Chapter 10

Willow’s POV

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the ceiling.

It was plain white. I would recognize it anywhere. It was the pack clinic.

I had lost track of how many times I had woken up here after being bullied by some of the pack members.

I lay there for a moment without moving, just staring up at the ceiling.

My head was heavy. My whole body felt like it had been run over by a dozen trucks.

My shoulder ached. My face throbbed. My back burned.

Each breath I took sent a sharp piercing pain through my chest.

Then I remembered the stairs incident.

Terror flooded me, and my eyes widened. My hand moved to my stomach, and I pressed my palm flat against it, holding it there, waiting for something that would tell me that my baby was fine.

“You’re awake.” A cold voice murmured.

My eyes moved.

Alpha Kelvin was standing at the side of the bed, looking down at me.

He had his hands clasped behind his back, the same as always, and his expression was unreadable. There was a faint sneer at the edge of his mouth.

I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t have the strength for words yet so I closed my mouth. All I could do was just look at him and keep my hand pressed against my stomach.

He looked at my hand.

Then he looked back at my face.

“The child is gone,” he stated.

He stated it flatly, the way you would report the weather.

I stared at him unblinking.

His words echoed in my head, but they didn’t make sense — they couldn’t make sense, so I just lay there and stared at him and waited for my brain to catch up.

The child is gone.

“Wha—” I gasped out, breathing heavily.

My hand was still pressed against my stomach, like I could check for myself and feel something that told me he was wrong, that the healer was wrong, that whatever had happened on those stairs had not taken the one thing I had.

A raw sob ripped out of my chest, and before I knew it, my whole body was shaking from the force of sobs.

My chest burned. Tears ran down into my hair.

I had held on to the fact that whatever else was happening, there was this one thing that was mine.

And now that was gone too.

I cried until I couldn’t anymore. Until my body ran out of energy, and I just lay there exhausted, staring at nothing.

Alpha Kelvin had not moved.

He had stood there the entire time, watching me with that faint sneer, without saying a word, no hint of sympathy.

When I finally went quiet, he released a small sigh of mild irritation, the way someone sounded when his time was being wasted.

“It seems we’ve hit a snag in our former plan,” he drawled.

I turned my head to look at him. My eyes were swollen and nearly shut. My voice was hoarse, barely a whisper.

“Are you going to kill me now?”

He looked at me for a moment, then he smiled. It was a smile that rang warning bells in my head.

“No,” he replied, tilting his head slightly, “But you will wish I did.”

Even in the state I was in, those words sent shivers running down my spine.

My heart slammed fast against my chest, and my breath sped up.

“What?” I managed.

He unclasped his hands from behind his back and moved slowly to the foot of the bed, looking down at me with that same cold expression.

“You are no longer carrying the heir,” he said. “Which means you are no longer useful to me in the way I had planned. You are also a distraction to Noah that I cannot allow to continue.”

He shrugged lightly. “I would have simply resolved the situation the old-fashioned way. But I find myself with a more practical option.”

My breathing was uneven. My voice shook as I asked. “What does that mean?”

“It means that you are going to be useful to me in a different way. You are going to help me buy a little favour with someone I need on my side.” He replied.

I stared at him. “I don’t understand.”

He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was chilling.

“To demonstrate goodwill, I am going to give you to Alpha Mordecai Black,”

I could not move. I could not speak as horror washed over me.

Alpha Mordecai Black.

Everyone knew that name.

The Kingslayer.

The alpha who had killed previous Alpha Kings with his own hands whenever they challenged him but always refused the throne like it meant nothing to him. The alpha that other alphas did not challenge because they valued their lives.

And Alpha Kelvin was going to give me to him.

My heart had stopped beating properly.

It was getting hard to breathe.