The IVF Mistake That Fated Me to an Alpha

"No amount of money gives you the right to decide what happens inside my body."

Logan's expression remained unreadable. "I didn't mention money."

"You had the clinic offer me five million dollars."

"That money is compensation for what they did to you. It has nothing to do with the pup."

The distinction should have reassured Isla. Instead, the calm certainty in his voice made her feel as though he had already separated her life into neat columns: what the clinic owed her, what he wanted from her, and what would happen to the child once her part was finished.

"What exactly are you proposing?" she asked.

Logan glanced at the examination room door, where his Beta and two attorneys waited in the hall. "You'll move into a secure residence and receive private medical care for the rest of the pregnancy. Every expense will be covered. After the pup is born, the child will come home with me, and you'll be free to return to your life."

"My life."

"Yes."

"The life where I pretend I didn't spend months carrying and giving birth to my own baby?"

A faint crease appeared between his eyebrows. "You said you didn't intend to keep the pregnancy."

"Not wanting what was done to me isn't the same as feeling nothing for the baby."

Logan fell silent.

Isla pushed herself off the examination table, needing to stand on her own feet while they had this conversation.

"You talk about pregnancy as if it's an apartment you can rent until your tenant is ready to move out. I would have to carry this child, hear its heartbeat, and feel it moving inside me. Then you expect me to hand it over and disappear because you paid the medical bills?"

"You would be compensated."

"Of course I would." A tired laugh escaped her. "Men like you always think they're talking about money, even when they don't say the number."

His Alpha scent deepened, smoke and cedar pressing against the sterile smell of disinfectant. Serena stirred defensively, but Logan did not raise his voice.

"What do you want from me, Isla?"

She wished she knew.

Before she could answer, her phone began vibrating inside her coat pocket.

Natalie Reese.

Isla's stomach tightened as she answered. "Hello?"

"Isla, he's awake." Natalie was crying so hard that the words blurred together. "Coel woke up ten minutes ago. The doctors are examining him now, but he's speaking. He's really back."

The room faded around her.

For months, she had imagined this call arriving at breakfast, in the shower, or in the middle of another night spent beside his bed. She had stopped letting herself believe it would come.

"I'm on my way."

When she ended the call, Logan was watching her.

"Coel?" he asked.

"My mate. And my fiancé." Isla could hardly think past the pounding of her heart. "He woke up. I need to see him."

Logan's jaw hardened. "He was your fiancé when you agreed to carry his child. That doesn't give him a claim over mine."

"Not everything is about claims and bloodlines." Isla slipped her phone into her pocket and gathered her medical papers. "Some people stay because they love each other."

Something flickered across his face, gone too quickly to name.

He took a card from his wallet. There was no office number or company logo, only his name and a handwritten phone number.

"Call me before you make a decision."

"I don't need your permission."

"I didn't offer permission." His gaze settled briefly on her stomach. "I'm asking you not to decide while you're angry."

Isla tucked the card into her coat without making a promise.

*

Coel's room was in the older hospital building across the courtyard. She knew the route well enough to walk it without thinking, past the vending machine that never gave enough change and the family lounge where she had slept on a vinyl couch during Coel's first week in intensive care.

A nurse at the station recognized her. "He's made incredible progress, Ms. Spencer. You must be so relieved."

Relief was only one piece of the knot beneath Isla's ribs.

She paused outside his room and smoothed her hair with unsteady fingers. She would tell him everything plainly. The clinic had used the wrong sample, the child was not his, and she had not yet decided what to do. It would hurt him, but perhaps he would take her hand and remind her that they had survived worse.

The door stood partly open.

"What are you going to tell her?" a woman asked inside.

Isla stopped with one hand raised toward the door. She knew that voice, Hilda Spencer.

Her stepsister. And the nightmare of her childhood.

She always softened her voice into the breathy sweetness she reserved for men.

"That waking up changed things," Coel answered.

His voice was rough after months of silence, but unmistakably his. Isla pressed a hand to the wall as her knees weakened.

"That's almost kind," Hilda murmured.

"Isla likes kind lies."

A soft laugh followed, then the quiet sound of a kiss.

Isla pushed open the door.

Hilda sat on the edge of the bed with one hand beneath Coel's hospital gown, her lipstick smudged across his mouth. She drew back, startled, but her surprise quickly settled into a familiar, satisfied smile.

Coel looked annoyed rather than ashamed.

"Isla," he said. "You're here already."

For months, she had washed his hair when the nurses were too busy, read him the morning news, and told him about every ordinary part of her day because someone had once said familiar voices might lead a patient home. Now he was awake, and the first expression he gave her was annoyance at being interrupted.

"How long?" she asked.

Hilda glanced at Coel. "Does it matter?"

"Yes." Isla kept her attention on Coel. "How long?"

He looked away first. "A few months before the attack."

The answer hollowed out something inside her, leaving a strange, steady quiet behind.

