Fated to the Mad Alpha, Pregnant with His Twins

I didn't sleep.

The rain stopped sometime before dawn, but I stayed curled on the floor of the apartment—our apartment,

Ethan's apartment, the apartment that had never really been mine—wearing yesterday's clothes, yesterday's coffee stains, yesterday's humiliation. My backup glasses were gone. Lost in the alley. Lost in the garden. Lost somewhere between Kira's first words and the moment a golden-eyed monster put his hand on my throat and unmade me.

The PackNet notifications wouldn't stop.

Five hundred thousand views. Eight hundred thousand. One million. Chloe's livestream clip had gone viral overnight, and every wolf with a phone seemed to have something to say about the Wolfless girl who dropped her coffee and ran.

she really thought an Alpha like Ethan would stay with THAT crying in the rain like a movie lmaooooo wolfless tears are so satisfying can we talk about how she didn't even fight back?? no spine at all

I scrolled until my thumb went numb. Until the words blurred together. Until Kira made a sound in the back of my mind like someone gagging.

You're reading that garbage? She sounded genuinely offended. Those comments are from Beta-level pack rats who couldn't scent a real Alpha if he bit them on the throat. Put the phone down.

"I'm not—" I started out loud, then caught myself. Talking to a voice in my head. That was new.

You are. You're doom-scrolling. You know what you should be doing instead?

"Don't say it."

Going back to that gate. That scent. That man.

I dropped my phone onto the carpet. "He nearly killed us."

He didn't, Kira said, and her voice went dreamy and soft in a way that made my stomach flip. He could have.

He should have. We trespassed on Lycan territory, and he let us go. Do you know what that means?

"It means he was distracted."

It means he FELT something. I felt him feel it. His hand on our neck—

"That's enough."

—and the way his thumb pressed right here—

"I said that's enough!"

But my body was already responding. Heat flooding my cheeks. My pulse kicking up at the memory of cold rain and hot fingers and a scent like dark chocolate and evergreen forests. Kira let out a low, satisfied purr.

See? You're not as immune as you pretend to be, little human.

I shoved myself off the floor and started packing.

The apartment was full of Ethan. His suits in the closet. His protein powders on the kitchen counter. His framed photo on the bedside table—the one of him shaking hands with the Pack Council chairman, his smile sharp and ambitious. Three years of my life, and I'd never owned anything here. My clothes fit in a single suitcase. My books fit in a cardboard box. The rest was just... him.

That jacket he left on the chair, Kira said. The brown one. Do you remember how much cologne he used to spray on that thing? I thought I was going to suffocate.

A laugh caught in my throat. It wasn't a happy laugh. But it was a laugh.

Chemical warfare, Kira continued. I'm serious. Meanwhile, that Alpha last night smelled like—

"Like dark chocolate and trees and something burning," I muttered. "I know. You've mentioned it. Several times."

Because it's important. Because his scent is still on the white dress you were wearing, and if you would just

PICK IT UP and SMELL IT—

I wasn't going to do that.

I did that.

The white dress was crumpled near the bathroom door where I'd peeled it off last night, still damp, still stained with mud and grass from the garden. I brought it to my face before I could stop myself, and then—

There, Kira breathed. There it is. Do you feel that?

His scent hit me like a fist. Stronger than I expected. Dark and cold and impossibly deep, layered with something that made my knees remember exactly how weak they'd gone when he touched me. I grabbed the edge of the dresser to steady myself.

We need to go back, Kira said. We need to find him. We need to—

The apartment door slammed open.

I spun around, the white dress still clutched to my chest. Ethan stood in the doorway. Chloe was draped over his arm like an accessory she'd been designed to match.

"You're still here," Ethan said. Not a question. An accusation.

Chloe wrinkled her perfect nose. "She smells like wet dog and coffee. Ethan, make her leave. I wanted to redecorate today, and I can't do that with that contaminating the space."

Behind them, two of Ethan's pack enforcers loomed. I recognized one of them—Marcus's nephew, or cousin, or something. He'd always been polite to me before. Now he stared at a spot on the wall like I didn't exist.

"I'm packing," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I'll be gone in twenty minutes."

"You'll be gone now." Ethan stepped forward, his lip curling. "You've already stained Chloe's carpet. Look at it. Coffee and mud. Do you have any idea what that rug costs?"

I looked down. The carpet was beige. Generic. I'd picked it out myself at a discount home goods store six months ago because Ethan said we needed something "neutral" for when he brought colleagues over.

"That's my rug," I said. "I bought it."

Ethan's jaw tightened. Chloe's smile flickered at the edges.

"Pack your things," Ethan said coldly. "Take whatever garbage belongs to you, and get out. But don't think you're coming back to the Pack Corporation. Your employment is terminated, effective immediately. We don't need a Wolfless dragging down our productivity metrics."

