Surprise! My Alpha Mate’s Secret Pups Were Never HIS Chapter 09
“Magnus. Am I your backup plan? Your convenience? You can’t get cheated, lose the pups, and then come crawling back to me.”
“I’m not something you just pick up when it’s convenient. What makes you think you have any right to talk to me about having pups now?”
Magnus’s face went white. He backed out of the command tent.
I didn’t need him to explain.
In the beginning, maybe it was just a stupid mistake. But feelings grow. That’s how it works. You don’t care at first, then days turn into years, and suddenly they’re “your” pups.
But a heart can only take so much.
After that, Magnus parked himself at an abandoned border watchtower. He showed up every day with toys for Elva. Dried meat. New grooming brushes.
Elva took one look. Put her hands behind her back. Voice loud and clear.
“My mom buys me stuff. My mom doesn’t like you. So I don’t want your things. Take them away.”
She turned her head and flashed her little fangs.
Magnus stood there, awkward, and followed Elva over to me.
I took Elva’s hand and walked around him. “Go back. Ironfang Pack doesn’t need you.”
Magnus trailed behind me, steps quick and restless. “Sigrid, look—I made a new Bonding tapestry. I redid the den the way you always liked it. And I got three off-road vehicles. Pick whichever one you want.”
I glanced at him. Didn’t say a word.
His voice dropped lower and lower, like a pup who’d done something wrong. Thick with tears. “Sigrid, I regret everything. I never should’ve hurt you.”
He stared at my face. “If we’d had pups back then… would we have ended up here? Would you forgive me?”
I looked at him. No expression. Took Elva’s hand and walked past him, back into the territory.
Behind me, a long, low whimper.
A month later, Elara called. Aldric was failing. Heart failure. The healer said he had days. Magnus crouched outside my command tent. Eyes pleading.
“Sigrid. Come back with me. My father doesn’t have much time.”
I flipped through border patrol logs without looking up. “You go. He never liked me anyway. He won’t want me there.”
Magnus’s eyes were red. He didn’t blink. “Sigrid. Can you really walk away from twenty years of bonding? Is there really no going back?”
I closed the log. “Magnus. The Bond is broken. We’re done. Live your life. I’ll live mine.”
“Sigrid. I know I messed up. I can’t let you go.”
He left with red eyes.
I’m not cold. I’m just done living that way. Being someone’s Luna. Someone’s accessory. The “barren she-wolf” the whole Pack whispered about.
From now on, I’m my own Alpha.
A week later, Aldric died. Magnus handled the funeral alone.
Not long after, he transferred all of Nightshade Pack’s territory rights, mining contracts, hunting grounds—everything—into my name. A massive fortune.
I looked at the number on my phone. Didn’t send it back. I earned every bit of it with my own blood.
I donated it all to Ironfang Pack’s orphan dens. And the border camps that took in stray pups.
I didn’t want another Elva starving in an alley.
Word came later that Freya got a hundred silver lashes and was exiled. No Pack was allowed to take her in.
Her rogue lover had already disappeared. Kael and Iris ended up in a border orphan camp.
Magnus vanished. Some said he went to Veridian Pack. Others said rival Packs got him.
Only a few border patrol wolves knew the truth. Up in the northern wastes of Ironfang Pack, there’s an old abandoned watchtower. A silent grey wolf lives there now.
Every day, he cleans the boundary markers. Fixes fences. Leaves water and meat for passing patrols.
He never speaks. When someone asks who he is, he says one thing: “Waiting for a she-wolf to forgive me.”
I never went to see him.