Rejected by My Fated Mate: The Billionaire Princess

Aria Hayes POV:

"Push harder, Zack! Right there!"

The muffled moan slipped through the crack of the office door, making me freeze.

My fingers, hooked around the satin ribbon of the bakery box, locked tight. Inside rested a lemon cheesecake, fresh from the oven and still warm, baked to celebrate Lockwood Industries preparing to go public. For five years, I had toiled through sleepless nights in our damp basement workshop, breathing in gemstone dust and carving master mold after master mold, believing every drop of sweat was building our future.

Now, eight months pregnant, I stood outside his top-floor executive suite, my swollen belly brushing the cold mahogany door. Through the narrow gap came the heavy scent of wild orchids - Vivian White, my best friend.

"Zack, did you hear? The Sterling family has started searching for their missing daughter again," Vivian said softly. "They say she has slightly pointed ears. If I were their daughter, I could help you get into their circle. Just imagine what that would do for Lockwood Industries."

"Don't be ridiculous," Zack replied with a low chuckle. "You're already the woman standing beside me. You don't need some missing heiress's identity to prove your worth."

Vivian laughed softly. "Still, those pointed ears are such a strange clue. If some nobody suddenly claimed to be the Sterling heiress just because she had them, she'd only be a fake. The real Sterling daughter could never be someone like that."

A sharp contraction seized my lower abdomen, making my knees wobble. I steadied myself against the door and pushed it open.

Behind the sprawling Italian marble desk, Zack sat with his dress shirt torn open, his neck flushed red. Vivian was straddling his lap, her emerald silk dress bunched around her thighs, her fingers tangled in his dark hair. Zack's hands rested on her bare legs.

The ribbon slipped from my grasp.

The box hit the hardwood floor with a dull thud, splitting open. Lemon curd, whipped cream, and golden crust splattered across the polished floorboards.

Zack's head snapped up. A flicker of panic crossed his dark eyes, but it dissolved into an icy, irritated scowl. He did not push Vivian off; he simply began buttoning his cuffs with deliberate calm.

Vivian turned her head, resting her chin on Zack's shoulder, and gave me a smug, triumphant smile.

"What... what are you doing?" The words tore from my dry throat.

"As you can see," Zack said, his tone flat and cold. "You should have knocked, Aria. You have no manners at all."

Vivian slid off his lap with practiced grace and smoothed the folds of her dress. Her high heels clicked against the floor, stopping inches away from me. Her gaze raked over my swollen ankles, my oversized cotton sweater, and the dark circles beneath my eyes.

"Look at yourself, Aria," she purred, dripping with condescension. "A bloated, exhausted mess. Did you really think an Alpha CEO like Zack would stay tied to a woman who smells of wet clay and polishing paste?"

A sharp pain tore through my lower abdomen. I clutched the door frame with white knuckles to stay upright.

"Zack... the baby," cold sweat beaded on my forehead. "Our baby... our five years..."

"Baby?" Zack let out a harsh scoff. He rose from his chair, towering over me as if looking at a stray dog. "I never wanted that burden. As for your little jewelry sketches, I've already squeezed them dry."

He yanked open a desk drawer and slammed a thick stack of documents onto the marble surface.

"Look closely. These are the copyright assignment agreements for every one of your original designs. Every corporate document you signed included terms transferring full ownership to Lockwood Industries. From this second on, you have no claim to this company, and no place in this pack."

My vision blurred. I remembered the late nights when he kissed my cheek, handed me a pen, and told me he was taking care of the tedious legal paperwork so I could rest. Now I understood what those papers had really been for.

Vivian crouched beside the ruined cake. She extended a manicured nail, scooped up a dab of lemon cream, and wiped it onto a silk handkerchief.

"You're pathetic, Aria," she whispered, stepping closer. "Look at you. You're nothing but a wolfless orphan with nothing to your name. Did you really think a man like Zack would waste his life on someone like you? Nobody wants you."

My hand instinctively rose toward my hair. I had hidden the pointed tips of my ears since childhood, especially after years of moving between foster homes. Now Vivian had noticed them too.

The contraction in my lower abdomen peaked into agony. My legs gave out, and my knees slammed into the hard floor.

