My Mate Rejected Me While I Gave Birth

The fog was lifting.

I noticed it first in the forest at the edge of the pack border during my one free hour each afternoon. The pine needles weren't just green anymore—they were a dozen shades of it, dark to pale, and I could smell the difference between the ones still clinging to branches and the ones rotting soft into the earth. The wind carried layers: wet bark, animal musk, something floral I couldn't name but recognized as *alive* in a way I'd never felt before.

I stood with Adley strapped to my chest, breathing through my nose, cataloguing it all.

My wolf stirred.

Not the brief flicker from two weeks ago. This was longer. Deliberate. Like something deep in my bones was waking up one vertebra at a time and testing whether the room was safe.

I pressed my palm flat against a tree trunk and felt the pulse under the bark—or maybe it was my own pulse, I couldn't tell anymore. Either way, something in me was realigning. Cells remembering what they were supposed to be.

I didn't know what I was becoming.

I only knew I wasn't what I'd been.

Adley made a small sound against my sternum. I adjusted the sling and started back toward the servant quarters, counting my steps, evening out my breathing. The sharpness in my senses was useful. It was also dangerous. If anyone noticed—if Judith noticed—she'd want to know why.

I couldn't afford questions yet.

---

The food tray appeared outside my door the next morning.

I opened it to find twice the usual portion: bread, cheese, dried meat, a bowl of stewed vegetables still warm under a cloth. No note. No explanation.

I looked down the corridor. Empty.

I brought the tray inside and ate every bite.

The morning after that, Miriam was waiting in the healer's alcove when I brought Adley for her routine check.

"Let me see her," Miriam said, and her hands were already reaching before I'd fully crossed the threshold.

I unwrapped the sling and passed Adley over. Miriam laid her on the examination table—gently, the way you handle something breakable and precious—and began the measurements. Weight. Length. Reflexes.

I watched her hands. Careful. Competent. Genuinely attentive in a way that had nothing to do with protocol and everything to do with the fact that Miriam had been the one pulling me back from the edge of death three weeks ago and she remembered it.

"She's strong," Miriam said quietly, rewrapping Adley in the blanket. "Stronger than most pups her age."

I took Adley back and settled her against my chest. Then I asked the question I'd been holding since the second food tray arrived.

"The bloodwork you ran during my recovery. Did you keep records?"

Miriam went very still.

Her hands paused mid-reach for the supply drawer. She didn't look at me. She looked at the wall behind my shoulder, and I watched her face do the arithmetic—what I was asking, what it meant, what it would cost her if she answered wrong.

Then she said, "Yes."

"Everything?"

"Everything." She turned and met my eyes. "Chemical compounds. Concentrations. Dates."

I nodded once. "Keep them somewhere Judith's staff can't access."

Miriam didn't ask why. She already knew.

She opened the supply drawer, pulled out a small glass vial of vitamin drops for Adley, and pressed it into my palm. Her fingers closed over mine for just a second—warm, deliberate.

"I've been keeping them in my personal records," she said quietly. "Locked. No one touches those but me."

I took the vial. "Thank you."

She stepped back and busied herself with the examination table, wiping it down with more focus than necessary.

I left through the side door and didn't look back.

---

Judith came to visit two days later.

She knocked—three light taps, the kind that sound polite and feel like a command—and stepped inside before I could answer.

"Blair, dear." Her voice was warm as buttered bread. "I wanted to check on little Adley. And on you, of course."

She crossed to the cot where Adley lay sleeping and leaned over her, making soft cooing sounds that were perfectly calibrated for grandmotherly affection. I stood by the door and watched.

"She's beautiful," Judith said, straightening. "Brandon's eyes, don't you think?"

I said nothing.

Judith turned to me, her smile pleasant and fixed. "I know this transition has been difficult. But I do think, in time, you'll find your place here. Omega work is honest work. There's dignity in service."

I crossed to the small table near the window and picked up the kettle I'd been heating over a makeshift burner. "Would you like tea?"

Her smile brightened. "How thoughtful. Yes, thank you."

I poured two cups, handed her one, and kept the other. We stood in silence for a moment, sipping.

Then I asked, conversationally, "Do you manage all the household supply accounts yourself? Or do you delegate some of it?"

Judith's pleasantness didn't flicker. Not even a blink.

"I've always preferred to manage important things personally," she said. "Delegation is useful for trivial matters, but financial records, supply inventories—those require a certain attention to detail."

"That must take considerable organization."

"It does." She set her cup down on the table, still smiling. "But I find the work rewarding. A well-run household is the foundation of a strong pack, don't you think?"

"I do," I said.

She stayed another five minutes, making pleasant conversation about Adley's sleep schedule and the upcoming pack gathering, and then she left.

I stood by the door and listened to her footsteps fade down the corridor.

Then I sat on the cot, pulled the loose floorboard up, and counted the vials in the dark.

Seven.

I needed the ledger. And Judith had just confirmed she'd never let it out of her sight.

Somewhere beneath my ribs, my wolf stirred again—longer this time, a slow stretch like something testing the limits of a cage it was about to outgrow.

I pressed my palm flat against the cot frame and held it there until the pulse steadied.

Then I started planning.