The basement was a tomb of concrete and silence.
Three days had passed since Marcus locked me in this windowless cell, and the isolation was eating away at whatever sanity I had left. The single bulb overhead cast harsh shadows that seemed to shift and dance, mocking me with their movement while I remained trapped in this suffocating stillness.
I'd tried everything. When the first guard came with breakfast on day two—a silent delta whose name I didn't even know—I'd grabbed his arm through the slot in the door.
"Please," I'd begged, my voice hoarse from crying. "Just tell Till I need to speak with him. Tell him it's important."
The guard had stared at me with dead eyes, pulled his arm free, and walked away without a word.
I'd tried again at lunch. And dinner. And with the next guard, and the one after that. Each time, I was met with the same stone-faced indifference, as if I were already a ghost haunting these walls.
By the third day, desperation had given way to a hollow numbness. I lay on the narrow cot, staring at the ceiling, my mind cycling through the same torturous questions. How had I been so blind? How had I missed the signs that Till was planning to discard me? What had I done to deserve this?
The concrete floor was ice-cold against my bare feet when I paced, which I did obsessively, counting steps to mark the passage of time. Forty-three steps from wall to wall. Sixty-seven from the door to the back corner. Numbers became my anchor to reality when everything else felt like a nightmare I couldn't wake from.
The smell of the place—damp stone, industrial disinfectant, and something else I couldn't identify—had seeped into my clothes, my hair, my skin. I felt contaminated by it, marked by this place of exile and shame.
Sleep came in fragments, broken by dreams of Till's hands on my body, his voice whispering promises he never meant to keep. I'd wake gasping, reaching for him in the darkness, only to remember where I was and why.
On the morning of the fourth day, I was curled on the cot when the pain hit.
It started as a dull ache low in my abdomen, like the beginning of my monthly cycle. I shifted position, thinking it would pass, but instead it intensified, becoming a sharp, twisting agony that made me gasp and curl tighter into myself.
"What—" I breathed, pressing my hands to my stomach as another wave of pain crashed through me.
Then I felt it—warmth spreading between my thighs, sticky and wrong. I looked down and saw blood seeping through my clothes, more blood than I'd ever seen from my body.
Panic exploded in my chest. "Help!" I screamed, rolling off the cot and stumbling toward the door. "Something's wrong! I need help!"
The pain was getting worse, cramping through my entire core like someone was twisting a knife in my gut. I pounded on the metal door with both fists, my voice cracking as I shouted.
"Please! Anyone! I'm bleeding!"
Silence answered me. The same terrible silence that had been my only companion for three days.
Another wave of pain dropped me to my knees, and I felt more blood flowing, warm and terrifying. The concrete floor was cold against my palms as I tried to steady myself, but the world was starting to spin.
"Till!" I screamed his name with everything I had left. "Till, please! I need you!"
But he wasn't coming. No one was coming.
The blood was pooling beneath me now, dark and spreading. I could smell the metallic tang of it, could feel my strength ebbing with each pulse that left my body. My vision was starting to blur at the edges, gray creeping in like fog.
I don't know how long I knelt there, calling for help that never came. Time became meaningless as the pain consumed everything else. I was dimly aware of collapsing fully to the floor, my cheek pressed against the cold concrete, my hands clutched uselessly over my cramping abdomen.
The last thing I remembered was the taste of copper in my mouth and the terrible understanding that I was going to die alone in this basement, forgotten and discarded like everything else Till no longer wanted.
I woke to voices and movement, the harsh glare of medical lights burning through my eyelids. Someone was lifting me, carrying me, and I tried to speak but only managed a weak moan.
"...lost a lot of blood..." a woman's voice was saying. "...need to get her stabilized..."
"How long was she down there?" Another voice, male, angry.
"Guard found her during the noon meal delivery. Could have been hours."
The world swam in and out of focus as they moved me. I caught glimpses of ceiling tiles, fluorescent lights, concerned faces hovering over me. The antiseptic smell of the medical wing replaced the dank odor of the basement.
When I finally surfaced fully from the haze of unconsciousness, I was lying in a clean bed with soft sheets and warm blankets. An IV drip was attached to my arm, and the steady beep of monitors filled the quiet room.
"You're awake." The voice was gentle, familiar. I turned my head to see Elara Vance, the pack's head healer, sitting beside my bed. Her kind face was creased with worry and something that looked like anger.
"Elara?" My voice came out as a whisper, my throat raw from screaming.
"Easy," she said, reaching out to touch my forehead. "You've been through a trauma. Your body needs time to recover."
Memory came flooding back—the pain, the blood, the desperate hours of calling for help. "What happened to me?" I asked, though part of me already knew, already understood the horrible truth my body was trying to tell me.
Elara's expression grew even more gentle, the kind of careful softness medical professionals used when delivering devastating news. "Giselle, honey, you suffered a miscarriage. You were pregnant, and your body... it couldn't hold on."
The words hit me like a physical blow. Pregnant. I'd been carrying Till's child, and I hadn't even known. The cramping, the blood, the agony—I'd lost his baby while locked in that basement, calling his name.
"How far along?" I whispered.
"About six weeks, from what I can tell. Early enough that you might not have noticed the signs, especially with everything you've been through."
Six weeks. That meant conception had happened during one of those tender nights when Till had held me close, when he'd whispered about our future together. When he was already planning to throw me away.
Tears began sliding down my cheeks, and I didn't try to stop them. "Does he know?" I asked. "Does Till know about the baby?"
Elara hesitated, her jaw tightening. "I sent word to the Alpha about your condition. Protocol requires it when there's a medical emergency."
"And?"
The silence stretched between us, heavy with meaning. Finally, Elara spoke, her voice carefully controlled. "There's been no response."
No response.
I'd lost his child, nearly died from blood loss, and Till couldn't even be bothered to acknowledge it.
The man who'd claimed to love me, who'd shared my bed just days ago, felt nothing about the loss of our baby.
This—losing a child I'd never known I carried, while the father remained coldly indifferent to both our suffering—this was a kind of agony I hadn't known existed.
What a “no response”.
