Two months later

The Harvest Moon Festival has turned our pack grounds into Pinterest's wet dream—fairy lights, silk tablecloths, enough champagne to drown a small country. Rich werewolves showing off their money like it's a competitive sport.

And here I am serving drinks with trembling hands while my stomach stages a violent rebellion against the smell of wine.

I've been violently acquainted with every toilet in this house for two weeks straight. The kind of morning sickness that leaves you bargaining with deities you don't believe in, promising anything if they'll just make it stop.

But I'm refusing to acknowledge what it might mean, convincing myself it's just stress, or maybe that stomach bug going around, or my usual pre-period nausea that sometimes hits hard.

Denial is a hell of a drug.

I navigate through clusters of pack elite who look through me like I'm furniture with a pulse. Being the family disappointment has perks—invisibility at events where acknowledgment might require actual conversation.

Mom and Dad have strategically deployed me to server duty, safely removed from anyone important who might remember they have a second daughter and ask inconvenient questions.

Lia's holding court by the stage in some designer monstrosity that costs our parents more than her car, working the crowd with her practiced "future Luna" energy.

She's been playing psychological warfare since that morning two months ago. Dropping hints, making veiled threats, but never quite pulling the trigger.

Probably gets off on the power more than the actual reveal.

Alpha Magnus takes the stage with his sons flanking him. My heart does this stupid thing where it stops, just completely stops.

Because Kieran and Lysander are right there in their formal pack attire looking like every fantasy and nightmare I've had for two months rolled into one devastating package.

Neither has spoken to me since that night.

Not one word, not one glance. Nothing.

Alpha Magnus raises his glass and the crowd quiets. "Tonight," he announces with that commanding voice that makes everyone shut up and pay attention, "we celebrate the future of our pack."

Oh no. Please, let it not be what I think it is…

"It gives me great pleasure to announce the engagement of my heir, Kieran, to Lia Blackwood."

The tray slips. Five hundred dollars of crystal explodes across marble in a symphony of my complete mental breakdown. Every head turns to the clumsy server who just created the evening's main entertainment.

But I can't move. Can't breathe. Can't process anything except Lia floating toward Kieran like she just won the supernatural lottery, claiming his arm.

The engagement ring catches the light—a massive ruby surrounded by diamonds, the kind of ring that screams "property of" in multiple languages. She displays it like a trophy while Kieran stands there with his perfect Alpha heir mask, refusing to look anywhere near my direction.

Then she kisses him. Full tongue, maximum ownership, a public claiming that might as well be her pissing on him to mark territory.

Any desperate, delusional hope I'd been harboring dies right there next to the champagne carnage. The crowd erupts in congratulations that sound like white noise from another dimension.

I'm backing away, crunching crystal under my shoes, my hand pressed to my mouth as my stomach stages a full rebellion.

I bolt. Past the fancy bathrooms, through the service corridor, straight to the staff bathroom where no one important would be caught dead. I barely make it before my body decides to evacuate everything I've eaten since birth and gasp and try not to sob.

When it finally stops, I'm on the floor like a crime scene photo, cheek against tile that's probably seen better days. My hand goes to my stomach without conscious thought, and the terrible understanding finally breaks through the denial I've been clinging to for two weeks.

This isn't stress. This isn't a stomach bug. This isn't my usual pre-period nausea.

I didn't have a period. Not since before my heat.

Two months ago.

Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck.

I drag myself upright, splash water on my face that's gone vampire-pale, and stare at my reflection. Same disaster of a person, except possibly plus one.

The thought sends me into another wave of panic that I barely swallow down.

I grab my shit and bail. The forty-five-minute drive to the nearest non-pack town feels like driving to my own execution. Every mile is another chance to turn back, to pretend, to stay in denial just a little longer.

The 24-hour pharmacy is too bright, too clean, and the pregnancy tests are right there on the shelf next to condoms and lube in some cosmic joke about closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.

The cashier doesn't even look up. Probably seen worse at 11 PM on a Saturday.

The bistro bathroom two blocks down becomes my confession booth. Three tests, three different ways to spell "you're fucked." I sit on the toilet lid watching plastic sticks decide my future while my heart tries to escape through my ribcage.

Then I sit on the closed toilet lid and watch three plastic sticks decide my entire future.

Two pink lines on the first one. Plus sign on the second. The digital one takes longer, the hourglass symbol mocking me while I count my breaths and try not to pass out.

Then "Pregnant" in brutal digital letters.

Terror brings the kind of clarity usually reserved for near-death experiences.

I'm pregnant with either Kieran's or Lysander's baby. Kieran just got engaged to my sister, Lysander's ignoring me. And Mom's promise from two months ago plays on repeat: ‘I'll rip it from you myself.’

She meant it. They'll make good on that promise the second they find out.

And if anyone discovers an Alpha heir fathered my child? Both me and the baby will disappear. Quietly, efficiently, the kind of pack secret that gets buried along with the bodies.

The drive home becomes an escape plan. I catalog everything I need—cash hidden from years of escape fantasies, fake ID from junior year's rebellion phase, the go-bag I've kept packed since sixteen because I always knew this day would come.

Just not like this.

My mind runs through logistics while my hands shake on the steering wheel: where to go, how to disappear, how to survive alone and pregnant with no pack and no support.

The house is dark when I climb through my window at midnight. Everyone's still at the festival celebrating Kieran and Lia's engagement, probably toasting to the future Luna while I'm shoving clothes and documents into a backpack.

One backpack. One chance. One completely fucked situation that's somehow my reality now.

Mom's threat echoes as I slip back out the window: ‘Before it can draw breath.’

Not happening. Not to this baby. Not on my watch.

The forest swallows me whole—ancient trees that've marked pack territory since forever watching the wolfless daughter run with their Alpha's baby growing inside her. Behind me, the festival continues, probably haven't even noticed their server disappeared.

They won't realize I'm gone until morning. By then, I'll be a ghost, a memory, that embarrassing family footnote they'll eventually stop mentioning.

My hand finds my stomach as I run deeper into darkness. "Just you and me now, kiddo. Hope you inherited their strength and not my terrible life choices."