Page 16 of The Fated Hunter Wolf
Pregnant.
The word kept ricocheting around my skull like a bullet looking for vital organs. Six years since we’d heard a baby’s cry in Orion territory. Six fucking years of empty nurseries and shattered dreams, of pack members staring at their mates likethey’d never be able to start a family, of hope dying a little more each month.
Once upon a time, the Orions didn’t just lead a pack—we commanded an empire. Multiple sub-packs spread across territories that stretched from mountain peaks to coastal shores, each with its own alpha who answered to our Great Alpha. We were the heart that pumped life through all the Shadow Moon packs, the law that kept order, the strength that protected the weak.
Other packs sent tribute. Begged for alliances. Traveled hundreds of miles just to petition for our wisdom.
Now we were a cautionary tale whispered around distant campfires.
The Great Separation had gutted us. Within a few generations, it had carved out everything that made us legendary and left us scrambling to hold on to scraps. Logan’s victory over Grayson should have been our resurrection story—the moment the mighty Orions reclaimed their birthright. Instead, it had felt like winning a single battle while the real war continued to rage on around us.
Yesterday’s brawl between pack members had put Blair in the hospital three doors down, proof we were still bleeding internally. Heraclids and Orions trying to coexist, old grudges simmering beneath forced smiles. Peace held together with duct tape and bandages.
The other Shadow Moon packs weren’t exactly lining up to kiss our rings. Hard to command respect when you could barely keep your own wolves from tearing each other’s throats out.
We’d tried everything short of sacrificing goats to the Shadow Moon Goddess. Rituals that left us drained and disappointed, offerings that vanished into smoke without delivering miracles—precious metals, first hunts, even blood from our own veins poured onto ancient stones.
Some desperate souls had crawled to witches, trading pride for promises that turned to nothing the moment coins changed hands. I’d watched grown men return from those encounters looking hollow, knowing they’d been played.
The whispers had started in earnest a few years after the Great Separation, but had gotten worse when our parents were killed.The Goddess has truly abandoned us. Like we’re cursed.Pack members would stop talking when Logan entered a room, their conversations dying like snuffed candles.
Turned out, the whispers were right about the cursed part. Leave it to that cryptic bitch Mariyah to give us a name for our slow extinction.Curse.Our bloodline was withering on the vine, every generation producing fewer pups. Bonds that should have been unbreakable snapped like overloaded cables.
The Great Separation hadn’t just shattered pack alliances—it had ripped something essential out of our DNA. Alphas dying young or losing their minds to the kind of feral madness that left them nothing but monsters wearing familiar faces. Everything our ancestors built, crumbling to dust while we watched, helpless as children. Then the curse that made Orion wither to an almost forgotten and lost pack.
But if Eve had conceived…
“Why didn’t you tell me?” It sounded more accusing than I meant it to be.
Logan kept his face buried in his hands as if he could hide from reality. “Because I didn’t know. Neither of us did.”
“How did younot know—” I stopped myself. Even if the human didn’t want to accept that a pregnancy had a occurred, the wolf always knew. Logan and Eve were our alphas—more than anyone, they’d have known almost from the moment of conception. That’s the way it had always been. Though I shouldn’t have been surprised, since nothing about our situation followed normal rules anymore.
“She said it felt like someone whispering a secret into her visions, a sense that the child was there, then it was snatched back before she could understand the words.” His voice cracked like breaking glass. “Like the pregnancy was there and then gone.”
Something crashed, the sound echoing down the hallway. We both went rigid, predator instincts flaring, but silence swallowed the sound. Just us, trapped in this whitewashed purgatory while the most important person in my brother’s world fought battles we couldn’t reach.
I studied Logan’s profile, noting the new lines around his eyes, the way his shoulders carried a weight that hadn’t been there six months ago. Being alpha had always been Logan’s destiny, but he’d inherited a broken crown and a dying kingdom. Every day was a balancing act between holding together what remained and somehow building toward a future that seemed increasingly impossible.
And now this. Eve, his fated mate, his anchor in the storm—experiencing something none of us understood.
If we lost her…
I shoved the thought away before it could take root. Logan needed me, his beta, to be strong, not spiraling into catastrophic scenarios.
The door opened, cutting through my thoughts. Anwen drifted in like an ancient oracle, all jingling jewelry and layered fabrics that seemed to contain stories from a dozen different eras. Raina followed, her practical energy so different from Anwen’s mystical vibe that they might have been from different species entirely.
Logan exploded out of his chair before they’d crossed the threshold.
“How is she?” The words detonated from his chest. “Tell me everything, and don’t you dare cushion it with pretty lies.”
Anwen blinked at the raw desperation bleeding through his alpha mask, but she didn’t retreat. Good for her. Lesser wolves had cowered when faced with Logan at full intensity, but this Heraclid elder held her ground.
Raina radiated her particular brand of elder authority that could make grown wolves sit and behave. “She’s stable,” she said. “Logan, she wasn’t pregnant. Not in any conventional sense.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Logan’s hands fisted in his hair like he could physically tear the confusion out of his skull. “Are you calling her a liar?”
I rose to my feet, one hand clamping down on his shoulder. My wolf recognized the warning signs—his control shredding, his alpha instincts screaming at him to tear apart whatever threatened his mate. The problem was, you couldn’t fight phantom pregnancies with teeth and claws.
