Taking Alpha's Twins Away After Divorce

His hands are warm on my waist. His breath brushes the curve of my neck, slow and deliberate, and for one stolen second I let myself believe this is real , that he's looking at me the way I've always needed him to, like I'm something, like I matter.

"Kaelen," I whisper.

He pulls back.

The warmth evaporates. His eyes, silver-grey and cold as winter slate, look through me like I'm made of glass.

"Never."

I wake up with that word pressed against my sternum like a blade.

The bedroom is empty. It always is at this hour , six-forty in the morning, grey light seeping in through the curtains, the other side of the king bed undisturbed, the pillow still crisp and untouched. Two years of marriage and I have never once woken to find him beside me. Never felt the warmth of his body on that side of the mattress. Never worn his mark on my neck.

I sit up and press my fingers to the unblemished skin at my throat.

Unmarked.

The word carries the full weight of what it means in our world. Kaelen Vance , soon-to-be Alpha of the Silvermoon Pack, son of Alpha Valerius, a man whose every movement carries the gravity of command , has been my husband for two years. Two years of shared last names and separate lives. Two years of cold dinners eaten alone and hallways passed in silence. Two years of pretending, for the pack's sake, that we are something we have never been.

He doesn't love me. I've known this since the beginning. But I've been too much of a coward to say it out loud until now.

I get out of bed.

I'm almost late.

My phone reads 7:10 and my appointment at the pack's medical clinic is at 7:30, and I'm standing in the bathroom with toothpaste on my chin trying to remember where I left my keys.

The clinic. The checkup.

I'd scheduled it three weeks ago, quietly, the way I do everything in this house , quietly, carefully, hoping no one notices. A routine physical, I told the front desk. And it is routine. Except for the small, fragile, ridiculous hope I've been carrying around in my chest like a soap bubble, terrified to even breathe too hard near it.

Maybe this time.

I know how desperate that sounds. I do. Using a pregnancy to salvage a marriage that was never really a marriage , it's the kind of thing I'd tell a client was a red flag, if I were in session. But I'm not in session. I'm standing in a kitchen that doesn't feel like mine, grabbing my bag and my keys and trying not to think too hard about the fact that this might be my last option.

A child could change things. A child could give us something to build toward, something real between us. Kaelen is cold, but he's not heartless , is he? He would love his own child. Surely he would.

He has to.

I lock the door behind me and walk into the pale morning.

Dr. Alistair Finch has kind eyes. That's the first thing I noticed about him when I started coming to the pack clinic two years ago , warm brown eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, the sort of eyes that crinkle at the corners when he smiles, which he does often. He's the kind of doctor who remembers your name, your history, the small details that matter. In a world where I am largely invisible, Alistair Finch sees me.

He sees me now across the examination table, and something in his expression makes my hands go still.

"Elara." He sets down the tablet. "I have your results."

"Okay." My voice is steady. My pulse is not.

He glances at the screen one more time, then back at me, and there's something almost careful about the way he draws his next breath.

"You're pregnant."

The word lands like a stone in still water.

"I," I stop. Start again. "How far along?"

"About six weeks." He pauses. "Elara, there's something else I need to tell you."

I barely hear him. There's a ringing in my ears, a warmth spreading from my chest outward, flooding into my fingers and the backs of my knees. Pregnant. I'm pregnant. It happened , the one thing I'd let myself hope for, quietly, in the dark ,

"Elara."

His voice cuts through the noise. I focus.

"It's triplets."

The room tilts.

For a full five seconds I don't breathe. Then something breaks open inside my chest , not breaks, bursts , and I press both hands to my mouth and feel my eyes fill with tears I cannot explain and do not try to.

Three.

Three heartbeats where there was nothing. Three lives. Three.

"Oh my god," I whisper through my fingers.

Alistair gives me a moment. He's good at that. Then, gently: "Elara, I need you to hear the rest."

I lower my hands.

"The pregnancy is viable," he says, "but I'm concerned about your uterine wall. It's thinner than we'd like. Carrying multiples to term under these conditions carries significant risk , to the babies, and to you." His voice is measured, professional, but not unkind. "We're going to need to monitor this very carefully. You'll need to reduce stress as much as possible and come in every two weeks. Do you understand?"

I nod.

I don't tell him that stress has been the primary ecosystem of my life for the past two years. I don't tell him about the cold silences, the empty side of the bed, the word never I wake up to every morning in my husband's voice.