The folder from Blackthorn Fertility Center pressed against Isla's ribs beneath her arm. She had come here prepared to confess something that had never been her fault, while Coel had spent months hiding a betrayal that had been entirely his choice.

"You let me sit beside your bed every day."

"My mother wanted you there."

"You knew I was here."

"I was in a coma, Isla. What exactly did you expect me to do about it?"

"Maybe not wake up and put your hands on my stepsister."

Hilda slowly rose from the bed, smoothing her blouse. Her eyes dropped to the folder in Isla's arms, pausing on the fertility center's logo.

"What were you doing at Blackthorn?" she asked.

Isla shifted the folder behind her hip. "That's none of your business."

Coel followed Hilda's gaze but showed little interest. "You always do this."

"Do what?"

"Turn everything into a tragedy centered around you." He rubbed a hand over his face. "I survived a rogue attack. I woke up after months in a coma, and within minutes of getting here, you're demanding explanations."

"I spent those months waiting for you."

"No one asked you to make yourself a martyr."

The words landed more cleanly than a slap.

Isla removed the engagement ring from her finger. "Were you ever going to marry me?"

Coel released a weary breath. "You're a good person, but you were never right for me. Your wolf is weak, you're uncomfortable with everything an Alpha needs, and you still behave as if waiting until marriage makes you better than everyone else."

Hilda's smile deepened.

"She understands me," Coel continued. "With her, I don't have to apologize for being what I am."

Isla looked at the ring she had worn through every night beside his bed. Then she placed it on the rolling tray beside his untouched water.

"I stayed because I loved you."

"That was your decision."

Serena recoiled inside her, and the unfinished mate bond tightened beneath Isla's breastbone. It was a fragile thing because they had never completed the marking, but breaking it would still hurt. For two years, Isla had protected that bond as if patience alone could turn it into the life she wanted.

Now she finally understood that she had been protecting it alone.

"I, Isla Spencer, reject you, Coel Reese, as my mate and chosen Alpha."

Pain tightened beneath Isla's breastbone as the unfinished bond tore loose. Coel flinched against his pillows, shock flashing across his face before anger replaced it

"You don't reject me."

"I just did."

"You'll come back when you've finished being dramatic."

Isla picked up her bag, keeping the fertility folder tucked securely beneath her arm.

"No," she said. "I won't."

She walked out before either of them could see her cry.

*

Half an hour later, Isla sat in a women's clinic, staring at a termination form.

The physician across from her was an older Beta with silver threaded through her brown hair and a coffee stain on one cuff. She read Isla's chart twice before setting it down.

"Are you certain this is what you want?" she asked. "Or do you need today to stop hurting?"

Isla looked at the blank signature line. "Does it matter?"

"It does if you wake up tomorrow wishing someone had given you time."

"I want it over."

The doctor's expression remained kind. "Your bloodwork shows significant anemia, and you're underweight. From the history in your file, that isn't recent."

"My family didn't always have much food."

It was easier than explaining that the Spencers had never lacked food; they had simply found other uses for it before remembering Isla.

"Termination is possible," the doctor said, "but your risk of bleeding is higher, and your body is already recovering from hormone treatment and egg retrieval. I'd like to treat the anemia and repeat your bloodwork before we schedule anything."

"So I can't do it today."

"I wouldn't recommend it today." The doctor folded her hands. "Does the father know?"

"He knows about the baby."

"Then, if it's safe, speak to him. You don't need his permission, but you shouldn't make this decision today simply because you've been hurt."

Isla left the office with the unsigned form in her bag.

She sat alone in the corridor, beneath a window streaked with afternoon rain. Coel's ring was gone from her finger. Logan's card remained in her pocket, and the space between those two facts seemed to contain the wreckage of her entire life.

Then something fluttered low in her belly.

Isla froze.

The sensation came again, too soft to be a kick, more like the brush of a tiny tail beneath water. A human pregnancy might not have moved this early, but wolf pups developed quickly-and Serena had gone completely still.

Our pup, her wolf whispered.

Isla rested her palm over her abdomen. "Was that you?"

Warmth pulsed beneath her hand.

Her eyes stung.

The baby had not lied to her, used her, or asked to become part of this disaster. It was simply there-small, alive, and blameless.

"You didn't do anything wrong," she murmured.

Neither did we, Serena answered.

Isla had come here because ending the pregnancy had seemed like the quickest way to cut all the chaos. Perhaps it was not the only way.

She took Logan's card from her pocket and dialed the handwritten number.

He answered before the second ring.

"Isla."

"You said you would do anything to keep this child."

"Within reason."

"I've decided not to end the pregnancy."

Silence filled the line, followed by the quiet release of his breath.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"That isn't important." Isla kept her hand over the place where she had felt the pup move. "I won't hide your child from you, but I won't carry it for nine months and then be paid to disappear."

"Name your terms."

"Just one term."

Isla took a long breath, and when she looked up, she had made up her mind.

"Marry me."