Chapter 3 The News

Six weeks passed in a wink of avoided phone calls and isolation, Elara barely leaving her apartment except for groceries until the mandatory pack assembly notice appeared under her door with a red seal that meant attendance wasn't optional.

She dressed in plain clothes and kept her head down as she entered the Silvercrest hall where more than two hundred pack members filled the seats, their conversations dying when they spotted her and the whispers starting immediately—rejected omega, did you know she once attacked Maya Thornwood, she's unstable.. blah blah blah.

Elara took a seat in the back row and stared at her hands while people pointed and murmured until the seer entered through the side door, she's an ancient mini old lady with white eyes that saw things no one else could.

The hall went silent as the seer moved to the platform, her staff tapping against the floor with each step, and pack elders rose from their seats in respect while Kai sat in the front row beside Maya, his father on his other side.

"I have seen a truth that must be spoken," the seer announced, her voice was loud despite her age. "The Alpha's true Luna carries his heir, the bloodline continues within her womb."

Congratulations erupted from the crowd and everyone turned to Maya, but she looked confused and shook her head slightly while touching her flat stomach.

The seer's staff struck the floor once. "Not the chosen Luna," she said and those white eyes turned toward the back of the hall, toward Elara's section. "The fated mate, the one that was rejected, she carries the Alpha's child."

Elara's heart stopped and the room tilted sideways as every face swiveled to stare at her, shock and disgust written across their features while her mind raced through the impossibility of what the seer was saying.

Pregnant? She couldn't be pregnant, she hadn't been with anyone except….

The hotel room flashed through her memory, the stranger's familiar voice, the heavy cologne masking his scent, waking up alone and naked with no memory of how she'd gotten there.

Six weeks ago, the same night as the rejection.

"This is sacrilege," the seer continued and her tone held no sympathy. "An omega bearing the Alpha's child outside of bonding violates pack law and the child will be cursed by this sin unless purification is performed."

The crowd exploded with noise—how did she trap him, omega whore, probably planned this, always knew she was desperate—and Elara couldn't breathe through the shame crushing her chest as mothers covered their children's eyes like she was something dirty they shouldn't see.

Kai's father stood, his face red with fury. "This is an outrage, my son would never…"

"The bloodline does not lie," the seer interrupted. "I have seen the truth in the magic, the child shares his essence and cannot be denied."

Elara pressed her hand to her stomach which felt no different than it had yesterday, it was still flat and unchanged, but if the seer said she was pregnant then it was true because the seer's magic never failed.

The stranger had been Kai, somehow, in disguise, and he'd done this deliberately while she was too drunk to recognize him or consent properly or understand what was happening.

"Elara will present herself for purification in three days," the seer declared. "Until then, she is not to leave pack territory or the curse will deepen."

Pack members stood and filed out slowly, their eyes on Elara with judgment and disgust as they passed, whispering about her sin and her desperation and how she'd ruined herself trying to trap an Alpha who didn't want her.

Elara stayed seated as the hall emptied, her hand still on her stomach and her mind spinning through fragments of that night, trying hard to piece together how Kai had orchestrated everything.

The seer approached Kai near the exit after everyone else had gone, speaking quietly but Elara's wolf hearing caught the words. "You are the father, your scent lives in the child's blood, I see the truth you're hiding."

Kai's expression didn't change, it was still cold and he still looked unmoved. "You're mistaken, old woman, I was never with her."

He walked away without looking back and the seer stood there watching him go, her white eyes somehow sad.

Liam caught up to Kai in the parking lot, grabbing his arm. "You need to act fast, we both know she's telling the truth and this will destroy everything we've planned."

Kai shook him off and got into his car without responding.

In his mind, he was already calculating, the solution was simple—exile her, remove the problem completely, make her and the child disappear before anyone could prove what he'd done.

Elara sat alone in the empty hall with one hand on her stomach where a stranger's child grew, except the stranger wasn't a stranger at all but the man who'd rejected her publicly and then used her privately for reasons she still didn't understand.

Tears fell but she made no sound, just sat there as afternoon light slanted through the windows and painted everything beautiful, beautiful and terrible all at once.