Rejected by My Fated Mate: The Billionaire Princess

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.