I Died Waiting for My Alpha, Why Is He Begging Me to Stay Now?

I spent seventeen hours in labor waiting for my husband.

Cassian never came.

Our newborn daughter was born with Wolf-Fade. The healers said one dose of her Alpha father’s blood could stabilize her.

I called him myself.

“Please. Not for me. For her.”

He promised he would come as soon as Talia was stable.

My daughter lived eleven minutes.

I kept whispering that Daddy was coming until her tiny fingers slipped from mine.

Then I bled to death beside her.

When I opened my eyes again, I was six weeks away from marrying Cassian.

On my desk sat the Frostmoor acceptance letter I had once thrown away for him.

This time, I signed it.

Cassian thought I was angry.

He told me if I walked away, he wouldn’t chase me.

I smiled.

Because in my last life, even our dying daughter waited for him.

This time, neither of us would.

***

POV: Elara

**POV: Elara Quinn**

As the legally wedded mate of Northern Territory Alpha Cassian, I was enduring a fatal, solitary labor in a cold clinic while my husband abandoned me to care for another woman, leaving my daughter and me to die in silence.

The labor monitor screamed with a sharp, erratic tempo that had not stopped for three hours. Seventeen hours in total. My body felt ripped down the center, soaked in cold sweat and trembling so hard the steel rails of the delivery bed rattled against the floor.

"Her heart rate is dipping below eighty," the midwife, Maya, said, her voice tight with strain as she adjusted the band around my swollen belly. "Elara, you need to push now. We can't wait any longer."

For three years, I had believed that silent endurance was the ultimate proof of devotion—that if I swallowed my pain, excused his absences, and made myself small enough, loyalty would eventually be rewarded. But agony strips away all illusions; the bitterest truth of my life was discovering that unconditional sacrifice for a man who views you as optional is nothing more than a slow, self-inflicted execution.

I was not a weak omega prone to hysterics; I was a trained healer who had spent years mastering composure, swallowing every insult from his aristocratic mother, and stepping aside whenever Talia’s shadow entered our home. I was a woman defined by her infinite patience, guarding my dignity like armor—until that armor shattered against twenty-six unanswered calls, reducing all my restraint to blood-soaked dust.

I didn't push. I couldn't. I kept my fingers locked around the glass screen of my phone, the screen smudged with dried sweat and blood.

There were twenty-six missed calls. Not a single reply.

"Try him again," I whispered, my throat raw from hours of silent screaming. "Please, Maya. Just dial the direct line."

"He's the Alpha of the northern territory, Elara. If he isn't picking up—"

"I don't need him to fix anything," I interrupted, a fresh contraction tearing through my lower back like jagged glass. "I don't need him to save me. I just want him here when she's born. Please."

Maya looked at me, pity softening the harsh lines of her face, before she picked up the clinic phone and punched in the private bypass code reserved for the Alpha's inner circle.

It rang once. Twice.

On the fourth ring, the line clicked open.

"I told the command center not to patch through non-emergency alerts," Cassian's voice came through the speaker, deep, clipped, and heavy with exhaustion. The background behind him was loud with hospital intercoms and the frantic shouting of medical staff.

"Cassian," I choked out, forcing air into my crushed lungs. "It's me."

The line went completely silent for a second. "Elara? Why are you calling from the clinic line?"

"The baby," I said, tears finally spilling over my burning cheeks. "She's coming right now. Her heart rate is failing. The doctors say she's in distress."

I heard him shift, his breathing changing instantly. "Now? The due date was next week."

"She's coming today. Please, Cassian. You're only twenty minutes away at the central district. I need you here."

For a fraction of a second, I heard the hesitation in his chest, the faint hitch of conflict that made me foolishly believe he would drop everything.

Then, a weak, trembling cry echoed from his side of the line.

"Cassian..." a woman's voice whimpered, frail and breathy. "It burns. Don't leave."

Talia.

"She took a direct hit from rogue wolf-venom during the perimeter ambush," Cassian said, his voice dropping into that familiar, guarded tone he always used whenever her name entered the room. "The venom is attacking her nervous system. Her pack bond is unstable, Elara. If I leave the room before they finish the blood transfusion, her wolf will collapse."

"Our daughter is dying inside me," I said, every word tasting like copper.

"Talia has no family left in this territory," he replied, his tone hardening with defensive authority. "I am responsible for her survival. The clinic has the best obstetricians in the province. You have a full medical team. Talia only has me."

I knew that tone. I was his legal mate, but Talia was the ghost that lived in every corner of our home.

"She just needs to stabilize," Cassian added, his voice slightly softer, though the distance in it was absolute. "The healers said another thirty minutes. As soon as her vitals level out, I'll drive straight to you. Just hold on."

I looked down at my trembling hands. I didn't scream. I swallowed my own blood and gave him an exit.

"Okay," I said, my voice barely a thread. "I'll wait."

I hung up before he could answer.

"Elara, push!" Maya yelled, her hands moving frantically between my knees. "The cord is compressed. Push now!"

A blinding wave of agony split my pelvis. I threw my head back against the thin pillow, screaming until my vision turned completely black.

At 4:12 PM, the room fell dead silent. There was no sharp, healthy wail—only a weak, rattling gasp.

My daughter was born into Wolf-Fade, needing her Alpha father's blood within fifteen minutes to anchor her life force. With shaking fingers, I recorded a final voice message, begging him to bring a single drop of blood to save our child.

He saw it, but eleven agonizing minutes ticked away into nothingness while he escorted Talia at St. Jude's VIP wing. My daughter's tiny fingers went slack, her little arm dropped against the sheet, and her chest stopped moving.

A sharp, tearing pain exploded in my stomach as postpartum hemorrhage tore through my body, and the monitors shrieked in continuous tones. Through the red haze, my phone lit up with a news alert: *Alpha Cassian shields former packmate Talia after border skirmish, personally escorting her to emergency care.*

I pulled my daughter closer to my chest, tucked her cold little face into my neck, and closed my eyes. I stopped waiting.

As the darkness dragged me down into the cold abyss, I didn't waste my final breath cursing him. I only had one thought left: *If the moon gives me another chance at life, I will never look at Cassian again.*

And then, with a violent, suffocating jolt, my lungs seized, dragging in a sharp, freezing gasp of air as my eyes flew open to the sunlit ceiling of my old apartment—proving with terrifying certainty that death was not the end, and I had been reborn.