I had been in labor for eight hours. My pregnancy with twins had been a nightmare from the start, but I had endured every tear, every sharp ache, and every terrifying spell of dizziness.
I had told myself it would all be worth it. I believed that once our babies arrived, Ronan would finally see me differently.
He was my fated mate and he was also the Alpha of the Darkmoon Pack.
For years, I convinced myself that his coldness was just a temporary wall. I believed that once I officially became his Luna and gave him heirs, he would stop treating me like an embarrassment.
Instead, he had grown distant especially when Celeste arrived.
Celeste was everything I was not. She was polished, graceful, politically connected, and the daughter of a respected Beta family. She knew how to speak at Alpha gatherings, wore beautiful dresses, and understood pack politics. I was just the nameless Omega standing in his shadow.
Tonight, I desperately wanted to believe he would care.
With another contraction threatening to break my spine, I pulled out my phone and dialed his direct link. I pressed the device against my ear, holding my breath.
He answered on the fourth ring. "What is it, Yvonne?"
His voice was clipped, cold, and devoid of warmth.
"Ronan," I sobbed, gripping the leg of the delivery table. "Please. The babies are coming. It's too early, and something is wrong. I need you here."
A heavy sigh came through the speaker. "I am in the middle of an important territory negotiation. I do not have time for your drama."
"I'm in labor!" I cried out as another wave of agony hit my core. "Ronan, please!"
"I already sent my assistant to manage the hospital paperwork," he said coldly. "Do not call this line again tonight."
Before I could beg him, a faint sound drifted through the receiver. It was a woman's soft, melodic laugh.
"Ronan, darling, who is that?" Celeste's voice echoed in the background, light and sweet. "The wine is getting cold."
"Nobody," Ronan replied to her, his voice softening in a way he had never used with me.
The line went dead.
The silence that followed crushed the final piece of hope I had held onto. While I was on a cold floor fighting to bring his children into the world, he was sharing wine with the woman he had chosen to replace me.
Another contraction hit me like a physical blow. My body gave out completely, and I collapsed onto the freezing floor.
"Yvonne!" The Healer rushed toward me, catching my shoulders. "Stay with me! Do not lose consciousness!"
Darkness crept into the edges of my vision. I felt my spirit slipping away, untethering from my broken body. But then I thought of my babies. I could not die. I refused to leave them alone in a pack that already hated me.
"Help them," I whispered. "Please."
The Healer dragged me back onto the bed. Working frantically, he managed to stabilize my vitals just long enough to assist with the first delivery.
A sharp, high-pitched cry filled the room.
"It's a boy," the Healer called out.
The sound cut straight through my agony. For one precious moment, the pain vanished. I forgot Ronan, I forgot Celeste, and I forgot my pathetic standing in the pack. I was a mother.
"Wait," the Healer's voice panicked. "The second baby is in distress!"
The atmosphere in the room turned chaotic. The monitors beeped wildly as my blood pressure dropped to dangerous levels.
The second child was refusing to descend properly, trapped inside a body that was far too weak to push.
It felt as though I was being ripped apart from the inside out.
"I have to intervene manually," the Healer said, grabbing a silver medical clamp.
He worked quickly, his movements precise but rushed. During the procedure, a sharp edge sliced my skin, spilling a small stream of my blood onto the polished silver instrument.
Then, the impossible happened.
The blood on the metal did not pool dark red, it began to glow. A faint, silver-white radiance spread across the metal surface, illuminating the dark room.
The Healer froze instantly, staring at the tool in his hand.
I dragged my heavy eyelids open and glanced at the reflective metal. In the glowing silver surface, I saw my own reflection. My eyes were no longer their usual dull brown. They were burning with a vivid silver-white light.
A second later, the sensation faded, and my eyes returned to normal.
I blinked, assuming the blood loss was making me hallucinate. But the Healer did not think it was a dream.
He set the instrument down with trembling fingers and rushed to the computer terminal, pulling up my medical file.
"Omega... no record of high bloodline..." he muttered to himself, reading the screen with wide eyes. "This cannot be."
He grabbed a fresh glass slide, scooped a sample of my glowing blood, and placed it inside a specialized scanner in the corner of the room. He pressed several high-security commands, initiating an advanced bloodline examination.
Before I could ask him what he was doing, another wave of excruciating pain slammed into my lower back. I screamed into the empty room.
"Push, Yvonne! One last time!" he shouted, rushing back to my side.
I used every remaining drop of my life force. Moments later, a second cry echoed off the tile walls.
"A girl," he breathed, wrapping her quickly. "They are both alive."
They were tiny, fragile, and severely premature. The Healer placed them into incubators and pushed them toward the doors to be taken to the intensive care unit.
I stretched my trembling arm out toward the glass containers. "Let me... let me hold them..."
My hand dropped back onto the mattress, completely paralyzed by exhaustion.
I lay there in the quiet room, staring at the ceiling. I waited for Ronan.
I waited for the door to burst open. I waited for him to run in, full of regret. But he never came. He did not come after the birth, and he did not come when the nurses logged that his newborn twins had nearly died.
Tears slid down my temples, soaking into the thin hospital pillow. For the first time in my life, the truth washed over me with absolute clarity. My fated mate had never loved me.
Then, deep inside my chest, something stirred.
It was a strange, warm sensation I had never felt before... a slow, deep pulse beneath my ribs.
My dormant wolf, silent since my childhood, shifted softly in her sleep.
It felt as if she had been asleep my entire life and had finally heard something terrible enough to wake her up.
I was too weak to process it, and my eyes drifted shut.
Across the room, the bloodline scanner chimed softly, flashing a bright red warning label across the screen. The Healer walked over, grabbed the printed readout, and read the results.
His face drained of all color, and he dropped the paper in sheer horror.
The system had just matched my glowing blood to a royal lineage that had been wiped from the earth eighteen years ago.
And according to the machine, the bloodline was no longer extinct.
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