But not a single wolf noticed the blood pooling beneath me.
I lay on the floor, screaming in agony. The marble was cold against my back, and the sound of my own voice echoed off the corridor walls of the Healing Hall and came back to me distorted, animal, a howl half-formed in a throat that had forgotten it was human. Somewhere deep inside me my wolf was thrashing, clawing toward the small warm life it could already feel slipping. No one answered.
"Help... please, save my baby..."
My mother had told me I could keep the pup and take her far beyond Ironclaw's hunting grounds. Leave the mate, keep the pup. Those words had been carved into my mind for weeks. Luna-Matriarch Aurelia Ashthorne did not make such offers lightly. She had laid it out in the inner den of the Ashthorne estate, her fingertips pressed together, her scent of white birch and aged amber filling the room with the weight of a she-wolf who had brokered pacts between bloodlines and never once been wrong. Come home. Bring the pup. Leave the Ironclaw mark at the threshold.
I'd already decided to keep this pup.
So why was this happening?
The blood was warm and spreading beneath me and I could feel my body giving up something it was sworn to protect, and the corridor was empty because every warrior, every pack-captain, every wolf bound to the Ironclaw name had followed Darius out the door behind Vesper and her stolen performance, and I was alone on the floor of a Healing Hall that Ironclaw strength had built, and not a single wolf in this place knew I was dying.
As consciousness slipped away, I saw a young healer passing by. She froze, nostrils flaring at the scent of blood, then rushed in.
"What happened? Someone help! Miss, don't be scared. Why are you here alone? Where's your mate? Do you remember his mind-link? I'll call him for you!"
"I... don't have a mate..."
Then everything went black.
My baby was gone.
Four moons along. Just barely formed.
The moon-healer said it was a girl.
I stayed in the Healing Hall for three days. A private den on the fourth floor. The blinds drawn. The crystal monitors pulsing in a rhythm that meant nothing except that I was still alive, which felt like the cruelest possible outcome. My wolf had gone silent. Not calm, silent, the way a creature goes still when the wound is too deep to whimper over.
In those three days, Darius didn't reach for me through the bond once. Not a mind-link whisper. Not a warrior sent to check. Not even Cassian Thornwood with his careful, measured words and his rehearsed condolences. Nothing. As if I had already ceased to exist inside the Ironclaw world.
But I saw what he sent out across the spirit network.
Blessed with a baby boy.
Four words. Beneath them, a crystal-image of a she-wolf and pup asleep, taken from behind. Vesper's dark hair fanned across a pillow. The pup tucked against her chest. The angle chosen with the same deliberate care she used when she tucked her hair behind her left ear before a lie. Even in sleep, she was performing.
The replies flooded in with congratulations. Allies. Heads of allied bloodlines. Wolves whose names I knew from border talks and territory negotiations, wolves who owed their standing to Ashthorne protection they didn't even know flowed beneath their paws, all of them falling over themselves to celebrate the Ironclaw heir.
I stared at that image. The tears came anyway.
Some things are simply cruel.
The girl I'd lost didn't even have a name yet. I'd been saving that. Waiting until she was further along, until it felt safe to say it out loud. In our world, you learned not to name things you loved too early. The bloodlines taught you that. Name it under the moon, and someone can take it from you.
But I was grateful, at least, that I'd seen the truth before it was too late. I could still walk away.
The day I was discharged, a healer helped me pack my things. My hands were steady. My face was washed. I had put myself back together the way my mother had taught me, the way an Ashthorne she-wolf does it: from the inside out, so that by the time anyone sees you, there is nothing left to pity.
"Lady Ashthorne, how come no one's visited you these past few days? Are you sure you'll be all right going home alone?"
"I'm fine. Thank you all for taking care of me. I'm feeling much better."
I managed a smile and walked out of the den.
I hadn't gone more than a few steps when I heard the healers whispering behind me. Their voices carried in the tiled corridor, bouncing off the walls the way secrets do in places meant to heal.
"Poor thing. Lost the pup, and not a single soul by her side. Where's her mate?"
"She says she doesn't have one. Probably gone to the Moon Goddess. Life really isn't fair, is it? You know the she-wolf in the next den? Her mate adores her. He's at her bedside every single day, holding the pup. You can tell he's absolutely besotted."
"Oh, I know. That den's been a revolving door of visitors. And they're all gorgeous wolves, too. How come I never draw that kind of luck?"
They didn't know.
The devoted mate they were gushing over was mine. The gorgeous wolves filing through that den were Ironclaw warriors and pack-captains paying tribute to their Alpha's household, tilting their heads in deference to Vesper as though she were the Luna, bringing gifts wrapped in silk for a pup that didn't even carry Darius's blood. And three doors down, the true Luna of the Ironclaw Pack had bled out a daughter alone on the floor and no one had come.
I walked to Vesper's door. The corridor was thick with scent, moonflowers and white roses, dozens of arrangements from well-wishers crowding the doorway like an altar laid beneath the moon. I stopped in the threshold.
Sure enough, Darius lay beside her, asleep.
He looked peaceful. His jaw was slack, the tension gone from his shoulders, one arm draped across the mattress. The blood-oath scar on his right palm was visible, the one from his sacred blood-brother bond with Fenwick, and even in sleep his fingers were curled loosely around Vesper's wrist as if she were something precious he was afraid to lose. The scent of him reached me. Scorched oak and old copper, and beneath it that sour rancid note I had spent years pretending I couldn't smell.
Vesper had her crystal communicator out, leaning against his chest, capturing image after image. Her expression was the careful blankness of a she-wolf composing a frame. She tilted her chin. Adjusted the angle. Made sure the light caught the curve of the pup's cheek.
Darius rolled over and pulled her into his arms, his voice low and groggy. "I thought you said you were tired. Go back to sleep."
"I'm not tired."
She looked up at him, then undid the buttons of her top and climbed on top of him.
"I want you. Give it to me."
His throat moved as his eyes traced her body.
"You just had a pup. Rest. Don't start something."
"I don't care. I want you."
She leaned down and kissed him.
He pushed at her a few times, halfheartedly. Within seconds, they were tangled together.
The sight made my stomach turn.
I could still feel where my body had emptied itself three days ago. I could still feel the absence, a hollow where a heartbeat should have been. And here was my mate, the wolf who had built his entire territory on the name I gave him, wrapped around the she-wolf who had put me on that floor.
I spun around and ran out of the Healing Hall. I caught the trunk of the tree by the entrance and threw up until there was nothing left. My knees buckled against the bark and I stayed there, bent over, my forehead pressed to the wood, breathing in gasps that tasted like bile and cold night air. Inside me my wolf finally made a sound, low and broken, a keening I had never heard her make before. A black carriage idled at the curb, Ironclaw crest on its door. The driver glanced at me without recognition and went back to his communicator.
I never imagined the wolf I'd loved all these years could be this person.
The moment I got home, I went straight for my documents. The mating bond record. The formal Pack Alliance Pact. Every piece of evidence that bound the Ashthorne name to the Ironclaw Pack.
I was going to end this. Formally. Irrevocably. A severance of the blood-oath so complete that every territory, every arrangement, every ounce of protection the Ashthorne bloodline had ever extended to Darius Ironclaw would be withdrawn in a single stroke, like a pack cut off from the Moon Goddess's favor overnight.
When my parents had returned to the Crown Territories, I'd stayed behind for Darius. I had chosen him over the bloodline. Over the den. Over my mother's steepled fingers and my father's single tap of his signet ring that meant the conversation was over.
Now it was time to go.
