After My Sister Stole My Mate, His Twin Rescued Me

I didn't make it far.

My legs gave out somewhere past the territory marker, where the manicured pack grounds gave way to wild forest. The rain had turned the earth to mud, and I went down hard, my palms sinking into cold slick darkness. The rejection pain was still tearing through my chest—waves of it, like something with claws was trying to dig its way out from the inside.

I couldn't shift. Luna was there, stronger than she'd been in years, pushing against my consciousness with desperate urgency. But my body wouldn't respond. Three years of poison had left me too weak, too broken.

The scent hit me first.

Unwashed fur. Rancid meat. The sour-sharp smell of rogues who'd been living outside pack law for too long.

I lifted my head. Three wolves emerged from the tree line, their eyes reflecting the lightning that split the sky. They were smaller than pack wolves, mangy and scarred, but their teeth were just as sharp.

"Well, well." The largest one shifted into human form—a man with matted hair and a face full of old violence. "What do we have here? A little rogue, all alone."

I tried to stand. My legs wouldn't hold me. I went down again, this time onto my side, and the impact sent fresh agony through my abdomen. The cramping was back, sharper than before, and my hand moved instinctively to cover my stomach.

The rogue's eyes tracked the movement. His smile widened. "Damaged goods. Even better."

The other two circled closer, still in wolf form. One of them growled low in his throat, the sound vibrating through the mud beneath me.

Luna screamed inside my head. Not words—just pure animal rage and terror. She threw herself against the barrier of my poisoned body, trying to force the shift, trying to protect us.

It wasn't enough.

"Please," I heard myself say. The word came out broken, barely audible over the rain. "Please don't—"

The largest rogue lunged.

Then the world exploded into violence.

Something massive and black intercepted him mid-leap. The impact sounded like thunder—bone meeting bone with crushing force. The rogue's scream cut off in a wet gurgle as jaws closed around his throat and tore.

Blood sprayed across the mud. Across my face. Hot and copper-tasting.

The black wolf was enormous. Twice the size of any Alpha I'd ever seen, with fur so dark it seemed to absorb the lightning rather than reflect it. And his eyes—God, his eyes—glowed red like embers in the darkness.

The remaining rogues froze. I felt it then, the aura rolling off the black wolf in waves so crushing I couldn't breathe. It pressed down on everything, on the air itself, a weight that made my bones ache and my wolf go absolutely still.

The black wolf moved.

It wasn't a fight. It was an execution. Efficient and brutal and over in seconds. The rogues didn't even try to run. They couldn't. The aura held them in place while teeth and claws did their work.

Then silence. Just the rain and my ragged breathing and the sound of something massive moving through the mud toward me.

I couldn't move. Couldn't think. The black wolf stopped three feet away, his red eyes fixed on me with an intensity that made my skin prickle.

He shifted.

The transformation was seamless—fur melting into skin, massive frame condensing into human form. And when it was done, when the man stood before me in the rain, I screamed.

Tristan's face. The same sharp jaw, the same dark hair, the same features I'd looked at every day for three years.

"No—" I scrambled backward through the mud, my hands slipping. "No, please, I signed the papers, I left, please don't—"

"Stop." His voice cut through my panic. Deeper than Tristan's. Resonant in a way that made my chest vibrate. He frowned, something that looked almost like pain crossing his features. "I am not him."

I stared up at him. Rain plastered his hair to his skull, ran in rivulets down his bare chest. He was identical. Exactly identical. But—

The scent hit me.

Pine. Storm-charged earth. Wild and clean and so familiar it made my chest ache with something that wasn't rejection pain.

The scent from the dark. The presence that had claimed me in the night. The only thing that had made me feel safe in three years.

It was him.

He moved closer, dropping into a crouch. Not aggressive—careful, like he was approaching something wounded. His eyes—not cold like Tristan's, but burning with an intensity that made me want to look away and never stop looking at the same time—searched my face.

Then he inhaled.

His entire body went rigid. His eyes flared brighter, the red glow intensifying until I could see it reflected in the rain between us. A sound rumbled from his chest—not a growl, something deeper, more primal.

Inside my head, Luna exploded into consciousness.

MATE, she screamed. MATE MATE MATE—

The man's hand moved to my stomach, hovering just above the fabric of my ruined dress. His voice, when he spoke, was barely human.

"You're carrying my child."