Rejected By The Alpha For An Omega

Christian Dixon walked into my clinic with his mistress in his arms.

Everyone knew who she was. Angelena. The Omega my husband had been hiding at a secret residence for months. The one he visited every night while I waited alone in our pack house.

The one he treated like his real mate—while I, his true wife, lived like a ghost in his shadow.

She whimpered against his chest. He looked at me like I was the enemy.

"Be gentle with her."

The whole hospital whispered how much our Alpha loved his girl.

No one knew I was his wife.

This year was the third year of our secret marriage.

Eleonore POV:

The door was thrown open just as I was halfway out of my scrub top. No knock. No warning. Only the sudden gust of cold night air and the scent of pine and an approaching storm.

She nestled into his chest, her pale hair spilling across his expensive suit, her doe-like eyes wet with tears. Her ankle was swollen. She whimpered and buried her face deeper into his shoulder.

He didn't even glance at me.

He simply looked down at the woman in his arms and murmured, "Don't be afraid. I'm here."

Then he raised his head, and those gray eyes swept over me, cold as a knife in the dead of winter.

"Check her. Now."

Not a request. A command.

Alpha's command weighed on my mind, like a hand gripping the back of my neck, forcing me to submit. I gritted my teeth and endured it.

Three years. Three years I had learned one thing—his orders could crush my bones, but they could never bend my spine.

I crouched down and touched her ankle.

She cried out "Ah!" and snuggled deeper into his arms. His hand immediately covered the back of her head, cradling her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

Then the way he looked at me—

It was the look of an executioner.

"Could you be a little gentler?"

The nurse beside me, Chloe, tugged at my sleeve. Her eyes were red. The entire hospital knew how much Alpha Dixon doted on his mistress.

I said nothing.

He slammed the prescription on the table and turned to wash his hands. Even with the tap turned on full blast and the hot water scalding my fingertips until they turned red, I still felt cold.

It wasn't my hands that were cold.

It was my chest. Like something had bitten me there, leaving a wound that throbbed and went numb. My wolf stirred beneath my skin, a low growl of fury rising in my throat. I could smell it on her—the mark he had left on her, that possessive, claiming scent that screamed to the entire pack: She is his.

His. All his.

And me? His Luna. His legal wife. His true mate. I didn't even have a trace of his scent on me.

I turned off the tap and stared at myself in the mirror. Dark circles under my eyes. Chapped lips. My surgical gown stained with the blood of the patient I had just saved.

This was Luna of the Dixon Pack.

No one would believe it if I told them.

"You're hurting her," he said, ice in every syllable.

I didn't look up. "I'm doing my job."

What I wanted to say was: I've been on my feet for twelve hours. I just fought death and won. And you're standing there, asking me to be gentle with your mistress. Where's your conscience, Cristian?

But I said nothing. Because this was my marriage. Silent. Cold. A transaction that had given his pack stability and my family influence, and given me nothing but a title I never wanted.

I finished the examination and stood. "No fracture. No ligament damage. RICE protocol—rest, ice, compression, elevation. I'll write a prescription for anti-inflammatories."

"That's it?" Cristian demanded. "I want a full workup. X-rays. An MRI if necessary."

"There's no medical indication for—"

"I wasn't asking."

The Alpha command pressed against my mind, a weight I had learned to resist over three years of marriage. As his true mate, some instinct buried in my blood gave me a shield ordinary pack members didn't have—it couldn't force me, not completely. But it could still hurt, like a fist closing slowly around my will. I pushed back, and it retreated, leaving only a dull ache behind my eyes.

But before I could speak, Angelena let out a delicate cough.

"Alpha Dixon, please," she whispered, her hand finding his sleeve. "I don't want to cause trouble for the Luna."

The shift in address was masterful. From whatever intimate name she used in private to the formal title in public. Positioning herself as humble. Me as the villain.

Cristian's expression softened as he looked at her. When he turned back to me, it was stone.

"We're leaving," he announced. "We'll go to a human hospital. The doctors there are more responsible."

He lifted her—cradled her, really, as if she were made of glass—and walked out of my office without a backward glance.

The door clicked shut.

Silence.

I stood there for a long moment, staring at the closed door. My wolf was restless beneath my skin, confused by the bond that told it to follow him even as every waking thought screamed to let him go.

Chloe appeared in the doorway, her face a mask of sympathy I didn't want. "Dr. Sargent... are you—"

"I'm fine," I said. "I'm going home."

After she left, the only sound in the room was the low hum of the fluorescent lights. I peeled off my scrub top, folded it neatly, and placed it in the laundry bin. Then I grabbed my car keys, turned off the lights, and locked the door. Every movement was mechanical, as if my body knew what to do while my mind had drifted somewhere else entirely.

That was when his voice sliced into my mind, a cold, sharp blade cutting through the mate bond.

"We need to talk. Don't think this is over."

I froze. Whatever composure I'd managed to hold on to through the surgery, through his visit, through Angelena's performance, shattered in an instant. The pen in my hand, forgotten until now, snapped between my fingers. The sharp crack echoed the sound of something breaking inside me. White plastic dug into my palm, but I didn't feel a thing.