I just nod, and clutch the printout he hands me, and walk out into the October air with three heartbeats worth of impossible joy burning in my chest.

He'll have to care now, I think. He can't look at this and feel nothing.

I'm almost running by the time I reach the car.

The front door swings open and I hear them before I see them.

His voice , low, almost gentle, a register I didn't know he possessed , and underneath it, soft, hitching breaths. A woman crying.

I round the corner into the living room and stop.

Kaelen is on the couch. Seraphina is curled against his side, her head on his shoulder, her dark hair falling across his arm. His hand moves in slow circles on her back , soothing, tender, careful , and he murmurs something I can't make out. She makes a small broken sound. He pulls her closer.

The printout crinkles in my grip.

He looks up.

The warmth vanishes from his face like a switch thrown. His jaw sets. Those silver-grey eyes go flat and cold and something ignites behind them , not surprise. Anger.

"There she is," he says.

Seraphina lifts her head. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her face a careful composition of fragility. She looks at me the way a person looks at something they've been waiting for.

"Kaelen, I," I start.

"What did you give her?" His voice is quiet. That controlled quiet that's worse than shouting.

"What?"

"The medication." He's standing now, and the room feels smaller. "What was in it? She's been sick for three days. Trembling, can't sleep, her wolf won't respond to her properly." His eyes don't leave my face. "What did you put in those herbs you gave her?"

"I gave her a mild sedative blend," I say. The words come out steady, which surprises me. "Lavender, valerian, passionflower. Standard calming formula. There are no side effects , I've used the same formula with a dozen clients, it's completely safe,"

"She is not your client."

"I know that,"

"You are not her healer. You had no right to give her anything."

"She asked me,"

"Don't." The single word drops like a stone. He steps toward me, slow and deliberate, and the Alpha energy radiating off him presses against my skin like heat. "Don't stand there and make excuses. I know what you think of her. I've always known. And now you've found a way to,"

"I didn't do anything." My voice breaks on the last word and I hate it. I hate it. I take a breath. "Kaelen. I swear to you. It was a calming blend. That's all it was. If she's having a reaction to something, it isn't from me,"

"Get out of my sight," he says.

Seraphina makes another small sound. His attention snaps back to her like a compass finding north , immediate, instinctive, absolute , and something inside me goes very, very quiet.

I look at the printout in my hand.

I fold it in half and walk down the hallway.

I lock the bedroom door.

I sit on the edge of the bed and I look at my hands and I count my breaths, one by one, until the trembling stops.

Outside, I can hear murmured voices. His voice. Low and steady and warm with a warmth I have never once been the recipient of in two years of marriage.

I'm pregnant with his children and he thinks I'm poisoning his favorite person in the world.

The laugh that rises in my throat is not a happy one.

I hear his footsteps in the hallway. Then the door handle rattles. Once. Twice. Then a dull, percussive crash as his shoulder or his foot hits the wood , and the lock gives way, and Kaelen fills the doorframe.

His eyes sweep the room, find me. He steps inside, and doesn't close the door behind him.

"You think locking a door keeps an Alpha out?"

"I think locking a door sends a message," I say. "Which you apparently read as an invitation."

Something flickers across his face. Then it's gone.

"We're done," he says. "I want a divorce."

The words are so clean. So simple. Like he's been carrying them around for a while and they've worn smooth in his pockets.

I look at him.

"I'm pregnant," I say.

Silence.

He stares at me for a long moment. Something shifts behind his eyes , I watch it, whatever it is, move through him. And then it hardens. Calcifies. Becomes something I don't have a name for but recognize immediately as the thing that has always been the engine of his cruelty.

"Get rid of it."

The room goes very still.

"Excuse me?" My voice comes from somewhere far away.

"You heard me." He doesn't look away. "Get rid of it, Elara. Don't think for one second that this changes anything. Don't think you can use a pregnancy to manipulate your way into staying in a position you were never meant to hold." His voice is cold and even and perfectly, precisely brutal. "You are not fit to be the mother of my children. You never were."

I watch him. I watch his mouth form the words. I watch his eyes, flat and certain, watch me back.

Something inside me that I didn't even know was still alive goes quiet. Not with grief. Not with rage.

Just , quiet.

"Okay," I say.

He blinks. Just once.

"Then let's get divorced."

My voice doesn't shake. I don't know why. Maybe there's simply nothing left to shake.

I hold his gaze until he looks away first, and then I look back down at my hands, and I wait for him to leave.