Chapter 1

Lena POV

“Mom!” a little boy laughed.

My son is calling my mate’s EX his mom.

His small voice carried through the crack under the closed door of the Alpha’s office, piercing straight through my chest like an arrow. I stood there frozen, rooted in place while my hand trembled around the door knob.

The woman he called to wasn’t me. It never was. No matter how many times I pleaded and begged in my mind for that reality to be different.

A woman’s voice answered with a laugh. “Oh, sweetheart. What did I say about calling me that?”

My hand dropped from the handle and curled tightly into my palm until my nails bit crescents into my skin. I forced myself to breathe evenly, to keep quiet before I drew attention to myself that I’d been eavesdropping.

A group of wolves strode past behind me, passing me in the hallway. Their voices carried as they chatted casually.

“I can’t believe Alpha Damon invited her back.” One said.

Another responded. “Celeste? The Royalcrest princess? Of course he did. It’s good politics.”

“And because that boy, Noah, is hers, right?” A third chuckled.

“Wouldn’t surprise me.” The first continued. “Who else could it be? They were on and off again for years. Not to mention, she’s perfect mate material. A powerful bloodline. Plus, have you seen the boy? Even for a child he’s strong. He must’ve inherited it from her.”

A low laugh rippled through them all. Their footsteps faded, but the sting of their words lingered, gnawing at me.

In reality, Noah was my son. He was the tiny boy I had carried in my belly for nine months. The one I’d endured hours of agony to bring into this world.

Damon, the Obsidian Fang Pack’s Alpha, knew it, too. He knew the bond that tied me not just to Noah but to him as well. The same mate bond he denied to this day because I was his dirty little secret. The one he claimed without meaning to, linking our souls together for eternity.

Because I was an Omega, wolfless and deemed worthless in the eyes of the Pack. As punishment, I had been reduced to this: a nameless caretaker. An invisible shadow raising his heir. A glorified nanny to my own child. No one ever spared me a glance, not even in passing.

Today, it felt like a curse heavier than ever.

I held out hope for almost six years that Damon would one day reveal our bond to the Pack, and our shared child. That he would put aside the world’s prejudice against Omegas and tell everyone the truth.

But that day had never come.

No matter how many years I waited, Damon continued to cast me aside. And now that his ex was back in the picture, what little hope I had left was now completely shattered.

I caught the melody of that other voice again through the door singing. It’s soft, feminine pitch grating on my ears. She giggled in response to something Noah said, her tone bright with practiced warmth when she responded.

Celeste.

The beloved daughter of the Royalcrest Pack Alpha. Damon’s ex, his first love. The one the Pack rumored to be the mother of his child. She was everything I wasn’t: beautiful, poised, elegant, from a strong bloodline. She was the prized daughter of the Royalcrest Pack. A once lost heir now returned.

Everyone loved talking about her beautiful life’s story, tales of her once being lost but finally, after a decade of searching, reuniting with her true family to live happily ever after.

What hurt the most was that my son believed she was his long lost mother, too. Not me. And Damon continued to let him live that lie without any kind of pushback. He never cared to correct him or tell him differently. He allowed our son to believe it instead of revealing the truth that had always standing right in front of him.

I swallowed hard, blinking back the tears pricking behind my eyes.

The door next to me began to open, forcing me to retreat down the hall and disappear around one of the corners.

My back pressed hard against the wall as my heart rattled in my chest. More voices floated down the hall but this time, it wasn’t a bunch of gossiping nobodies, it was my son and his father.”

“Dad… is she really my mother?” Noah asked. “People say she is but she always tells me not to call her that.”

My heart clenched.

There was a pause that was long enough for me to force myself to fight the urge to look around the corner to check if they had walked away or not. When Damon finally responded, it was to say, “In a way. We’ll talk about it later.”

No denial, no truth, just avoidance. A weapon he wielded as easily as any blade.

