressed both hands over my mouth so no one would hear what came out. A knock. "Luna Hale." Kael's voice. "May I come in?" I wiped my face. "It's your house." "It's your room." He opened the door but didn't step inside. Shirtsleeves rolled. A steaming mug in his hand. "Ginger tea," he said. "The healer says it helps with the sickness." "I'm not sick." "You've been in the bathroom three times in an hour. I'm a wolf, Ivy. I can hear your heartbeat from the stairs." Heat climbed my neck. He set the mug on the dresser closest to the door, then stepped back. As if he knew exactly how much space a frightened woman needed. "Why are you being kind?" I asked. "I'm tribute." "You are a guest under Moon Law. No one will touch you. No one will raise their voice to you. If any wolf in my pack so much as looks at you wrong, you tell me." "And after thirty days?" "That depends on your mate." We both knew what that meant. Damon had money. Damon had land. He could pay the debt tomorrow. He hadn't even asked the price. Kael watched me understand that. He didn't say anything cruel. Somehow that was worse. "In the clearing," I said. "You asked, 'Which her?' Why?" He leaned against the doorframe. "I've watched Alphas trade land. Silver. Their own brothers." His jaw tightened. "I've never watched one walk past his pregnant Luna like she was furniture." My breath caught. "Drink the tea," he said quietly. "And lock your door if it helps you sleep." "Would it matter? You have the key." "I don't. There's only one." He nodded at the lock. "It's on your side." He closed the door. I looked. The key was already there. On my side. For three years, I'd lived in an Alpha's house where I couldn't lock a single door. My enemy had handed me the only key in the first hour. I lay awake until dawn, one hand on my stomach. At six a.m., my phone lit up. Not Damon. A photo from an unknown number. Damon, in the kitchen I had designed, pouring coffee into the mug I'd bought him. And Selene. Barefoot. Wearing his shirt. Underneath, one line: "He never needed you. Now he knows it too."

Chapter 3

I didn't cry over the photo. I threw up instead. It felt more honest. By the fifth day, the Nightfang house had a rhythm. The pack's old housekeeper, Greta—sixty, forearms like a baker, eyes like a hawk—decided on the second morning that I belonged to her. "Too thin," she announced, slamming a bowl of porridge in front of me. "Eat. The pup needs." I froze. "Who told you?" "Nobody tells Greta. Greta smells." She patted my cheek. "Also you see toast and run. Very obvious." She fed me every three hours. She left crackers on my nightstand. When I cried in the laundry room on day four, she didn't ask why. She just folded towels beside me and hummed an old pack lullaby. It was the first time in three years anyone had stayed in the room while I fell apart. Kael, I barely saw. He left before sunrise and came home long after dark. But things kept appearing. Pregnancy tonics on my breakfast tray. The right blend—the one I'd have mixed myself. A stack of old healer texts in the library. My specialty. Warm slippers outside my door, the morning after I'd walked barefoot across the cold stone floors. On day six, I finally caught him in the kitchen at midnight, drinking black coffee over a stack of border reports. "Thank you," I said. "For the slippers." He didn't look up. "Greta's idea." "Greta says they were yours." A pause. "Greta talks too much." "Greta," called a voice from the hall, "hears everything." Kael closed his eyes. For one second, the most feared Alpha in the North looked like a very tired son. I laughed. Actually laughed. It startled both of us. He looked up then. Really looked. Something warm moved behind the gray. I went back to bed and told myself my heart was racing because of the pregnancy. On day seven, the photos went public. Damon and Selene at the Alpha Council banquet. His hand on her lower back. Her head on his shoulder. Every pack channel called her "Silver Creek's true Luna, finally home." Nobody asked where I was. On day ten, Damon finally called. My whole body betrayed me. My pulse jumped. My hand flew to my stomach. This is it. He's sorry. I'll tell him about the baby and he'll— "Ivy." His voice was clipped. "I need you to do something." "Damon, I need to tell you—" "As my Luna, you're leverage. Draven can keep raising the price. If the bond is broken, you're worthless to him. He'll let you go faster." A breath. "I'm going to reject you. Formally. You need to accept it." The floor tilted. Every wolf knows what rejection does. It doesn't just end a marriage. It rips the bond out by the root. "And after?" I whispered. "When I'm free? Will you mark me again?" Silence. Then, in the background, soft and sleepy: "Damon? Come back to bed. It's cold." He covered the phone. Too late. "Just accept it, Ivy. Trust me." Then he said the words. Calm. Like reading a contract. "I, Damon Ashford, Alpha of Silver Creek, reject you, Ivy Hale, as my mate and my Luna." Trust me. Down the hall, I heard a door open. Kael was standing in it. He'd heard every word. "Ivy," he said quietly. "You don't have to answer him tonight." "Yes," I said. "I do." I lifted the phone. "I, Ivy Hale," I said, and my voice didn't shake once, "accept your rejection." The line went dead. So did something inside me. It started as a pulling. Like a thread being yanked out of my chest. Then it became a tearing, a white-hot ripping from my heart down to my belly. I dropped to my knees. Something twisted low in my stomach. A sharp, deep cramp. Then another. I looked down. There was blood on the floor.