He Killed My Pup,I Came Back as His Nightmare

After the ninety-ninth time I performed the moonsong in Vesper Duskmire's place and won a standing ovation, I was thrown from a high balcony.

Both my hands were shattered, and I lost my first pup with Cassian Thornridge.

It was all because Heir Alpha Kael Nightbane had issued a search across the Mooncrown Dominion for a rare moonsong singer, declaring that whoever won the grand competition would be offered an arranged mating into the Heir Alpha's den.

Vesper had only heard me sing once, by accident, before she begged Cassian to let me compete under her name.

I owed Cassian my life. I agreed without hesitation.

But every opponent I defeated only deepened Vesper's hatred.

She severed the tendons in both my feet, slashed my face, and even forced a wolfsbane-laced suppressant down my throat so I could no longer speak.

I begged Cassian to stand up for me, and all I got was that weightless voice of his.

"Vesper grew up in a rural branch pack. She's a little rough around the edges, but she doesn't mean real harm. She's just afraid someone will find out you've been performing in her place and it'll bring trouble..."

"Bear with it a little longer. Once she's in the Heir Alpha's den, you and I will have our mating ceremony. I'll find the best moon-healers to treat you, and I promise you'll be good as new."

What he didn't know was that my memory was already returning.

And he would never live to see our bonding day.

——

Consciousness came back slowly, and the pain wracking my body pinned me in place.

I could half-remember now: my moonsong had drawn the Heir Alpha's attention mid-performance.

He'd turned, walked toward me as if pulled by something he couldn't name, and was about to lift the curtain. Vesper, terrified that the deception would be exposed, had shoved me straight out the upper-floor window.

A strange, unfamiliar pain pulsed low in my belly.

I was still trying to understand it when Cassian's and Vesper's voices drifted closer.

Vesper was weeping, that breathy, trembling way she always wept: "Cousin... I really didn't mean to. I was only trying to pull her back, but she lost her footing near the window and fell. I didn't even know she was carrying a pup... I'm so scared..."

A pup.

My hand moved to my stomach before I could think.

So that was what had just been taken from me.

"Don't cry, Vesper. It's not your fault. She's the one to blame, keeping a pregnancy secret like that..."

"Besides, she's always been frail. Even without what happened yesterday, she probably couldn't have carried a pup to term."

Cassian's voice was gentle, patient, soothing the red-eyed woman in his arms. His scent, pine resin and rain-soaked stone, carried no grief at all. Just the calm musk of a wolf tending something precious, and it wasn't me.

And every word drove into my chest like the slow push of a needle, over and over, until I couldn't breathe.

I clenched the bedding beneath me so hard my knuckles ached, and forced every tear back down. Somewhere deep inside, my wolf lay curled and silent, too broken even to whimper.

Five years ago, Cassian had pulled me from a border kill field. I had no memory, no more sense than a frightened pup, terrified of everything. I couldn't shift. I couldn't even remember what my own wolf looked like.

He was patient and tender, teaching me little by little how to exist in the world, how to live like a normal person.

The year we were closest, he whispered a vow against my ear: he would help me recover my past, find my bloodline, and stay by my side until we were old and gray.

Then Vesper's mother died, and Vesper came to Cassian for refuge, and everything changed.

There was a time when I pricked my finger sewing him a sachet and he fretted over it for half the day.

Now we had lost our pup, and I couldn't find a trace of grief on him.

He had stood by and let Vesper ruin me into something crippled, mute, and scarred beyond recognition.

Footsteps stopped at my bedside. Cassian sat down on the edge. His scent settled over me, familiar as an old wound.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner that you were carrying?"

I moved my hand, tried to gesture something, but in the end let it fall.

Vesper had driven me to practice day and night without a moment's rest, not even for sleep. How was I supposed to notice a pup growing inside me?

And a moon cycle ago, Vesper had poured that wolfsbane suppressant into me. I hadn't been able to speak a single word since. How exactly was I supposed to tell him?

When I closed my eyes and refused to look at him, he took my hand gently, his thumb stroking the back of it, slow and soft.