Eleanore Avery POV:
I woke to the damp chill of stone.
My head throbbed, a dull, heavy ache behind my eyes. This wasn't my chamber in the palace. There was no soft mattress, no silk sheets. Just a rough, hard cot and the smell of mildew and despair.
I sat up abruptly, the image of Bertram's dying eyes flashing in my mind. The memory was a physical blow, making my chest tighten until I could barely breathe.
A strange emptiness coiled in my lower belly. I pressed a hand there, a sense of loss so profound it felt like a part of me had been carved out.
The heavy stone door scraped open, flooding the small cell with dim torchlight.
Kade stood there, silhouetted in the doorway. The tender warmth he had always shown me was gone, replaced by a cold, mocking sneer.
"You're awake," he said, his voice dripping with contempt. "My foolish little Omega."
I scrambled off the cot, my legs unsteady. "Kade? We did it? Where are my father and our people? You promised you would protect them!"
A harsh, ugly laugh escaped his lips. "The Avery pack? They will soon go to hell with their foolish daughter."
The words hit me like a physical slap. Ice spread through my veins. "What... what are you talking about?"
He crossed the cell in three long strides, his fingers clamping onto my jaw. The pressure was immense, grinding my bones together. I whimpered in pain.
"I'm talking about you, Eleanore," he hissed, his face inches from mine. "You were a tool. A means to an end. And now, your use is over."
He shoved me away. I stumbled backward, my legs giving out, and collapsed onto the cold stone floor.
Tears streamed down my face, hot and useless. "Why?" I choked out. "I loved you. I did everything for you!"
"Love?" He threw his head back and laughed, a sound utterly devoid of humor. "A wolfless Omega presumes to speak of love? Your only value was your proximity to Bertram."
He crouched down, his voice dropping to a malicious whisper beside my ear. "Do you know why he didn't have his guards posted? Why he let you get so close with that poisoned wine?"
My body trembled uncontrollably. I didn't want to know.
"Because he loved you," Kade breathed the words like a curse. "He loved you so much, the pathetic fool, that he would have willingly drunk fire from your hands."
The last of my denial shattered. Bertram's soul-deep weariness. The chilling resolve in his eyes as he took the glass. The way he held my gaze as he drank without hesitation. It was all true.
A wave of nausea washed over me.
Kade watched my breakdown with a look of detached amusement. "Oh, and I almost forgot the most interesting part."
His gaze flickered down to my stomach. "You were carrying a child in there."
My breath hitched. My hand flew to my belly, to the source of that hollow ache.
"My... child?" The words were a fragile, broken whisper.
"Yes. A little bastard that should never have existed." His smile was a predatory slash in the dim light.
A desperate, insane flicker of hope ignited in the darkness of my despair. "Our child? Kade, please, for the sake of our child..."
He cut me off with another bark of laughter, so cruel it made me recoil. "Ours? Eleanore, you are truly a simpleton. Did you really think I would ever touch a wolfless creature like you?"
He leaned in close, his voice a venomous stinger in my ear.
"That child was Bertram's."
The world tilted on its axis. The stone walls of the cell seemed to spin around me.
"It was his heir," Kade continued, savoring every word. "The product of that night you drank too much at the winter feast. A little bit of sedative in your wine, a carefully arranged encounter. It was so easy."
The fragmented memories surfaced. Waking up in my own bed, feeling sore and confused. Kade's soothing voice, telling me I'd just had too much to drink.
The truth was a slow, methodical execution.
I hadn't just killed the man who loved me.
I had killed our child.
A scream tore from my throat, raw and animalistic, a sound of a soul being ripped in two. It echoed off the cold stone, a testament to my absolute and utter ruin.
Kade watched me, a satisfied smirk on his face. He had broken me.
He turned and walked out, the heavy door booming shut, plunging me back into darkness. A darkness filled with nothing but the ghosts of my monumental, unforgivable sins.