Zack did not spare me a single glance. He picked up the desk phone, his expression completely blank.

"Security? There is a corporate spy on the executive floor stealing core blueprints. Detain her immediately and hand her over to the police."

"Zack... please..."

The heavy oak doors were shoved open. Two burly security guards marched in, their hands locking around my arms like iron clamps before hauling me off the ground.

I struggled, but my heavy body had no strength left to resist. My shoes dragged against the polished floorboards, leaving scuffs behind. As the elevator doors slid shut, I saw Zack wrap his arm around Vivian's waist, his gaze cold and indifferent.

Vivian met my eyes through the closing gap. Her red lips parted to mouth silent words: Thank you for the designs. And thank you for the man.

The cold bite of metal handcuffs clicked around my swollen wrists. Police sirens wailed through the downtown streets, drowning out my ragged breathing.

At the city detention center, no one listened to my protests. They booked me under felony charges of corporate espionage and grand larceny. They stripped away my coat, shoved me into a freezing holding cell, and slammed the heavy iron bars shut.

I slid down against the damp concrete wall, shivering violently. Inside my belly, the baby kicked with panicked, erratic thumps.

My hands trembled as I pressed them against the firm curve of my stomach. I couldn't die here. My child needed me to survive.

Zack had stolen the paper blueprints, but he could never take the gemstone ratios, the heat-treatment formulas, or the craftsmanship I had spent years mastering. The moment I walked out of those gates, I would take back everything he had built on my work, piece by piece.

Ray Sterling POV:

The damp chill of the municipal detention center usually never bothered me, but tonight, a strange restlessness kept me on edge.

I sat behind the steel desk in the warden's administrative office, smoothing the front of my captain's uniform. As the newly transferred head of this district's enforcement sector, I was clearing the intake logs, checking that the local cells held no unregistered shifters.

A woman's ragged scream echoed down the concrete corridor outside.

"Officer! Please... call someone... I'm in labor!"

"Shut it, inmate 4092!" a guard barked from the central catwalk, followed by the clang of a baton against steel bars. "Every petty thief suddenly goes into labor the second the lock turns! Stay quiet until morning arraignment!"

A sharp prickle crawled up my neck. I flipped through the stack of intake folders, tossing aside drunk drivers and brawlers, until a manila folder stopped my hand.

Aria Hayes. Charge: Corporate Espionage. Complainant: Lockwood Industries.

I opened the file to the intake photograph. The woman in the picture was pale, dark hair plastered to her temple with sweat, her eyes hollow with exhaustion.

My breath caught.

Beneath the damp strands of dark brown hair, the tips of her ears curled upward into a delicate, unmistakably defined point-a physical trait unique to one bloodline across this continent.

The Sterling royal family.

My hand jerked so hard that hot black coffee sloshed over my fingers, scalding my skin, but I hardly noticed. My heart slammed against my ribs with brutal force.

Twenty-three years ago, our pack cradle was raided, and my newborn baby sister was stolen during the chaos. For decades, our parents had searched through human orphanages and border settlements, consumed by grief.

I scanned the rest of the sheet: Orphan. No known family. Profession: Lead Jewelry Artisan.

At the bottom, stamped in red ink: Subject is approximately eight months pregnant.

I slammed my palm down, cracking the desk's laminated wood across the middle, and snatched up my encrypted satellite communicator to dial forensics.

"Authorize maximum emergency clearance under my Alpha-line authority," I snapped into the receiver. "Locate the intake swab for inmate Aria Hayes in the bio-vault. Run a prioritized genomic match against the primary Sterling royal registry. I want results in two minutes, or someone will pay with their badge!"

I slammed the communicator down, lunged around the desk, and seized the desk sergeant by his collar, lifting him clean off the floor.

"Take me to cell block C," I growled. "Right now!"

We sprinted down the hallway. The metallic air carried the unmistakable scent of copper and amniotic fluid.

A piercing shriek tore through the corridor, followed by the wet splash of water hitting stone.

"Captain!" the sergeant stammered, his face turning paper-white. "Her water broke... she's delivering!"

