Rejected While Pregnant Returned As The Silver Queen

Chapter 1 — The Rejection "Reject her!" The chant started at the back of the gathering ground and rolled forward, wolf by wolf, until three hundred voices were beating against Sierra Bennett like fists. "Reject her! Reject her! REJECT HER!" The blood moon hung low and swollen over Ironridge, turning the smoke from Alpha Edmund's funeral pyre a dirty red. The old Alpha had burned at sundown. His ashes were still warm on the wind, and his pack wanted someone to burn with him. They had chosen her. Two guards pinned Sierra's arms behind her back, gripping hard enough to bruise. Her fingers had gone numb — all except the ones curled tight around the little plastic stick hidden in her fist. Two pink lines. She had practiced the words all afternoon in front of the mirror. Kade, we're going to have a baby. She had been on her way to tell him when the bells started ringing and the world caught fire. "Quiet." Kade Sinclair didn't shout it. He didn't have to. The chant died like a snapped neck. He stood on the stone dais where his father's body had lain an hour ago, and he did not look like the man who had kissed her shoulder that morning. His eyes were ringed red and rubbed raw. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. Grief was eating him alive in front of the whole pack — and grief always needs something to feed on. Vanessa Pierce gave it something. She stepped up beside him in her gray mourning dress, holding a carved wooden box like an offering. "Forgive me, Alpha. I wish I didn't have to do this tonight of all nights." Her voice trembled beautifully. She opened the box. "Three vials of wolfsbane. My father's guards found them under her mattress an hour ago." The crowd's growl rolled through the ground and up Sierra's legs. "That's a lie," Sierra said. "I've never—" "My family took her in when she had no one." Vanessa's voice broke in exactly the right place. "We fed her. We clothed her. And she poisons our Alpha under our own roof." "There's more." Elder Marcus Pierce came forward, silver-haired, hands folded like a priest. He laid a leather book open on the dais. "The poison ledger from the border market. Her name. Her signature. Wolfsbane, purchased twelve days ago." "Twelve days ago I was at the north ridge." Sierra's voice cracked. "Kade. Kade, look at me. I was with you." For half a second, he almost did. Then Vanessa touched his arm. "There's a witness." They pushed a kitchen girl forward — Tilly, sixteen, crying so hard she could barely stand. "I saw her by the Alpha's tea tray," she sobbed at the ground. "The night before he fell sick. I didn't think— I'm sorry— I saw her—" "Tilly." Sierra stared at her. "Tilly, look at me. Who told you to say that?" The girl only cried harder and said nothing, which was its own answer. But nobody in the crowd was listening for answers anymore. "Three proofs." Marcus's voice was soft and final, like a lid closing. "Pack law asks for two. Alpha... the law is the law, even tonight. Especially tonight." Kade came down the steps. He crossed to her slowly, and Sierra's heart did the stupidest thing — it hoped. Three years of him. His laugh in the dark. His heartbeat under her ear. The bond between them was pulled tight as wire, and surely, surely he could feel down that wire that she was telling the truth— "Did you do it?" His voice was gravel and broken glass. "No." She held his eyes. "On my life. On ours. No." "They found it under your bed, Sierra." "Then someone put it there!" She twisted against the guards. "Think! Who benefits? Who is standing next to you right now—" "Enough." It cracked out of him like a whip, and she saw it happen — saw the exact second grief won, and the man she loved went under. He stepped back. He straightened. And in the voice of an Alpha passing sentence, over the sound of her screaming his name, Kade Sinclair said the words that ended her world: "I, Kade Sinclair, Alpha of Ironridge, reject you, Sierra Bennett, as my mate and my Luna." The bond didn't break. It tore. Something ripped loose behind her breastbone — a rope of fire dragged out through her ribs, root and all. Sierra heard screaming and understood, dimly, that it was her. Her knees hit the stone. The blood moon smeared across the sky. Through the white blaze of it, she saw Kade sway and catch the dais rail, his other hand pressed hard against his own chest. Good, she thought, from somewhere far away. Feel it. "Traitor," someone shouted. Then everyone. "TRAITOR. TRAITOR. TRAITOR." The guards hauled her up. The test nearly slid from her numb fingers, and she gripped it hard enough to c***k the plastic — because it was suddenly the only thing left. And the fog cleared, and she remembered. "Wait—" She fought their hands. "Kade! Kade, I'm preg—" A leather glove clamped over her mouth. "Spare us her lies," Marcus said, sorrowful as a funeral bell. He lifted his voice to the pack. "The council has ruled. At dawn, the traitor's brand. Then exile beyond the border — alive, as mercy, in honor of Alpha Edmund's gentle heart." Kade had already turned his back. "Take her down," he said, and did not watch them drag her away. The cells under the packhouse were cold enough to see her breath. Sierra sat on the stone shelf with her knees pulled to her chest and finally, alone, opened her hand. The test was cracked down the middle. Both pink lines still showed. "Let me see that lip." Old Dr. Fenn crouched in front of her with his lamp and his bag. He dabbed her split mouth and wrapped her rope-burned wrists in silence. He had set her broken arm when she was nine. Now his fingers settled on her wrist for a pulse — and went still. His eyes moved slowly down to her stomach. He pressed his palm flat against it and listened the way only an old wolf can. "There's a second heartbeat," he whispered. "Nine weeks." Her voice didn't sound like hers anymore. "Does the Alpha know?" Sierra laughed. It was an ugly, broken sound. "He didn't let me finish the sentence." The old man's jaw set hard. He pulled paper and wax from his bag and wrote fast, the pen nearly tearing the page. "The law is filth tonight, but even filth has rules. No iron touches a woman with child. Whatever else he's become, he has to be told." He sealed the letter and held it up so she could read the front: For the Alpha's eyes only. Urgent. Before the sentence — the prisoner is with child. Sierra caught his sleeve. "And if he doesn't care?" Dr. Fenn's eyes were wet. "Then he's not the boy I delivered." He squeezed her hand once. "Hold on till dawn, girl." Dr. Fenn hurried up the corridor, lamp swinging, the letter pressed tight to his chest — and stopped. Vanessa Pierce stood at the foot of the stairs, two of her father's guards behind her. "Working late, Doctor?" A guard twisted the letter from his fingers before he could move. Vanessa broke the seal, tilted the page to the torchlight, and read. Then she smiled — slow and bright, like the blood moon. She tore the report in half. Then in half again, and let the pieces fall around her feet. From her sleeve she drew a small vial of pale liquid and pressed it into the old man's hand, closing his shaking fingers around the glass one by one. "Add this to her water tonight," Vanessa said sweetly. "Wolfsbane is so hard on unborn things, let's see if that thing in her womb lives long enough to see the light of day."