Ellery POV:
I sat in my car across from the maternity clinic, knuckles white on the wheel.
I shouldn't be here. I should be gone. But I needed the final nail in the coffin.
The glass doors slid open.
Brendan walked out, looking powerful in his suit. Then Kiya, glowing with pregnancy hormones.
They waited for the valet.
Kiya pointed at her shoe.
I held my breath.
Brendan Wiggins, the Alpha who forced the Council to rewrite trade laws, dropped to one knee.
He tied her sneaker. Gently. Reverently.
Air left my lungs.
In ten years, he had never tied my shoe. Even when my spine was healing and I couldn't bend, he called a nurse. "Alphas do not kneel," he'd said.
But he knelt for her.
My phone buzzed on the seat. A message from Kiya.
He says the heartbeat sounds like thunder. Stronger than any pup in history. Too bad you'll never know what that sounds like, you empty shell.
I didn't cry. The salt was gone.
He hadn't just rejected me as a mate. He rejected my worth as a living being.
Brendan opened the car door for her, hand protecting her head.
That was it. The image I would take to the grave.
I drove.
I didn't look back.
