The Unwanted Mate: Her Secret White Wolf Identity

My Alpha husband stood in the hospital room, his eyes cold as ice. He wasn't there to comfort our daughter; he was there to harvest her.

"Take her essence," he commanded the doctors without a shred of hesitation. "Timothy needs the transfusion. He is the future Alpha. Your daughter is just a useless runt."

I screamed, clutching the hem of his suit, begging him to stop. I tried to tell him that our little Lily wasn't weak-she was a late bloomer because she carried the rare, powerful blood of the White Wolf.

But Jaimen didn't care. He used the Alpha Voice to paralyze me.

"I command you to silence yourself, Omega."

I was forced to stand frozen, a prisoner in my own body, as they drained my three-year-old daughter dry. She died screaming in agony, sacrificed to save Timothy, the sickly son he had with his mistress, Ivanna.

With Lily's body still warm on the bed, Jaimen looked at me with pure disgust and severed our mate bond.

"I reject you. Get this trash out of my territory."

I was dragged out to the borderlands and beaten to death in the mud, clutching a cheap locket, while he celebrated saving his "heir."

He didn't know the truth.

He didn't know that he had just murdered a prodigy to save a lie.

Three years later, he finally ran a DNA test on his beloved Timothy.

The results showed zero match to the Alpha line, but a perfect match to a filthy Rogue.

That night, the Alpha went mad.

And I watched from the afterlife as he slaughtered everyone involved, begging a ghost for forgiveness that would never come.

Chapter 1

Christeen POV:

The smell of antiseptic was usually sharp, clean. Tonight, in the Blood Moon Pack hospital, it smelled like *a grave.*

My knees hit the cold linoleum floor. The impact bruised, but I couldn't feel it. All I could feel was the terrifyingly slow rhythm of the heart monitor next to me.

"Please, Jaimen," I sobbed, my hands reaching out to grasp the hem of his expensive suit jacket. "She is too small. She hasn't even shifted yet. You can't take her essence."

Jaimen Cline, the Alpha of our pack and the man the Moon Goddess had cruelly designed for me, looked down. His eyes, usually a warm hazel, were currently frozen shards of ice. He didn't look at me. He looked at the other bed.

On that bed lay Timothy, the three-year-old boy everyone believed was his son. The boy was pale, gasping for air, his body fighting the genetic failure of his wolf spirit.

"Timothy needs the transfusion, Christeen," Jaimen said, his voice devoid of emotion. "He is the future Alpha. He is strong. Your daughter... she is a runt. She has no wolf."

"She does!" I screamed, scrambling to my feet to block the doctors from Lily's bed. My little girl was curled in a ball, her tiny thumb in her mouth, her skin translucent. She had the blood of the White Wolf in her, hidden deep, waiting to wake up. "She is just a late bloomer! If you extract her spinal essence now, it will kill her!"

Ivanna, the woman standing by Jaimen's side, let out a soft, *staged* whimper. She leaned her head on Jaimen's shoulder, her hand resting possessively on his chest.

"Oh, Jaimen," Ivanna cried, though her eyes were dry and glittering with malice as she looked at me. "She would rather let our son die than share a little bit of her useless daughter's blood. How selfish can an Omega be?"

Jaimen's jaw tightened. The air in the room suddenly became heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and burning wood-the smell of an angry Alpha.

"Move, Christeen," Jaimen growled.

"No!" I planted my feet. My inner wolf was howling, a sound of pure, terrified grief. "I won't let you murder her!"

Jaimen's eyes flashed red. He didn't raise a hand. He didn't need to. He used the one weapon I could not fight.

*"I Command you to step aside and silence yourself, Omega."*

The Alpha Voice crashed into me like a physical wave. It was absolute law. My muscles betrayed me instantly. My legs locked, forced to step to the left against my will. My vocal cords paralyzed, choking off my scream.

I stood there, a prisoner in my own body, tears streaming silently down my face as the doctors moved in.

*Dr. Evans, the pack's head physician, didn't use anesthesia. He claimed it would taint the purity of the Wolf Essence.*

They flipped my sleeping daughter onto her stomach. They strapped her down.

When the needle pierced her small spine, Lily woke up.

She screamed.

It wasn't just a child's scream. It was the sound of a soul being torn apart.

I fought the Command. I fought until blood trickled from my nose, until my capillaries burst, but I couldn't move. I could only watch as Jaimen stood there, holding Ivanna's hand, watching my daughter be drained to save a lie.

The monitor on Lily's side beeped faster. Then slower.

Then, one long, flat tone.

The silence that followed was louder than her screams.

"The extraction is complete," *Dr. Evans* said, handing a vial of glowing, silver-blue fluid to Jaimen. "But... the donor is gone."

Jaimen didn't even look at Lily's body. He handed the vial to the nurse attending to Timothy. "Save my son."

