He Chose The Rogue Over His Fated Mate

I lay on the cold steel operating table, enduring the agonizing Bloodline Breeding Ritual without anesthesia.

As a supposedly weak Omega, having my life essence extracted was the only way to give my Alpha mate, Rowan, a pureblood heir.

The Healer warned that my essence would expire in twenty-four hours if Rowan didn't inject his blood into it.

But my mind-link was blocked, and I waited in the empty clinic all night.

When he finally showed up twenty-five hours later, he casually dismissed my suffering and told me we would just do the ritual again next month.

He reeked of cheap floral perfume, a scent belonging to his former rogue lover, Serena.

Soon after, Serena barged into my home using a passcode Rowan gave her, and threw a positive pregnancy test onto my coffee table.

She sneered that she was carrying his heir, mocking the childhood trauma I had only ever confided in my husband.

Rowan panicked, but instead of defending me, he proposed a vile compromise.

"We will take the pup and raise it as our own. You will remain the Luna, and no one needs to know."

I had sacrificed the marrow of my bones for this man, while he was in a hotel bed promising my title to a rogue.

Looking at his terrified, cowardly face, I didn't cry or beg.

I pulled out a thick stack of papers and threw them onto the table.

"I want a complete severance of the mate bond. And I am taking half of this territory's wealth."

Chapter 1

Aria POV

The cold of the steel operating table seeped through the thin cambric of my gown.

My gaze traced the gothic arches of the Pack Healer Clinic's ceiling, my hands gripping the table's edges until the knuckles shone white.

The air carried a sharp scent of sterile alcohol mingled with ancient, earthy herbs.

"Hold still, Luna Aria," the old Healer murmured. Her hands, shimmering with a faint, silver luminescence, paused above my abdomen. She drew back with a frown. "Your essence... it scorches. Brighter than any Omega I have ever touched. It is almost a conflagration." But then she shook her head, dismissing the anomaly as a side effect of the ritual's intensity, and resumed her chant.

I bit my lip so hard that the taste of copper filled my mouth.

This was the Bloodline Breeding Ritual, an ancient and agonizing magic used to extract the life essence from an Omega like me.

The ritual had been designed in the old times, when Alpha blood was needed to stabilize the volatile Omega essence-without it, the merged essence would decay within a single lunar cycle. It was the only way, the Healers said, to ensure a pureblood heir.

Because my wolf blood was supposedly weak, it was the only way to ensure I could bear a pureblood heir for the Pack.

The Pack was everything to us, our family, our government, and our survival in this modern world.

And the Alpha and Luna were the father and mother of that massive family.

I was supposed to be their mother, but my body was failing them.

The Healer chanted in a forgotten language, and a pulling sensation took root deep in my abdomen.

It did not feel like a sharp cut.

It felt like a forest fire was slowly burning through my veins, consuming my energy, my warmth, and the very marrow of my being.

I gasped, tears streaming down my face, searching the empty room for him.

Rowan.

My Alpha. My husband. My Fated Mate.

The Moon Goddess was said to have wired our very nervous systems together, promising us a lifetime of quietude and completeness.

Just this morning, through our Mind-Link, he had promised me.

I will be right back, Aria. I just need to fetch the defense runes from the manor.

His deep, rumbling voice in my mind had been my only comfort.

But that was three hours ago.

The Healer pulled her hands away, holding a small glass vial filled with a glowing, golden liquid.

My life essence.

I collapsed back onto the table, panting, my body shivering violently from the cold and the exhaustion.

"It is done," the Healer said, her voice heavy with warning. "But Luna, this essence only holds its magical vitality for twenty-four hours."

I nodded weakly, trying to catch my breath.

"The Alpha must inject his blood into this vial before the time runs out, or your suffering today will be for nothing," she added, placing the vial in a temperature-controlled safe.

I closed my eyes and reached out through the Mind-Link, the telepathic bridge that connected me to Rowan.

Rowan? The ritual is over. Where are you?

I waited for the familiar warmth of his mind to touch mine.

Instead, my consciousness struck a solid wall of static, a void where his warmth should have been.

My breath hitched.

He had blocked me.

An Alpha could shut out their mate, a cruel display of power that left the other half feeling deaf, blind, and utterly abandoned in the dark.

My inner wolf, a creature of quietude and deference, began to claw at the inside of my skull, frantic at the sudden, inexplicable barrier.

I dragged my aching body off the table, dressing in slow, painful movements.

I walked out into the cold, empty corridor of the clinic and sat on a hard plastic chair.

The sun outside the narrow windows began to set, casting long, lonely shadows across the floor.

I waited.

I watched the clock tick past midnight.

The night shift Healer walked by, giving me a look of deep pity.

"Luna Aria, you should go home and rest. He is not coming tonight," she said gently.

"He is," I whispered, my voice trembling. "He promised."

She sighed and walked away, leaving me drowning in the silence.

To distract myself from the gnawing panic in my chest, I pulled out my phone.

I opened the Pack's hidden social network, a secure app where our wealthy, modern werewolf society shared their lives.

My thumb froze on the screen.

It was a photo posted by Serena, a female wolf from our Pack.

She was Rowan's first love, a woman who had been demoted to the very edge of becoming a Rogue-a feral, packless wolf-due to her past mistakes.

The photo was taken in a high-end human hotel room.

Serena was wearing a silk robe, leaning against Rowan's broad chest.

Rowan was asleep, his face relaxed, his heavy arm draped over her waist.

The screen's glaring backlight made my eyeballs ache with dryness, the pixels of the photograph bleeding into a meaningless smear of colour upon my retinas.

Even through the digital image, I could almost smell it.

The cheap, overpowering floral perfume she used to mask the sour, unwashed scent of a Rogue.

It was mixing with Rowan's scent, a scent that was supposed to belong only to me.

The unique aroma of a snowstorm mixed with wild berries.

A wave of bile rose in my throat, and I clamped a hand over my mouth, the muscles of my abdomen contracting violently.

I sat in that plastic chair as the sun rose, the golden light a cruel mockery of the profound stillness that had taken root in my chest.

I kept my eyes fixed upon that digital effigy of my ruin until the phone's screen went dark, its life expiring before my vigil did.

With every passing hour, the desperate love I held for my mate slowly turned to ash.

Twenty-five hours later, the clinic doors finally swung open.

Rowan walked in, wearing a crisp, expensive business suit, looking every inch the billionaire CEO he was in the human world.

But my wolf senses picked up the truth immediately.

He reeked of her.

He walked up to me, running a hand through his thick, dark hair, looking mildly annoyed.

"Sorry, Aria. Things got complicated at the manor," he said, loosening the knot of his silk tie, his tone possessing the unthinking ease of a man discussing the weather.

I looked up at him, my eyes dry and hollow.

"The essence," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "It expired an hour ago."

Rowan sighed, waving his hand dismissively as if I had just told him we missed a dinner reservation.

"It's of no consequence. You needn't be so dramatic," he said, a flicker of impatience in his gaze. "We shall simply perform the ritual again at the next full moon."

I stared at the man I had loved for five years-the man whose heir I had just endured agony to conceive-and realized he had not even bothered to check the time. The vial had expired. My suffering had been for nothing. And he did not care. Somewhere in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the last ember of my love for Rowan Blackwood flickered, guttered, and went dark.