Chapter 2

To the pack, Brooks was a fierce and forbidding Alpha.

But I was the only one who knew he had the temper of a small boy, all reckless play and no sense of responsibility.

My parents had been the old Alpha and Luna's personal doctors.

So I had trailed after them from a young age, and when I wasn't studying I had time to spare.

And so the job of keeping our little wolf prince entertained fell to me.

Only this time, I had no intention of coddling him again.

Back in my room, I started to pack.

The invitation from the Healers Without Borders would arrive in a few days.

In this life I hadn't become Luna, and at last I could do what I had always wanted.

I was folding the last white coat into my bag when the door pushed open from the outside.

I didn't need to turn around, because the cloying smell of rose perfume already told me who it was.

“Funny how two women can start out the same and end up worlds apart. So you're really leaving?”

Cassia leaned against the doorframe, winding a strand of hair around her finger, a perfectly measured sneer on her lips.

“Then again, what is there left for you to say? A woman who couldn't even hold onto the Alpha, all those years at his side, wasted.”

Her voice was sweet and lilting, her face stunning.

Beauty like that could make the Luna of any pack feel plain by comparison.

Next to her I was ordinary, and if I hadn't saved Brooks in my last life, I'd never have earned the right to be marked at all.

When I didn't answer, her eyes grew darker and harder to read.

I noticed her glance at the side of my neck.

I quickly pulled my collar closed.

I'd worked up a sweat packing and had loosened it for air.

She didn't seem to have noticed.

Quietly relieved, I lowered my eyes.

“There's a lot to sort through, so I'm just doing a quick pass.”

Cassia gave it no further thought and shrugged, then her lips twitched into something mean.

“You don't actually think Brooks will come after you once you're gone, do you?”

“He has me now. Do you know where he spent last night?”

“In my bed.”

She said it slowly, one word at a time.

As if she meant to drive each one into my bones.

The bitterness spread from my tongue to my throat to my stomach, until even my heart had gone bitter.

I nodded and managed something like congratulations.

“Brooks says you're to look after our bodies around the clock. He's been rough lately and I'm worried about bleeding, and we were close once, weren't we? So tonight you'll wait outside the door, and when we're done you come check me over.”

I brushed her off with some empty answer.

Inside, it felt like I'd swallowed a clump of wet cotton, lodged and suffocating.

Brooks spent a full week tangled up in bed with Cassia.

Each night I stood outside the door, watching in case anything went wrong with either of them.

The low pants of a man and the soft moans of a woman drifted through from the next room.

The sound crawled into my ears through the gap in the door like damp insects.

Slowly the noise died down.

I lowered my head and laid a hand over my belly.

There was already a child of his growing inside me.

In my last life, this little one was so sensible.

It gave me no morning sickness and cost me no sleep.

I was four and a half months along before I realized it had happened on that one night.

I carried it so carefully, and in the end I still couldn't keep it.

I knew my own body best, and I'd never been the kind who conceived easily.

The miscarriage damaged something deep, and after it I could barely conceive again.

Before I had even recovered, he walked in with Cassia tucked under his arm.

He told me she was expecting too.

She would rest at the villa through the pregnancy, and she asked for me by name to care for her.

“Poor thing.”

In that other life, she lay sprawled on the bed.

She'd crossed one leg over the other, the toe of her foot tapping idly at the air.

A servant brought Cassia a small bowl of bird's nest soup, and she stirred it with a silver spoon.

In no hurry to drink, she just kept stirring, letting it clink.

“Do you know what this is? Blood-red bird's nest. An ounce of it runs you—”

She fanned five fingers in front of my face.

“Brooks had it flown in from the East just for me. He said if you're carrying his child, you eat nothing but the best.”

She scooped up a spoonful and held it out to me. “Want some?”

I said nothing.

She let go, and the spoon dropped back into the bowl, splattering a few sticky drops onto the sheets.

“Oh, I forgot, you can't have this. Fresh off a miscarriage, it would only do you harm.”

She laughed behind her hand.

“Dr. Hart, you're such a brilliant healer. How did you fail to save your own baby?”

Whenever I stayed silent, she would lean her face in close.

The sweet rose smell stung until I wanted to sneeze.

“You know what your problem is? You're so boring.”

She shifted onto her side and stared down at me.

“Brooks can't even be bothered to look at you, and you still cling to this place without an ounce of shame? How is your skin so thick? If it were me, I'd have walked out long ago. Hanging around here, whose sight are you spoiling?”

Back then I swallowed the bitterness and kept caring for her all the same.

Then I went back to my room and downed handful after handful of medicine.

It was bitter, my tongue went numb, and my throat felt like something had clamped around it.

I couldn't get it down, didn't dare bring it up, and forced it through anyway.

The bitterness surged back up from my stomach, and I clapped a hand over my mouth as the tears fell without warning.

But afterward I happened to overhear Brooks tell her,

“It’s a good thing she lost the child. How else could I ever face you? I only wish it had been you who saved me that night from the start.”

That was when I understood that all those years of love and time had been given to the wrong man.

In this life, all I wanted was to keep this child.

And then to make my dream of joining the Healers Without Borders real.