My hand tightened on the lunchbox I’d brought and forgotten to drop off the moment I reached his door. I hadn’t meant to linger here, hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. I was supposed to simply deliver the food and retreat as I always did, silent and unseen. But when I’d heard Noah call Celeste mom my feet had frozen, chaining me to the spot.

Gathering what was left of my pride, I pushed myself away from the wall and turned the corner. The conversation hushed instantly, two pairs of identical eyes snapped to me.

Damon’s face dropped into a scowl. “What is it?”

I raised the lunchbox slightly, forcing a polite smile. “I brought food for Noah. His lunch.”

Neither of them moved. Damon’s gaze slid past me as though I were air while Noah ducked his head, suddenly quiet.

Suddenly, Celeste appeared in the doorway, her head tilted. “Oh, it’s you. Did you finally bring what I requested?”

Forcing another polite smile on my face, I lifted the lunchbox again and nodded. “Yes. It’s all packed.”

To my surprise, Celeste smiled, a wide and radiant one that took be back. She moved from the doorway to squeeze between Damon and Noah, brushing a hand over the boy’s head while she did.

When she grabbed the lunchbox from me, she said, “Thank you so much.”

Damon didn’t hesitate. “Don’t thank her, she’s the nanny. She’s just doing her job.”

The words hit me harder than any physical blow. I had always known what I was to him in the eyes of the Pack, but hearing him strip me down to nothing in front of our son burned like poison in my throat.

I wanted to run but my feet were locked to the floor. As much as I wanted to turn around and flee, I couldn’t leave without seeing Noah, even if it meant enduring this humiliation. It was always like this no matter how much I bent over backwards trying to give this Pack what it needed.

Damon refused to ever give me that though. Not even out of pity.

He waved both Celeste and Noah back into the room and pulled the door shut behind them, sealing them inside and away from me. My chest ached from not being able to reach out and grab my son. It had been days since the last time I saw him, even in passing.

Why did his father get off on torturing me like this?

As soon as Damon turned back to me, his expression was cold steel, lips pressed into a thin line. “Why did you come yourself? You could have sent someone else to bring his lunch to him. I don’t need you trying to insert yourself where you’re not supposed to be.”

“I—” My throat started to close, but I forced the words out anyways. “Celeste asked me to this morning. I rarely get to leave the servant quarters anyway, so I figured there was no point asking someone else to do it when I was already free.”

That was only half the truth, of course. The real reason clung to me like the trace of perfume I’d inhaled on his shirt that morning while folding his laundry. A woman’s scent, sweet and floral, clinging to the fabric where his neck had brushed.

Celeste’s perfume.

Jealousy and dread had twisted together inside me until I couldn’t bear it anymore. At the time, I had needed to see for myself, needed to know if what my heart feared was true that the rumors of her return after months of being away were actually not as unfounded as I originally hoped.

Damon’s eyes narrowed. “That still doesn’t give you the right to come here when you haven’t been assigned to take care of Noah.”

Something inside me snapped. All the years of silence, of lowering my head, of hoping one day he’d look at me and see more than an Omega spilled out in a rush, trembling words breaking like a dam.

“Please… at least let me tell him the truth. Tell him I’m his mother. He just called someone else that today. Do you know what that does to me? To hear my son—our son—give that name to another woman?”

Tears blurred my vision.

Damon’s frown deepened, lines cutting harshly across his face. “You don’t understand anything, Lena. I have bigger things to worry about than your hurt feelings. Rogue wolf attacks have been increasing. Our Pack is vulnerable. For the safety of everyone, we need an alliance with the Royalcrest Pack and that means cooperation with Celeste’s father. This isn’t about you so stop making it that way.”

The word broke something fragile in me. Useless. As though all the nights I’d given him my body, all the mornings I’d cared for Noah, all the love I’d poured into our son meant nothing. As though the bond screaming in my soul was a lie only I could feel.

Before I could speak, the door opened once more.

Celeste peeked her head out. “Is everything okay?”