The Beta’s Betrayal,Her Bond RejectionChapter 1
Seven moons along with pup. Confined to my chambers on healer's orders. Anxiety clawing at my chest as I scrolled obsessively through the pack-net mark-threads.
"Should I make my mate try a whelping simulation?"
A reply with captured images caught my eye.
"Definitely! My intended did one and swore he'd never let me endure that alone. But I'm about to become a mother anyway."
Someone challenged her: "If you're not carrying the pup yourself, where's it coming from?"
The poster replied smugly: "My intended's bonded mate spent five heat cycles trying to conceive and finally caught with pup. Once she whelps, the little one belongs to me."
"She's seven moons along now, just resting in her den like a fool, waiting to birth. Has no clue whose pup it truly is."
Five heat cycles of trying. Seven moons pregnant. I knew exactly how brutal that journey was.
I couldn't stop the rage boiling inside me at this shameless she-wolf.
I kept scrolling—and froze.
A healer's scrying image. The kind that showed the pup's form in the womb.
My breath stopped. She was showing off a picture of my pup.
——
Hands trembling, I pulled up my own scrying image from the last healer visit and compared them side by side.
I wasn't wrong. That was my child she was flaunting.
No wonder I couldn't catch any trace of my own scent-signature in those images.
I tapped into her profile and found her previous viral howl-stream.
"Documenting my intended's whelping simulation experience "
Her intended's face wasn't visible, but I caught something else.
The bonding mark on his left ring finger. The hand he kept clenched tight.
Identical to Kael Ironclaw's.
My heart seized. I gripped my swollen belly, gasping for air.
No wonder Kael had recoiled every time I mentioned doing a whelping simulation together.
He'd already done it. With her.
He knew exactly how excruciating birthing a pup was—bones shifting apart, the agony of full transformation during labor.
And he'd decided to use my body to give another female a child.
The comments below were vicious.
"Everyone spread this! That poor she-wolf needs to see it. She can't be tricked into being a vessel for some shadow-mate!"
"Even if she whelps, there's no way she's handing over that pup. Once a rogue consort, always a rogue consort."