Rebirth of the Alpha's Slave Mate (Samantha and Kade) novel Chapter 158

Chapter 158

Right. The trouble I caused. I wanted to correct her, tell her that it was her who caused all the strife, but my mind was wholly focused on Ivy. I didn’t care about the details right now.

We followed her upstairs, down the hall and toward Ivy’s nursery. My heart ached more and more with each step. When I reached out through the mother-daughter bond I shared with Ivy, I felt nothing on the other end. Just emptiness and quiet, like a silent forest. The kind of silence that only comes when there’s a predator stalking through the underbrush.

“Here you go,” Serena said, pushing Ivy’s nursery door open and gesturing for us to enter. “See for yourself.”

I stepped into the room, looking around warily. The room was empty-truly empty. No trap.

And no furniture.

“Where did everything go?” I whispered, eyes going wide as I turned in a slow circle. Even the childish wallpaper had been painted over, replaced with a bland off-white.

Serena leaned against the doorframe with her arms folded.

“I tried convincing Kade to spare her. But he said it wasn’t worth the cost-why keep the sickly child of a slave alive when he’s going to have a healthy heir with me? One with pure blood, strong and powerful and actually suited to be the heir of a pack?”

“You’re a fucking liar.” I whirled toward my sister, hands clenching at my sides. My heart raced so hard it made my wound, which had already healed, begin to burn again as if it had been torn open once more.

But Serena’s face was calm. Resolute. Wordlessly, she walked across the room and opened the closet door. She disappeared for a moment, then returned with something soft and pink in her hands. She tossed it to me, and I caught it with a quiet gasp.

“The poor thing coughed up so much blood in her final moments,” she whispered, shaking her head. ” Afterwards, Kade got rid of everything; said he wanted to start fresh with our future child and that everything she touched was tainted. I figured you might come back looking for her, so I snagged that for you.”

My eyes watered as I looked down at the item in my hands. It was a baby blanket, too small and too empty; the very same baby blanket she had once been swaddled in.

The pink yarn, once clean and feminine, was now stained with dark brown splotches.

With shaking hands, I lifted the blanket to my nose and inhaled.

The sound that came out of me was nothing short of gut-wrenching. My knees buckled, and if it weren’t for my father and brother rushing to my side, I would have collapsed. The room tilted around me, and everything else fell away-Serena, Samson, Tyler, the white walls, all of it.

All that was left was that blanket in my hands and the scent of that blood.

It was Ivy’s. I could sense it deep in my bones, just as I could sense the bond we had once shared. The bond that had now gone cold.

My baby was dead.

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Chapter 158

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Kade had killed her.

I must have cried, must have screamed and sobbed, but I couldn’t hear any of it. I was too far away from here, no longer present in this room or my body; I was standing in a forest with the blanket clutched to my chest, Ava’s spectral form wrapping around me, howling along with me.

The forest clearing that had once brought me comfort in my darkest moments would never be the same. It wasn’t warm and sunny, nor was it green and soft. It was cold and windy, with a biting, icy snowstorm ravaging the plants and the trees. A winter that would never end.

And in those moments, as I looked up at the gray sky and howled for my lost child, I knew one thing and one thing only.

I never wanted to see Kade again.

I hated him.