Seraphine dropped to the floor of the washing den, clutching her belly, and screamed.
“My pup! Aurora, why did you push me?”
The next second, Roderic burst through the door.
He saw Seraphine crumpled on the cold stone, sobbing, and his face went dark as he turned on me. The cloying sweetness of his scent soured in an instant, copper sharpening to something feral.
“What did you do to her?!”
Before I could say a word, he shoved me aside and scooped up Seraphine, still crying her pretty little eyes out.
“Ah!”
I hit the cold floor hard, and a searing pain tore through my stomach.
Beneath me, a dark red stain slowly spread.
I reached for Roderic, terrified: “I didn't do anything to her. Roderic, my stomach……”
“Shut up. Don't fucking pretend with me.”
He didn't even glance at me. He carried Seraphine out the door and was gone, and his scent went with him, leaving the den hollow and silent.
I curled up on the floor, cold sweat soaking through every layer I wore.
My abdomen was screaming. Somewhere deep inside me my wolf had gone utterly still, the way a creature goes still when something it was guarding has already slipped away. My heart, though, that didn't hurt so much anymore.
I dragged myself upright, made it down the stairs one step at a time, and summoned a carriage alone.
Blood ran down my legs. The driver was so frightened he took the bends in the road too fast, the storm-hawks straining against their harness.
We passed the little grove on the corner, and I suddenly remembered where it all began.
That same old tree. A boy standing under it, face going red because I'd told him first, nodding before he could get a full sentence out.
“Yeah, yeah……”
“I mean, I like you too, Aurora.”
The memory flickered past, so sweet it made me laugh out loud even as my eyes blurred with tears.
That “honest wolf” I'd found so endearingly sincere had only ever been something I invented.
Just last night, a full account of Roderic's holdings had landed in my sending-stone.
Vast hunting grounds. Territory stretching past the far ridges.
Even his parents weren't ordinary lore-keepers. They were silent owners behind an entire pack, seated among the Elders.
Yet he hadn't even been willing to give us a decent mating ceremony beneath the moon.
I finally saw it for what it was: he had never loved me.
Five cycles bonded as mates, nothing but a game to him. A lie spun to keep me from ever learning about the wealth.
Sitting on the bed in the Healing Hall, I pressed my hands against my hollow stomach, and my eyes went cold.
I reached my advocate through the sending-stone:
“I've sent over all the evidence. Move to freeze Roderic Ashthorne's holdings.”
I'd meant to part on decent terms. No need for that now.
My sending-stone pulsed. A message from Dorian Greywood, my old academy lab-mate and Alpha of the Silvercrest Pack.
“Passage is arranged. I'll send a carriage for you the day after tomorrow.”
“Good. See you then.”
The pup was gone. Five cycles of love, severed clean. It was time to leave.
At the edge of pack territory, right before departure, a message from Roderic.
“Do you have any idea Seraphine almost lost the pup because of you?”
“Fine, I lied to you. I took her to my bed. But if you're angry, take it out on me. What does she have to do with it?”
“Just lower your head to Seraphine and we'll put it behind us. You only did all this because you love me too much, and carrying the pup made you a little emotional. I get it.”
That interrogating tone, that lofty charity-dispensing attitude, I actually laughed.
What right did he have to defend Seraphine to me?
Where did he find the nerve to demand I bare my throat to her?
I sent back fast: “In a few days, you can speak to my advocate. Before the Council.”
Sent. Stone dark. I walked toward the waiting carriage without looking back.
Once I stopped loving him, the whole sky opened up. I was done being someone's useless mate. I had a place to claim, the lead architect of the Silvercrest Pack's territory-strengthening lore, work the whole wolf-world would one day know.
Eight hours later the carriage crossed into Silvercrest land and I woke the stone again.
Roderic's missed calls and messages hit the surface like a volley of arrows.
The first few dozen were all threats and warnings.
Then the tone shifted, fraying into agitation and unease.
By the last hundred or so, the long and short voice-sendings, the broken strings of words, they reeked of raw, bone-deep panic.
He had finally realized the bond rejection was real, and that I had slipped out of his grip for good.
