CHAPTER 5: THE FIRST NIGHT

Rhiannon's POV

I don't remember how long I ran.

The trees blurred together—dark shapes against darker sky. My lungs burned. My legs screamed. But the pain in my chest eclipsed everything else.

The mate bond.

It had snapped into place for one perfect, golden second. I'd felt it—the rightness of him, the completeness, the destiny our souls had been reaching for.

Then he'd spoken those words, and it shattered.

I stumbled over a root and went down hard. Dirt scraped my palms. Blood—I was bleeding from somewhere. Couldn't tell where. Everything hurt.

Get up. Keep moving.

But my body refused. I rolled onto my back, staring up through the canopy at fragments of moonlight. The Forbidden Forest. I'd run straight into the place where wolves went to die.

Good. Maybe I belonged here.

A sob tore from my throat, raw and animal. I pressed both hands over my mouth to muffle it, but another followed. Then another. Until I was shaking with it, curled on the forest floor like something broken.

"I, Darius Nightshade, reject you, Rhiannon Ashwood."

His voice echoed in my head. Cold. Final. Like I was nothing.

Like I'd never been anything.

My hand drifted to my stomach. Still flat. Still normal. But I knew.

I was pregnant.

The realization cut through my grief like a blade. I was pregnant, alone, in the deadliest forest in three territories. Rogues hunted here. Ferals. Things without names that even pack warriors feared.

I might die here.

The thought should have terrified me. Instead, it felt almost peaceful. No more pain. No more humiliation. No more waking up to realize the man I loved had thrown me away like garbage in front of everyone who'd ever mocked me.

But the baby.

My hand pressed harder against my stomach.

His baby. Growing inside me. A piece of the man who'd destroyed me.

I should hate it. Should curse it for existing.

Instead, I felt—protective. Fiercely, irrationally protective.

"I won't let you die," I whispered to my still-flat belly. "I won't."

But saying it and doing it were different things. I was bleeding. Exhausted. The broken mate bond was like an open wound in my chest, phantom pain shooting through me with every breath.

I needed shelter. Water. Something.

Get. Up.

I forced myself to my knees. The world spun. I grabbed a tree trunk for balance and held on until the dizziness passed.

A cave. There—thirty feet away. Dark opening in the hillside, probably home to some animal I'd have to fight off. But it was shelter.

I crawled toward it.

My dress—the pale blue one I'd worn to the ceremony—was torn and filthy. Blood stained the fabric. Mud caked the hem. I'd looked so hopeful this morning. So stupid.

The cave was empty, thank the gods. Just damp stone and the smell of earth. I collapsed just inside the entrance, every muscle in my body giving out at once.

Cold. I was so cold.

I curled into myself, shivering, and let the darkness take me.

---

Hours Later

Pain woke me.

Not physical—though my body ached—but something deeper. The mate bond breaking had left jagged edges inside my chest, cutting me with every breath.

I gasped, pressing my hand over my heart.

This is what dying feels like.

But I didn't die. The pain crested, held, then slowly—agonizingly—began to dull.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Pre-dawn light filtered through the cave entrance. I'd survived the night.

Barely.

My throat was dry as sand. My stomach cramped with hunger. And somewhere beneath all of that, the tiny life inside me pulsed with stubborn determination.

If I survive today, I thought, I'll never be weak again.

The vow felt important. Real. Like if I could just make it through one more sunrise, I could make it through anything.

I pushed myself up on shaking arms. My vision swam but held.

Water. I needed water.

The sound of a stream reached my ears—faint, but there. I crawled toward the cave entrance.

That's when I felt it.

Someone was watching me.

Every instinct I had screamed danger. I tried to shift—tried to call on the wolf that should have been mine—but nothing happened. Wolfless. Still wolfless, even after the mate bond.

"Who's there?" My voice came out hoarse, broken.

A figure stepped from the shadows of the trees.

Female. Tall. Silver hair that seemed to glow in the pre-dawn light. Eyes like molten gold.

She studied me with an expression I couldn't read. Not quite pity. Not quite curiosity.

"Interesting," she said, her voice ancient and knowing. "You smell like broken bonds and Chimera blood."

I tried to stand, failed. "Who are you?"

She tilted her head, and a small smile played at her lips. "Your salvation."

A pause.

"Or your doom."

Another pause, longer this time. Her golden eyes seemed to see straight through me.

"We'll see which."