They put me in the dungeon before midnight.
Not the South Wing. Not a guarded guest room. A cell beneath the keep where water ran down the walls and silver had been worked into the bars to weaken hostile wolves.
The metal did nothing to me.
I had no wolf to suppress.
That did not make the cold easier to bear.
I sat on the narrow cot with both hands over my belly, listening to footsteps move overhead. Sometime before dawn, a guard pushed a cup of water through the slot in the bars. There was no food. When I asked for the pack physician, he stared at my stomach and told me the healer was busy with Lady Serena.
"I'm pregnant," I said.
"I know."
"Then bring someone. I've been having contractions."
His gaze flicked toward the stairwell. "Orders are that no one enters until the Alpha comes."
I almost asked whether Ronan knew about those orders. I stopped myself. I was tired of building excuses for him before he even arrived.
The baby had been restless since Serena collapsed. Every few minutes, a hard tightening pulled across my abdomen.
"Easy," I whispered. "Stay with me."
The child answered with a small kick.
At dawn, Ronan came alone.
He stopped outside the bars.
I looked at the dried blood on his cuff.
Serena's blood.
"Is she alive?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Then you already have proof I didn't use a lethal dose."
"That isn't proof of anything."
I almost smiled at how badly that hurt.
"Did you come to question me or say goodbye?"
His hand closed around one of the bars. "The healer says the poison came from the wine bottle at your end of the table. Garrick has six witnesses who saw you pass it."
"Everyone passed it."
"I know."
"Do you? Because I have yet to hear you say you believe me."
Ronan looked down.
"The Council is demanding judgment before sundown."
"And what are you demanding?"
His silence filled the cell.
Then he unlocked the door.
"Come with me."
Two guards waited in the corridor.
I backed away. "Where?"
"The old moon chamber."
My pulse stumbled.
"No."
"Elara, listen to me."
"You brought the ritual parchment."
He did not deny it.
I stared at the man I had loved since I was nineteen.
"You are actually going to sever me."
"It is temporary."
A laugh tore out of me. "A mate bond is not a title you suspend for an investigation."
"The Elders will not accept confinement alone."
"Then tell them no. You're the Alpha."
His eyes flashed. "And if I turn the Council against me before the border treaty is signed, Blackthorn fractures."
"So I am the easier sacrifice."
"That is not what this is."
"Then what is it?"
He stepped into the cell. His voice dropped so the guards could not hear.
"I spent the night going through the serving records," he said. "The kitchen staff swear the bottle was sealed when it left storage. Serena's healer insists the symptoms match concentrated wolfsbane, but the residue in her cup is weaker than it should be. Something about this is wrong."
Hope moved before I could stop it. "Then stop this. Give me one day. Search her rooms. Question her maid."
"I asked for a delay. Garrick refused."
"You are still speaking as if he outranks you."
Ronan's eyes hardened with shame.
"It is the only way I can keep you alive long enough to prove what happened."
I searched his face for something I could trust.
"Say you believe me."
His mouth opened.
Footsteps approached.
Elder Garrick appeared at the end of the corridor with four council guards and a priest carrying a silver ceremonial blade.
Ronan's expression closed.
And I knew I had lost him before the knife ever touched me.
The old moon chamber lay beneath the Council Hall. They strapped my wrists to a stone altar carved with pack runes. When I fought, two guards pinned my shoulders.
"She is eight months pregnant," Ronan snapped. "Loosen the restraints."
"Then she should stop struggling," Garrick said.
I twisted my head toward Ronan. "Get me off this table."
He stood beside the altar, white-faced, the Severing decree in his hand.
"Please," I said.
I had promised myself I would never beg these people.
I begged him anyway.
"Ronan, don't do this."
His fingers shook around the pen.
Garrick leaned close to him and said something too low for me to hear.
Ronan went still.
His gaze dropped to my stomach.
Then he signed.
The scratch of the pen across parchment was almost gentle.
The priest pressed the silver blade against the old mate mark at the base of my neck.
My child kicked violently.
"He's scared," I gasped. "Ronan, please. If you won't stop this for me, stop it for him."
Ronan moved toward the altar. Two Elders blocked him. Garrick held up the signed decree like a shield.
"If the Alpha interrupts a severing after the first cut, the backlash can kill both mother and heir," the priest warned.
I did not know whether it was true. Neither did Ronan. That uncertainty was enough to trap him where he stood.
Pain exploded through me.
I screamed.
The mate bond did not break like a rope. It tore like living tissue. Every memory tied to Ronan seemed to rip loose at once—our first winter run, the vows in the moon garden, his hand over mine when we heard the baby's heartbeat.
Gone.
Not forgotten.
Worse.
Unreachable.
I felt Ronan stagger beside the altar.
"Stop," he rasped.
Garrick caught his arm. "The ritual has begun."
"She's bleeding too much."
"Complete it."
The priest drew the blade through the final rune.
Something inside me snapped.
The familiar warmth that had always told me where Ronan stood vanished.
I looked straight at him.
For the first time since we mated, he smelled like nothing.
Just winter air.
Just a stranger.
"Elara," he whispered.
A crushing contraction seized my abdomen.
I gasped and curled against the restraints.
Warm liquid spread beneath my hips.
The priest stepped back in alarm.
I looked down at the blood and clear fluid running over the edge of the stone altar.
"My water broke," I said.
Then another contraction hit, and the room dissolved into screaming.
