I woke up disoriented, still lying in the pool of blood on my bedroom floor. The storm had passed, and weak sunlight filtered through the curtains. I’d been unconscious for hours, maybe longer. Dorian never came back.

My body felt hollow, like something essential had been scooped out of me. In a way, it had. My baby—gone. I could feel it in the emptiness inside me, in the dull ache that had replaced the sharp pain.

The day I’d discovered I was pregnant still burned bright in my memory.

I’d been sick for days, blaming Dorian’s increasingly frequent absences for my nausea and fatigue. The mate bond stretching thin could do that. But when my heightened wolf senses detected the subtle change in my own scent—a warm sweetness underneath my usual forest and rain—I’d known.

I’d bought a test from a drugstore three towns over, terrified someone from the pack might see me. When those two pink lines appeared, I’d wept with a joy I never thought possible. For those first beautiful days, that tiny spark of life had been my secret treasure, something pure and untainted by the mess I’d made of my life.

I’d imagined a thousand futures—a baby with Dorian’s sharp green eyes, my dark hair.

A child who might, just might, give me the family I’d never had. On the darkest nights, when Dorian’s absence cut like a knife, I’d press my hand against my still-flat stomach and whisper promises.

“You’ll be loved,” I’d told my baby. “You’ll be protected. You’ll never know what it’s like to be unwanted.”

Lies. All of it.

I dragged myself to the bathroom, leaving bloody handprints on the pristine white walls. The mirror reflected a stranger—pale as death, hair matted with sweat, eyes vacant with shock. A bruise had formed on my cheek from when I’d fallen. My lips were cracked, my throat raw from screaming for help that never came.

This is what loving Dorian Caldwell has made of you.

Mechanically, I peeled off my blood-soaked nightgown and stepped into the shower. Pink water swirled down the drain as I stood motionless under the spray. I watched it with detached fascination—my baby, my hopes, all washing away in a swirl of diluted crimson.

My baby had only been a month old, barely formed, but I’d already loved it fiercely. I’d talked to it every night, promised to protect it, promised a life filled with love. All lies now. I couldn’t even protect it from its own father. The cruelest part was that Dorian probably didn’t even care. One less complication in his perfectly orchestrated life.

The water ran cold, but I barely noticed. Nothing could wash away what had happened. Nothing could fill the emptiness inside me. Eventually, I turned off the shower and wrapped myself in a towel. My body moved on autopilot—dry off, dress, strip the bloody sheets from the bed. I found clean ones in the closet and remade it, then flipped the blood-soaked mattress.

Erasing the evidence. Just like I’d been erasing myself bit by bit since the day Dorian claimed me as his mate and then told me to hide it from the world.

—

When Dorian finally returned the next evening, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing. The sheets had been stripped, the blood-soaked mattress flipped.

“Dorian, where were you a night ago?” My voice sounded strange to my own ears—flat, emotionless.

He didn’t even look at me as he set down his keys. “That is none of your business, pup.”

Pup. How I hated that condescending nickname. As if I were some child to be humored rather than his mate. As if I hadn’t just lost our actual pup while he was busy between Selene’s thighs.

Your child. Not our child. Never our child.