Alpha Abandons Dying Mate

The cabin's wooden walls pressed in around me like a coffin, and maybe that's exactly what this place was—a tomb where I'd been left to die alone. Every breath felt like swallowing glass, the pain in my stomach twisting deeper with each shallow inhale. My fingers trembled as I reached for the medical documents scattered across the rough-hewn table, the papers that had arrived three days ago with a courier who'd looked at me with the kind of pity reserved for the already dead.

*Terminal gastric adenocarcinoma. Stage IV. Estimated survival: 3-4 weeks.*

The words blurred together through my tears, but their meaning had already carved itself into my bones. Less than a month. I had less than a month to live, and I'd been rotting away in this godforsaken cabin for two weeks already, waiting for a rescue that would never come.

The rogue attack replayed in my mind like a broken record. The snarling faces, the claws that had torn through my flesh, the way my blood had painted the forest floor crimson. I'd called out for him through our mate bond, screaming Nathaniel's name until my throat was raw. But he never came. He never even looked for me.

"Lyra," I whispered to my wolf, but she remained silent in the depths of my mind, as quiet as she'd been for months. The grief had stolen her voice just as surely as it had stolen mine.

I pressed my palm against my abdomen, feeling the hard mass that had been growing there like a malignant secret. How long had it been eating me alive while I'd been focused on trying to carry Nathaniel's children? How many nights had I attributed the pain to heartbreak when my body had been staging its own rebellion?

The irony wasn't lost on me. I'd spent seven years failing to create life, and now death was growing inside me instead.

A sharp knock on the cabin door made me flinch. The elderly woman who'd been caring for me—a rogue's widow who'd found me bleeding out in the woods—shuffled inside with a bowl of thin soup that I wouldn't be able to keep down anyway.

"There's news from the pack," she said quietly, her weathered hands setting the bowl down with careful precision. "A celebration."

My heart stopped. "What kind of celebration?"

She pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her apron pocket, smoothing it out on the table beside my medical files. The Silvermoon Pack's official seal gleamed at the top of what was clearly an invitation.

*Alpha Nathaniel Hughes and the Silvermoon Pack cordially invite you to celebrate the birth of our future heir, Finn Stewart Hughes. Join us in honoring this blessed addition to our pack family.*

The date on the invitation hit me like a physical blow. Three weeks ago. The exact night I'd been fighting for my life against the rogues, Nathaniel had been celebrating the birth of his son. His son with another woman.

My hands shook as I stared at the elegant script, at Margot Stewart's name printed right there beside his like she belonged there. Like she was his true mate instead of the woman slowly dying alone in a cabin miles from home.

"He has an heir," I whispered, the words tasting like poison on my tongue.

The old woman's face creased with sympathy. "I'm sorry, child. I thought you should know."

Know. Yes, I needed to know. I needed to understand that while I'd been screaming his name, begging the Moon Goddess to let me live long enough to see him again, he'd been cradling another woman's baby. His baby.

Something cold and sharp unfurled in my chest, crystallizing around my heart like ice. The grief that had been drowning me for weeks suddenly transformed into something else entirely—something harder, more focused.

Deep in my mind, Lyra stirred for the first time in months.

*He abandoned us,* her voice was barely a whisper, but it carried the weight of seven years of love turned to ash.

"He did," I agreed, my voice steadying for the first time since I'd woken up in this cabin. "But we're not dead yet."

Lyra's presence grew stronger, and with it came a rage so pure it burned away the weakness in my limbs. *What do we do?*

I looked at the invitation again, at the celebration that had already passed, at the life Nathaniel was building with his chosen mate while his true mate wasted away. Then I looked at my medical files, at the death sentence that gave me nothing left to lose.

"We go home," I said, feeling Lyra's approval ripple through our bond like wildfire. "We go home, and we make sure they remember exactly who the real Luna of the Silvermoon Pack is."

For the first time in weeks, my wolf's voice rang clear and strong in my mind: *Let's show them what happens when they abandon their Luna to die.*