The stairs were dark.
I should have turned on the light. I knew that. But it was three in the morning and I didn't want to wake anyone. My head was pounding. My stomach churned with nausea that hadn't let up in days. I just needed water. Cold water from the kitchen. Then I could go back to bed and try to sleep through the cramping that had started an hour ago.
I pressed one hand against the wall for balance. The other rested on my stomach. A habit now. Protective. Instinctive.
Eight weeks. The pup was eight weeks old. Still so small. Still so fragile.
I hadn't told Julius yet. I kept waiting for the right moment. For a night when he came home before midnight. For a morning when he looked at me like he used to. For any space between us that wasn't filled with Camryn's name or my own exhaustion or the growing silence where my wolf used to speak.
I reached the landing. Twelve more steps. The wooden boards creaked under my bare feet. The pack house settled around me in the darkness. Sleeping. Peaceful. Unaware.
My foot caught on something. The edge of the runner maybe. Or my own clumsiness. Or the dizziness that had been getting worse all week.
I pitched forward.
For one terrible suspended second I was airborne. My hands reached for the railing. Missed. My body twisted. I tried to catch myself. Tried to shift my weight. Tried to do anything except what was about to happen.
I hit the stairs hard.
The impact drove the air from my lungs. Pain exploded up my spine. My head cracked against the edge of a step. I tumbled. Rolled. My shoulder slammed into the wall. My hip struck the banister. I couldn't stop. Couldn't control it. Couldn't do anything but fall and fall and fall until finally I hit the bottom and everything went still.
I lay on the cold floor. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. The darkness above me spun.
Then the pain came.
Deep. Low. Visceral. A tearing sensation in my abdomen that made me curl onto my side and gasp. Wetness spread between my legs. Warm. Too warm. I pressed my hand down and felt the blood soaking through my nightgown.
No.
No no no no no.
*Julius.*
I tore open the mind-link. Screamed his name into it with everything I had. Every ounce of strength. Every particle of desperate terrified need.
*Julius help me I'm bleeding I fell please please please come home I need you the pup Julius the pup please—*
Nothing.
Silence.
The link was open. I could feel it. The channel was there. But he wasn't answering. He wasn't hearing me. He wasn't coming.
I screamed again. Louder. Harder. Until my mind felt like it was tearing itself apart.
*JULIUS PLEASE—*
Still nothing.
The pain intensified. I curled tighter. My hands pressed against my stomach. Against the life that was slipping away from me. I could feel it. The wrongness. The emptying. The terrible certainty of loss.
"Help," I whispered aloud. My voice cracked. "Someone help me."
But the pack house was asleep. The Alpha was gone. And I was alone on the floor in a spreading pool of my own blood.
My wolf. Where was my wolf. She should be here. She should be fighting. She should be doing something.
But she was silent. Completely silent. Like she had already left me. Like she knew what I refused to accept.
I don't know how long I lay there. Minutes. Hours. Time stopped meaning anything. There was only pain and blood and the mind-link stretched open into emptiness.
Footsteps. Finally. Running.
"Luna!" A young voice. Panicked. "Luna oh goddess—"
Hands on my shoulder. Turning me gently. I blinked up at a face I barely recognized. One of the younger pack members. A boy. Eighteen maybe. His eyes were wide with horror.
"Get the healer," I whispered. "Please."
He ran.
More footsteps. Voices. The pack waking. Someone brought blankets. Someone else knelt beside me and held my hand. I couldn't focus on faces. Couldn't process words. There was only the pain and the blood and the terrible knowledge settling into my bones.
Healer Marsh arrived. Her face went pale when she saw me.
She knelt. Pressed her hands to my abdomen. Her healing energy pulsed through me. Searching. Assessing. Her expression changed. Closed. Became carefully neutral in that way healers have when the news is bad.
"The Alpha," I whispered. "Where is he."
"Someone's gone to find him," she said quietly. Her hands stayed on my stomach. Still working. Still trying. But I could see it in her eyes. She already knew.
"The pup," I said.
Her hands stilled. She looked at me. Her eyes were wet.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered.
The world went white.
Not from pain. From something worse. From the sound of those three words destroying everything I had been holding onto. Everything I had been hoping for. The one thing that might have brought him back to me.
Gone.
I turned my face to the floor. Closed my eyes. Let the darkness take me.
My wolf didn't stir. Didn't speak. Didn't comfort me.
She was already gone too.
And somewhere across the territory, Julius was with her. With Camryn. Handling her fabricated emergency. Completely unaware that his mate was bleeding out on the pack house floor. That his pup was dying. That the bond he had taken for granted was shattering into pieces too small to ever put back together.
I had screamed for him.
He never heard me.
And in that moment, lying in my own blood with the healer's hands still pressed uselessly to my empty womb, I understood with perfect clarity that I had already lost him long before tonight.
This was just the moment I stopped pretending otherwise.