Then, he turned to me. The Command lifted, just enough for me to collapse to the floor. I crawled toward the bed, my hands shaking as I touched Lily's cooling cheek.

"You monster," I whispered, my voice broken. "You killed her."

Jaimen looked at me with pure disgust. "I did what was necessary for the pack. A weak pup for a strong heir. It is the law of the wild."

He stepped closer, his shadow engulfing me.

"I am tired of your weakness, Christeen. I am tired of your jealousy toward Ivanna. You are a stain on my legacy."

He took a deep breath, and I felt the air shift. The bond between us, that thin, golden thread that had tethered my soul to his since the first time we met, suddenly pulled taut.

"I, Jaimen Cline, Alpha of the Blood Moon Pack, reject you, Christeen Hahn, as my mate and Luna."

The pain was immediate. It felt like a serrated blade was being dragged through my chest, severing the connection to my heart. I gasped, clutching my chest, vomiting bile onto the pristine floor.

But as I looked at Lily's lifeless face, something inside me broke. The love I had for him turned into something cold and sharp.

I looked up, blood staining my teeth.

"I, Christeen Hahn," I rasped, "accept your rejection."

Snap.

The bond shattered. Jaimen stumbled back, clutching his chest, a look of shock crossing his face. He hadn't expected it to hurt him. He hadn't expected the void that followed.

"Get her out of here," Jaimen roared, trying to cover his pain with rage. "Throw her out! She is a Rogue now!"

Ivanna smiled. She signaled to the guards.

Two warriors grabbed me by the arms. I didn't fight. My soul had died on that bed with Lily.

They dragged me through the hospital corridors, out the back exit, and threw me into the mud of the borderlands.

"Don't come back, trash," one of them spat.

I lay in the rain, the cold seeping into my bones. But I wasn't alone. Ivanna hadn't just wanted me exiled.

From the shadows of the trees, five Rogues emerged. They smelled of rot and old blood. And behind them, I saw the hem of a witch's cloak-Ivanna's mother.

"Make it hurt," the witch whispered.

As the first blow landed, breaking my ribs, I didn't scream for Jaimen. I looked up at the moon, hidden behind the clouds.

*Wait for me, Lily,* I thought as the darkness took me. *Mommy is coming.*

Jaimen POV:

Three years.

It had been three years since the hospital. Three years since the silence settled over my life like a heavy, suffocating blanket.

I stood in my office, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the sprawling territory of the Blood Moon Pack. It was raining again. It always seemed to rain when my mood darkened, my Alpha pheromones affecting the very atmosphere around us.

"Alpha?"

I turned. My Gamma, Marcus, stood at the door. He looked pale, sweating.

"What is it?" I snapped. My temper had been short lately. The pack walked on eggshells around me. They whispered that I was unstable, that the lack of a mate was driving me mad.

They were wrong. I didn't need a mate. Especially not a weak, pathetic Omega like Christeen.

"It's Timothy, sir," Marcus said, his voice trembling. "He... he collapsed during training."

A growl ripped from my throat. I pushed past Marcus, striding down the hallway. The walls seemed to close in on me.

Timothy was six now. He should have been shifting. He should have been showing signs of his Alpha heritage. Instead, he was frail. The infusion of essence three years ago had bought him time, but it hadn't fixed him. *Dr. Evans had retired shortly after the procedure, bought a private island, and vanished. The new head doctor, Dr. Aris, seemed perpetually confused by the boy's physiology.*

I entered his room. Ivanna was there, weeping loudly.

"Oh, Jaimen! My poor baby!" she wailed, rushing to clutch my arm. Her scent, usually heavy with rose perfume, was sour with fear. "He needs more essence. The doctor says his levels are critically low."

I looked at the boy. He was pale, shivering. *Around his neck sat a heavy obsidian amulet Ivanna insisted he wear for 'protection against evil spirits.' It smelled faintly of sulfur, masking the boy's natural scent entirely.*

"We don't have a donor," I said, my voice grinding like stones. "The last one..."

I stopped. The memory of Lily's small, lifeless hand flashed in my mind. I pushed it away. She was a runt. It was a necessary sacrifice.

"Christeen," Ivanna whispered. "She has the same blood markers as Lily did. If we find her... she could save him."

Christeen.

The name caused a phantom pain in my chest, right where the mate bond used to be. It was a dull, aching void that never went away. I told myself it was just the annoyance of an unfinished task.

"She ran away," I growled, pacing the room. "She severed the bond out of spite and fled to the Rogue lands. She's probably whoring herself out to some Rogue King by now."

"We have to find her, Jaimen," Ivanna pleaded. "Use the Mind-Link. Force her to answer. You are her Alpha. She cannot ignore a direct command forever."

I clenched my fists. I had tried. For three years, on sleepless nights, I had reached out into the mental void.

