Rejected Mate

I woke up disoriented, still lying in the pool of blood on my bedroom floor. The storm had passed, and weak sunlight filtered through the curtains. I'd been unconscious for hours, maybe longer. Dorian never came back.

My body felt hollow, like something essential had been scooped out of me. In a way, it had. My baby—gone. I could feel it in the emptiness inside me, in the dull ache that had replaced the sharp pain.

The day I'd discovered I was pregnant still burned bright in my memory.

I'd been sick for days, blaming Dorian's increasingly frequent absences for my nausea and fatigue. The mate bond stretching thin could do that. But when my heightened wolf senses detected the subtle change in my own scent—a warm sweetness underneath my usual forest and rain—I'd known.

I'd bought a test from a drugstore three towns over, terrified someone from the pack might see me. When those two pink lines appeared, I'd wept with a joy I never thought possible. For those first beautiful days, that tiny spark of life had been my secret treasure, something pure and untainted by the mess I'd made of my life.

I'd imagined a thousand futures—a baby with Dorian's sharp green eyes, my dark hair.

A child who might, just might, give me the family I'd never had. On the darkest nights, when Dorian's absence cut like a knife, I'd press my hand against my still-flat stomach and whisper promises.

"You'll be loved," I'd told my baby. "You'll be protected. You'll never know what it's like to be unwanted."

Lies. All of it.

I dragged myself to the bathroom, leaving bloody handprints on the pristine white walls. The mirror reflected a stranger—pale as death, hair matted with sweat, eyes vacant with shock. A bruise had formed on my cheek from when I'd fallen. My lips were cracked, my throat raw from screaming for help that never came.

This is what loving Dorian Caldwell has made of you.

Mechanically, I peeled off my blood-soaked nightgown and stepped into the shower. Pink water swirled down the drain as I stood motionless under the spray. I watched it with detached fascination—my baby, my hopes, all washing away in a swirl of diluted crimson.

My baby had only been a month old, barely formed, but I'd already loved it fiercely. I'd talked to it every night, promised to protect it, promised a life filled with love. All lies now. I couldn't even protect it from its own father. The cruelest part was that Dorian probably didn't even care. One less complication in his perfectly orchestrated life.

The water ran cold, but I barely noticed. Nothing could wash away what had happened. Nothing could fill the emptiness inside me. Eventually, I turned off the shower and wrapped myself in a towel. My body moved on autopilot—dry off, dress, strip the bloody sheets from the bed. I found clean ones in the closet and remade it, then flipped the blood-soaked mattress.

Erasing the evidence. Just like I'd been erasing myself bit by bit since the day Dorian claimed me as his mate and then told me to hide it from the world.

---

When Dorian finally returned the next evening, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing. The sheets had been stripped, the blood-soaked mattress flipped.

"Dorian, where were you a night ago?" My voice sounded strange to my own ears—flat, emotionless.

He didn't even look at me as he set down his keys. "That is none of your business, pup."

Pup*.* How I hated that condescending nickname. As if I were some child to be humored rather than his mate. As if I hadn't just lost our actual pup while he was busy between Selene's thighs.

"You went to her, didn't you? You slept with her, knowing what it does to me." My fingers dug into the edge of the mattress, my knuckles white with tension.

He sighed, annoyed at being questioned.

"The whole pack sees her as my mate; it is necessary."

Necessary. Was it necessary to leave me bleeding on the floor? Was it necessary to ignore my calls? Was it necessary to destroy everything I loved?

Something snapped inside me. The numbness that had protected me since waking in my own blood gave way to rage—pure, cleansing rage. It roared through me like wildfire, burning away the last of my blind devotion.

"I was in so much pain, and you were the cause." My voice rose, gaining strength with each word. "I lost my child because of you. Dorian, how could you do this to me? I am your true mate. How could you betray me?"

His face changed then, his handsome features twisting into something ugly.

"Oh, please shut up. It is not my fault your weak system couldn't hold him in, so don't you dare blame me for the loss of your child."

Your child. Not our child. Never our child.

In that moment, I understood that Dorian had never seen our baby as his. Just another inconvenience. Another loose end to be dealt with.

"You were with her during the worst storm of the year," I said, standing now. My legs trembled, but my voice held steady. "I called you. I left messages. I was bleeding to death on the floor while you fucked her!"

His eyes flashed dangerously, green irises bleeding to alpha gold. "You seem to have forgotten who you are and where you belong. I would give you a little reminder."

I saw his hand coming but didn't flinch. The slap felt like validation—proof of what I'd always known deep down but refused to acknowledge. That Dorian was not the man I'd built him up to be in my desperate fantasies. He was just another entitled Alpha, drunk on power and his own importance.

When my palm connected with his cheek in return, the look of shock on his face was almost worth what came next. No one had ever dared to strike the Alpha. No one but me, the lowest of the low, who had nothing left to lose.

The first blow knocked me back onto the bed. The second split my lip. By the third, I couldn't see clearly through the blood and tears. He'd never hit me before, but now that the dam had broken, his violence poured out unchecked. Each blow carried years of contempt, of seeing me as less than him, of tolerating my existence only when it suited him.

"You bitch!" he roared, punching, kicking. "You seem to have forgotten your place. You're nothing but a weak, pathetic pup."

I didn't see Dorian; I saw a beast.

And in that moment, I understood the truth: this was who he had always been. I just hadn't wanted to see it. My wolf cowered inside me, shocked by the betrayal from our mate—the one who was supposed to protect us above all others.

When he finally stepped back, breathing hard, blood dripping from his knuckles, I knew what was coming next.

The end of whatever twisted thing we'd had.

"I could never make you my Luna, you weakling. But Selene is my mate and would always be; she would be my Luna." His voice took on the formal cadence of an Alpha decree. "So I, Alpha Dorian Caldwell of the Mistwood Pack, reject you, Elowen Thorne, as my fated mate and Luna."