My Mate Ignored My Screams to Save His Mistress’s Son

I was resting in my chambers when I heard the door handle turn.

Not a knock. Not a request. Just the slow, deliberate click of the latch releasing.

My wolf surged to attention before my mind fully registered what was wrong. I pushed myself upright from the chaise, one hand instinctively moving to my abdomen. The pup had been restless all evening, kicking and turning in a way that made it hard to find a comfortable position.

"Hello?" I called out, my voice steady despite the sudden spike of unease.

The door swung open.

Eiden stood in the doorway. Not the boy. The wolf.

He was in full juvenile shift—too large for his age, his fur patchy and uneven, his eyes fixed on me with that same flat, assessing stare I'd seen in the hallway weeks ago. But this time there was something else in those eyes. Something that made my wolf recoil.

Hunger.

"Eiden," I said, keeping my voice calm, authoritative. The voice I'd used a hundred times to manage volatile situations in this pack. "Shift back. Now."

He didn't move. Didn't blink.

Just stared.

I took a slow step backward, my hand still pressed against my abdomen. The pup kicked hard, as if sensing my fear. "Eiden, I need you to shift back and leave my chambers. This isn't appropriate."

The wolf's lips pulled back. Not quite a snarl. Not quite a grin.

Then he moved.

Two bounds. That's all it took. Two bounds across my private chambers, claws scraping against the stone floor, and then he was airborne—launching himself directly at me with his full shifted weight.

I tried to turn. Tried to protect my abdomen. But he was too fast.

He hit me square in the stomach.

The impact drove all the air from my lungs. I felt something inside me tear—not just tissue, something deeper, something fundamental—and then I was falling, my back slamming into the floor, my head cracking against the stone.

Pain exploded through my abdomen. Not the sharp, localized pain of an injury. This was everywhere. Radiating. Consuming.

I tried to breathe and couldn't. Tried to move and couldn't. My vision went white at the edges.

Then I felt it. The wetness spreading beneath me. Warm. Too warm.

Blood.

My wolf howled inside my chest—a sound of pure, primal terror—and I did the only thing I could do.

I screamed through the mate bond.

Not words. Not a message. Just the raw, unfiltered sensation of what was happening to me. The pain. The blood. The tearing feeling inside my abdomen where the pup had been moving just minutes ago. I poured it all directly into Weston's consciousness through the bond that was supposed to protect me, supposed to bind him to my survival as deeply as his own.

*Weston. WESTON. HELP ME.*

I felt him receive it. Felt the bond flare with recognition. For one brief, desperate moment, I thought he would come.

Then the bond went cold.

Not silent. Cold. Like a door slamming shut.

I screamed again, this time aloud, my voice raw and breaking. "WESTON!"

Eiden had shifted back. He was standing over me now, staring down at my crumpled form with that same flat expression. No fear. No remorse. Just... observation.

I tried to reach for him—to push him away, to do something—but my body wouldn't respond. The pain was too massive. Too all-consuming.

"Get... help," I gasped. "Please. Get the Healer."

He tilted his head. Studied me for another long moment.

Then he turned and walked out, leaving the door open behind him.

I lay on the floor of my chambers, blood pooling beneath me, my wolf howling inside my chest, and I screamed through every link I had—the mate bond, the pack link, anything that might reach someone, anyone.

But the pack house remained silent.

No footsteps in the hallway. No Healer rushing to my door. No Weston.

Just me. The blood. And the terrible, creeping understanding that no one was coming.

I don't know how long I lay there. Time fractured into fragments—moments of white-hot pain, moments of gray nothing, moments where I was dimly aware of my own voice still screaming, though I couldn't feel my throat moving anymore.

The pup had stopped kicking.

That realization cut through the pain with a clarity that was almost worse. I pressed my hand against my abdomen—slick now with blood—and felt... nothing. No movement. No flutter. Just stillness.

*No. No. Please, no.*

I reached for the mate bond again, desperate, pouring everything I had left into it. Not just pain now. Pleading. Begging.

*Weston, please. The pup. Please.*

The bond stayed cold.

My vision was starting to fade at the edges, gray creeping in from all sides. I could feel my wolf weakening, her howls growing quieter, more distant.

I was dying. I understood that now. Dying alone on the floor of my own chambers while my mate—my fated mate, the man I had loved for five years—chose not to come.

With the last coherent thought I had, I reached for a different link. Not the mate bond. Not the pack link.

The Lycan bond. The one that ran between my father and me, older and deeper than anything Weston could touch.

*Father,* I whispered into that link, barely conscious enough to form the word. *Father, please.*

Arthur's presence flooded my mind immediately—solid, absolute, already moving.

*Hold on, Leyla. I'm coming. Hold on.*

Then the gray swallowed everything, and I let it.