Curled on the grease-stained cot inside cell 104 was the woman from the photo. Her fingers clawed into the damp plaster of the wall, her knuckles raw and scraped. Her spine arched in the grip of a violent contraction, her teeth sinking into her lower lip until crimson trickled down her chin.

"Out of the way!" I roared, kicking the iron gate with enough force to snap the heavy steel latch clean off. "Clear the entire corridor! Move the emergency medical unit inside! Prepare the detention facility's clinic into a sterile delivery room right now!"

I dropped to my knees on the filthy floor beside the cot. Up close, the distinct crescent birthmark behind her pointed ear was unmistakable.

Her dark eyes fluttered open, glazed with fever and pain, staring at my uniform in terror.

"Please..." she whispered, her voice a broken rasp. "Don't... don't hurt them... please..."

Before I could speak, my tactical phone vibrated against my chest. I pulled it out and hit speaker.

"Captain Sterling!" the chief medical officer shouted over the line, his voice shaking with disbelief. "It's a one-hundred-percent match! Chromosomal alignment, genetic markers-she is the lost princess! She is your sister!"

A hot tear spilled over my lashes, cutting a track down my cheek.

I dropped the phone, slid my broad hand over her cold, bloodied fingers, and gripped them with careful gentleness.

"Hold on, little sister," I said, my voice thick with years of sorrow. "Your brother is here."

Her eyes widened in shock, confusion mingling with the agony tearing through her frame. "Brother...?"

"Medical team, lift her!" I commanded.

Paramedics wheeled a sterile gurney into the cell. I helped lift her trembling body onto the mattress, keeping my hand locked around hers until the team rushed her down the hall and through the double doors of the sanitized infirmary.

The red emergency light above the clinic clicked on.

Outside the closed doors, I stood in the corridor, my chest heaving. With shaking fingers, I dialed the priority Sterling family satellite link, patched directly into the main estate.

The line connected on the first ring.

"Ray?" my father's deep, authoritative voice came through, flanked by the voices of my mother, my eldest brother Julian, and our younger brother Ethan. "What happened? You used the red-tier priority channel."

"Dad. Mom," I choked out, gripping the receiver until the casing creaked. "Julian, Ethan... listen to me. I found her."

The line went dead silent.

"What did you say?" my mother gasped, her voice trembling.

"Cell Block C of the municipal sector," I said, stepping toward the glass partition of the clinic. "Aria. She has the royal ear tips and the crescent mark. The forensic DNA match just came back one hundred percent. She is our sister."

A sob tore from my mother on the other end, followed by the sound of Julian's chair crashing to the floor and Ethan shouting for our private air fleet to mobilize.

The Sterling family was the wealthiest dynasty across the entire continent, controlling an empire of rare gemstone mining and master jewelry design. For twenty-three years, our vast fortune had meant little compared to the ache of losing the only daughter in our family. None of us ever imagined we would finally find our missing sister locked inside a freezing cell, framed on false charges and suffering alone.

"Lock down the entire district," Julian's icy voice cut in, cold fury vibrating through the speaker. "The private jets are taking off now. We'll be there in twenty minutes."

"Hurry," I murmured. "She's in labor. She's giving birth right now."

I cut the call and turned back toward the doors.

Inside the sterile room, the monitoring alarms suddenly peaked, followed by a sharp, piercing cry that cut through the silence of the corridor.

The double doors cracked open, and the lead doctor stepped out, sweating but smiling broadly.

"Captain Sterling! The first baby is delivered-a healthy boy!"

Before I could answer, a second, furious wail echoed through the glass.

"And the second is here! A baby girl! It's twins!"

Two new heirs to the richest jewelry dynasty in the realm had just arrived into the world, and every debt owed to their mother was about to be collected in full.

Aria Hayes POV:

The high-pitched wails of my newborn babies pierced the sterile room, cutting through the haze in my mind.

Exhaustion pinned me to the gurney, my muscles trembling with every shallow breath. I turned my head on the thin pillow, desperate for a look.

A nurse stepped forward holding two swaddled bundles in white cloth-a boy and a girl. Their tiny faces were flushed red, their delicate features carrying a faint trace of the man who had cast me aside.

A sharp sting tightened in my heart, but a deep voice sliced through the pain.