*Christeen.*

Nothing. Just static. A cold, empty silence that felt like standing on the edge of a grave.

"Gamma!" I barked.

Marcus appeared instantly.

"Send out the trackers. Expand the search radius to the neighboring territories. Put a bounty on her head. I want Christeen Hahn found. Alive."

"Yes, Alpha."

As they left, I stayed in the room. The air felt unnaturally cold. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

I spun around. "Who's there?"

The room was empty. But for a second, just a split second, I smelled something.

Wildflowers and rain. Christeen's scent.

But it was wrong. It didn't smell warm and alive. It smelled like frozen earth and ozone.

"You can't hide from me, Christeen," I whispered to the empty air, my voice dripping with a mix of hatred and desperation. "When I find you, I will make you pay for abandoning your pack."

The lights flickered. A cold draft swept through the sealed room, extinguishing the candles on the mantle.

I shivered. It felt like someone had just walked through my soul with icy feet.

Jaimen POV:

The waiting was the worst part. My wolf paced inside my mind, scratching at the walls of my consciousness. He was agitated, howling at nothing.

*She is near,* my wolf growled. *But she is... wrong.*

"Shut up," I muttered, rubbing my temples.

The door to my office burst open. It was Marcus again. But this time, he didn't look nervous. He looked terrified. His face was the color of ash. He fell to his knees as soon as he entered, baring his neck in submission.

"Alpha," he choked out.

"Did you find her?" I demanded, standing up. My chair scraped loudly against the floor. "Where is she? Is she in the dungeons?"

Ivanna, who had been lounging on the sofa filing her nails, sat up, her eyes gleaming. "Did you bring the bitch back?"

Marcus didn't answer Ivanna. He couldn't take his eyes off the floor.

"Speak!" I used the Alpha Voice. It cracked like a whip in the room.

"We... we tracked her scent, Alpha," Marcus stammered. "It led us to the Dead Lands. The Rogue territory near the old sulfur mines."

"And?"

"We found... we found traces of her."

"Stop speaking in riddles!" I slammed my hand on the desk, cracking the mahogany. "Bring her in!"

Marcus reached into his jacket pocket. His hands were shaking so badly he almost dropped the object. He placed a plastic evidence bag on my desk.

Inside was a necklace. A cheap, silver locket.

I froze. I knew that locket. I had given it to Christeen when we were teenagers, before I became Alpha, before I let power and Ivanna poison my mind.

"She... she dropped it?" I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.

"No, Alpha," Marcus whispered. Tears were leaking from his eyes now. "We found it... on the body."

The world stopped. The silence in the room was deafening.

"Body?" Ivanna asked, her voice shrill. "What do you mean, body? She can't be dead! Timothy needs her!"

I couldn't hear Ivanna. I could only hear the rushing of blood in my ears.

"You're lying," I said. It was a low growl. "She faked it. She put the necklace on a corpse to throw us off. She is hiding!"

"Alpha..." Marcus pulled out a file folder. It was stamped with the seal of the Werewolf Council's forensic unit. "We found skeletal remains. They were in a ditch, buried under three years of muck. The... the dental records match. The DNA matches."

He pushed the file toward me.

I stared at it. I didn't want to touch it. If I touched it, it became real.

"Read it," I commanded, my voice barely audible.

Marcus swallowed hard. He opened the file.

"Subject: Christeen Hahn. Estimated time of death: Three years ago. Cause of death: Blunt force trauma, multiple fractures, and... silver poisoning."

Three years ago.

The day I rejected her. The day Lily died.

"No," I said. I shook my head, backing away from the desk. "No. If she died, I would have known. The bond... I would have felt the mate bond snap completely."

"You did, Alpha," Marcus said softly. "You collapsed three years ago. You said... you said she severed it."

The memory hit me like a freight train. The pain. The vomiting. The emptiness. I had convinced myself she had done it out of spite. I had convinced myself she was alive, somewhere, hating me.

Because the alternative... the alternative was that I had sent my mate out to die.

"She's dead?" Ivanna screeched. "That useless bitch is dead? What about my son? What about the essence?"

For the first time in years, Ivanna's voice didn't sound like music to me. It sounded like screeching tires.

"Get out," I whispered.

"Jaimen, we need to find another way-"

"GET OUT!" I roared. The force of my voice shattered the windows. Glass rained down on the carpet.

Ivanna shrieked and ran. Marcus scrambled out backward.

I was alone.

I looked at the plastic bag. I reached out, my fingers trembling, and picked up the locket. It was cold. So cold.

And then I felt it again. That draft. That icy touch on the back of my neck.

I looked up at the ceiling, my eyes wild.

"Christeen?" I choked out.

There was no answer. But on the foggy glass of the broken window, a word appeared, traced by an invisible finger.

*MURDERER.*