Tell him, Kira snarled. Tell him what we are. Tell him I exist.

But I couldn't. Because whatever Kira was, whatever had woken up in that alley, I still hadn't shifted. I still couldn't prove I was anything more than defective.

I turned back to my suitcase. My hands were shaking. I zipped it closed with quick, jerky movements, then reached for my cardboard box of books—

Chloe's heel crunched down on the corner of the box.

"Oops," she said, and she was smiling again, that bright, performative smile that had launched a thousand sponsored posts. "Did you want that?"

The box was cheap. The cardboard buckled under her weight. I heard something tear.

"Move your foot," I said.

"I don't think I will." She tilted her head, studying me the way a cat studies a mouse it hasn't decided to kill yet. "You know, Elara, I almost feel sorry for you. Almost. You spent three years thinking an Alpha like Ethan would actually settle for a Wolfless? That's not optimism. That's delusion."

She lifted her hand. I watched it rise, watched her manicured fingers curl, watched the slap coming a full second before it would have landed—

And then Kira took over.

It wasn't a shift. I didn't sprout fur or claws or fangs. But something inside me moved, some deep and primal thing that had been sleeping for twenty-three years, and it moved fast. My spine straightened. My lips pulled back from my teeth. A sound rose in my throat, low and guttural, completely involuntary.

Chloe's hand stopped mid-air.

Her face went pale.

"What—" she started.

The front door exploded.

That's not a metaphor. The door—solid oak, steel hinges, Ethan's pride and joy—flew off its frame like it had been kicked by a god. Wood splinters scattered across the carpet. Chloe screamed. Ethan stumbled backward, his arm detaching from Chloe's waist like she'd suddenly become radioactive.

Four Royal Lycan Guards filled the doorway. Full tactical gear. Expressionless faces. The kind of soldiers who didn't knock because knocking implied they needed permission.

They parted like a curtain.

And Kael walked through.

He was taller than I remembered. Broader. The black suit he wore was tailored to perfection, but it couldn't soften the violence coiled in his shoulders, the predatory grace of his stride. His eyes—liquid gold, burning gold, the gold of a furnace about to melt through its casing—swept the room once and dismissed it.

Dismissed Ethan.

Dismissed Chloe.

Landed on me.

MATE, Kira wailed, and the sound inside my skull was pure, shameless joy. He came for us. HE CAME FOR

US.

The Alpha Aura hit me next. Not a scent, not quite—it was pressure, pure and crushing, the weight of an ancient predator pressing down on everything in the room. My lungs struggled. My knees buckled. I grabbed the edge of the dresser again and held on.

Ethan and Chloe didn't hold on.

They hit the floor. Both of them. Their knees cracked against the hardwood in perfect unison, like puppets whose strings had been severed. Chloe was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. Ethan's face had gone the color of old milk, his mouth opening and closing, his carefully cultivated Alpha confidence dissolving into pure animal terror.

"Your... Your Majesty..." Ethan's voice cracked. "This is... this is a civilian residence... I don't understand...

why would you..."

Kael didn't look at him.

He walked past Ethan like Ethan was furniture. Like Ethan was less than furniture—a stain on the floor that someone should have cleaned up. His long legs carried him through the wreckage of the door, glass crunching under his shoes, until he stopped directly in front of me.

I had to crane my neck to meet his eyes. He was that tall. That close. That overwhelming.

The cold-forest-dark-chocolate scent of him wrapped around me like a blanket. Like a brand. My head swam.

My thighs pressed together involuntarily.

Purrrrrrr, Kira went, and the vibration of it ran all the way down my spine.

Kael's gaze dropped to the white dress still clutched against my chest. Something flickered in his expression.

Something dark and satisfied. Then his eyes lifted to my face, and whatever I saw there made my breath stop entirely.

He shrugged off his jacket.

Black. Expensive. Warmed by his body heat. He held it for a moment, and I watched his knuckles go white around the fabric, like the act of offering it was costing him something. Like he was wrestling with something far more dangerous than a jacket.

Then he draped it over my shoulders.

The weight of it made me gasp. Not just the physical weight—though it was heavy, lined with something impossibly soft—but the scent weight. I was drowning in him. Every inhale was dark chocolate and evergreen and that burning note underneath, the one that made Kira howl and my human mind go very, very quiet.

My legs gave out.

I didn't fall. Kael's hand caught me first. Black leather glove. Hot palm. Fingers that wrapped around my waist and held me upright with infuriating, devastating ease.

His hand, Kira moaned. His hand on our waist. Elara. ELARA. We're going to die. We're going to actually die, and I don't even care.

"