Chapter three

NORA

They came for me at first light just like he said they would.

I had not slept. I had sat on the edge of that hospital bed through the entire night with my hands folded in my lap and my eyes fixed on the wall in front of me and my mind going over and over everything that had happened until the words and the faces and the memory of Lena walking out with my baby blurred together into one long continuous ache that never once let up.

When the door opened and two guards stepped in I did not even flinch. I had been expecting them. I stood up slowly, with one hand pressed against my abdomen, and I followed them out without a word, there was nothing left to say to anyone in this place.

They walked me through the hospital corridors and every nurse, every maid and every pack member we passed along the way looked at me and then looked away. Not one of them held my gaze.

Not one of them said anything. They all just turned their faces and found something else to look at and let me walk past them like I was already gone.

We came out through the main hospital doors and the morning air hit me cold and sharp and I pulled what little I had around me and kept walking.

I could see the pack gates ahead.

And I could see that it was not just the guards waiting there.

The entire pack had gathered.

I stopped walking for just a second when I saw them all standing there, dozens of faces spread out across the grounds near the gate, and then one of the guards pressed a hand against my back and kept me moving forward and I understood then that this had been arranged.

That Kael had made sure there would be an audience for this. That walking me out quietly through a side entrance in the early morning would not have been enough for him. He needed everyone to see it.

I kept my head up. I do not know where I found the strength to do that but I did.

I walked toward those gates with both guards beside me and the faces of my pack watching from every side and I kept my eyes forward and my chin level and I breathed through every step.

Then Lena's voice cut through the morning air like a blade.

"There she is."

She was standing near the front of the crowd with Kael beside her and her voice was loud and clear and designed to carry. Every head that had been turned in my direction turned further.

"She tried to take the baby," Lena announced, her voice ringing out across the grounds.

"After everything that was done for her. After being taken in and given a roof and a place in this pack. She tried to steal the alpha's child."

Murmuring moved through the crowd like a wave.

"That is not true," I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected it to. "That baby came out of my body. You cannot steal what already belongs to you."

"She is lying," Lena said simply, turning to the crowd the way someone turns to an audience they have already won over. "She was found trying to leave the pack with the child in the early hours. The alpha's heir. She had to be stopped."

"I never touched that baby." My voice rose now and I could not stop it. "I was never even allowed to hold him. I woke up and he was already gone and you know that. Every person standing here who was at that hospital last night knows that."

Nobody spoke up.

I looked out at all those faces. People I had lived among for years. People I had seen every day in those halls and at those meals and at those ceremonies. And not one of them opened their mouth.

Kael stepped forward then. He did not raise his voice. He never needed to.

"You are being removed from this pack effective immediately," he said, looking at me with that same flat unbothered calm he had shown me in the hospital room. "Not just for the attempted abduction. For being a threat to the stability of this pack and to the safety of its members."

"You are doing this because you are afraid," I said, and I looked straight at him when I said it. "You are afraid of what I know and what I saw and what I could tell people if I stayed."

Something moved in his eyes. Just for a second.

"Take her out," he said to the guards.

They grabbed my arms and I pulled against them on instinct, I desperately wanted to grab my child , maybe touch the child.

"I gave birth to that child!" My voice broke open completely now and I did not care anymore who heard it or what they thought of it.

"I carried him and I delivered him and you took him from me while I was unconscious and you are standing here calling me a thief in front of people who know exactly what you did!"I yelled, with tears streaming down my eyes.

“All I wanted was to be with my child, why are you being so cruel? I am your mate"

" Ex mate”Lena corrected.

Her eyes burned with rage, as she signaled the guards to drag me off.

The guards dragged me forward and my feet scraped against the ground and the faces of the pack blurred past me on both sides and through it all not one person moved. Not one person took a single step in my direction.

The gates opened.

They pushed me through and the cold outside hit me all at once and I stumbled and caught myself and turned back around just as the gates began to close.

Kael was watching from where he stood. Lena had her hand through his arm and she was smiling the way someone smiles when they have gotten exactly what they wanted and taken their time enjoying every second of it.

Slowly,I watched them close the gates.

The sound of them shutting was the loudest thing I had ever heard in my life.

I stood there on the outside of everything I had ever known with nothing in my hands and nowhere to go and the cold wrapping itself around me like it already knew I was alone.

I turned away from those gates because looking at them was not going to open them back up.