"Vital signs are stable," Ray commanded, his tall frame cutting a sharp silhouette against the doorway. "Prepare the transport enclosures. We move in five minutes."

"Transfer?" I rasped, my throat raw. "Where...?"

Ray immediately dropped to one knee beside my gurney. The stern authority in his expression softened completely. He took a warm, damp cloth from a tray and gently wiped the cold sweat from my forehead.

"We are going home, Aria," he said softly. "Mom and Dad are on the family jet right now. Ethan, your oldest brother, and Seth, your third brother, will be landing within the hour."

Mom? Dad? Brothers?

I had brothers? Ethan, the eldest, Seth, the third... and Ray, the brother standing beside me now. And somehow, I was the second child they had spent twenty-three years searching for.

For twenty-three years, I had bounced between cold foster homes, scraping by on stale bread and discarded carving tools. The thought of having a real family felt like a fever dream.

Before I could speak, Ray's tactical communicator chimed with an encrypted incoming video call. He tapped the screen and activated the video, holding it where I could hear the conversation clearly.

A woman's voice burst through the speaker, breathless and trembling with tears. "Ray! Is she breathing? Is my baby girl safe? Arthur, hold me..."

"Grace, take a breath," a deep, steady voice answered from the other end, thick with restrained emotion. "Our son has her."

Ray turned the communicator toward himself, his jaw set as he held back his own tears. "Mom, Dad, she's safe. Aria just delivered healthy twins-a boy and a girl. We are airlifting them to St. Hope right now."

Hot tears spilled down my temples. That frantic, desperate maternal voice belonged to my mother.

Two nurses carefully shifted me onto a mobile bed lined with thick, heated cashmere blankets. On either side, clear acrylic infant incubators were secured, allowing me to rest my fingertips against the glass, inches from my sleeping babies.

"Clear the corridor!" Ray barked as the team wheeled my bed outward.

We moved through the central hallway of the detention facility. The same guards who had mocked me hours earlier now stood pinned against the concrete walls, their heads bowed low, their faces pale with dread. They had finally realized the pregnant inmate they had thrown into a cell was the daughter of the most powerful dynasty in the country.

The heavy steel exit doors swung open, letting in the cool morning air.

Parked in the courtyard was a matte-black medical helicopter, its twin rotors whipping up a rush of wind. Flanking the aircraft stood two dozen private tactical guards in black suits, their earpieces catching the dawn light.

Ray kept one hand firmly over mine as the medics loaded my bed into the quiet, pressurized cabin.

As the landing gear lifted from the concrete, I glanced out the window. The detention center shrank into a tiny gray box against the city skyline.

Ray sat on the jump seat beside me and opened a thermal flask. He held a straw to my cracked lips, offering a warm sip of sweet elderberry and honey.

"Drink, Aria. It will help your strength." He reached into his uniform pocket and drew out a silver-edged leather wallet. "Your real name is Aria Sterling. Twenty-three years ago, our pack's maternity clinic was breached during an attack. You were taken from us. We searched the entire continent, and we never stopped."

Sterling.

Vivian's mocking sneer flashed across my memory: Did you honestly believe that having slightly pointed ears meant you were the long-lost Sterling daughter?

I was no gutter orphan. I was the blood daughter of the Sterling dynasty-the family that commanded the global trade of rare gemstone mining and master jewelry design.

Ray unfolded a weathered photograph and held it up.

A radiant woman with silver-streaked dark hair smiled back from the paper, cradling an infant in her arms. The baby's ears had the exact same pointed tips as mine, and the woman's face was an older mirror of my own.

"This was taken three days before you disappeared," Ray murmured, swallowing hard. "Mom never took off your baby bracelet."

I looked at the incubators beside me. My son and daughter slept quietly, their tiny chests rising and falling in rhythm.

A cold, steady resolve hardened in my heart.

Zack had treated me like a stray he could exploit, rob, and leave to rot in chains. He had stolen my sketches and my years of labor, blind to the fact that the woman he threw away belonged to an empire that could reduce him to nothing with a single word.

The helicopter banked, descending toward the rooftop helipad of St. Hope Hospital, where a specialized team in crisp white coats stood waiting behind the perimeter.