Chapter 4

After informing the research team director of my pregnancy and suggesting they reconsider my position, I closed my email fully prepared for rejection. Even if excluded, I've resolved to move to Switzerland—if needed, I'll find a charming cottage to begin this new chapter with my child.

Then Gavin's text appeared. He requested a meeting at Moonlight Restaurant tonight—the same place I'd booked for our anniversary, where he'd stood me up to be with someone else. Though every nerve resisted, I finally typed "Accepted" before the sinking sun drowned my phone screen in amber light.

Back in my dorm, my wolf Gloria snarled inside my head: "You're really going? After everything?"

"I have to," I shot back. "If we want to keep this pup safe, we need to cut all ties first. Dinner gets him to sign the papers. Then, when we're oceans apart..."

Her growl vibrated through me. "And after? You think he'll just let his cub go?"

I bared my teeth at the mirror. "By then, it'll be too late for him to do anything about it."

Gavin had arrived early at Moonlight Restaurant, the table adorned with peonies I once sketched in my botany journal, a moonstone necklace glimmering beside the crimson dress I'd lingered over in last month's Vogue spread—his silent admission of attention no less poignant for its belatedness.

When I approached, he rose with practiced chivalry, pulling out my chair with the precision of a man preparing for corporate arbitration rather than reconciliation. The silence between us condensed into crystalline tension until he finally broke it. "About what happened at the hospital—"

Chaos erupted as his assistant burst through the glass doors, frantic as a warzone medic. Their hushed exchange carried treacherous fragments: "Vivian...fainting spell...threatened miscarriage..." His chair screeched backward, the sound slicing through my last vestige of hope. At the exit, he paused—not for me, but to delegate responsibility. "Rebecca, I'll have James escort you—"

"Go." My smile tasted of copper and crushed jasmine. "We're adults playing at romance, aren't we?" The lie shimmered like the champagne flutes between us.

He disappeared into the night's embrace. My knees buckled as biological betrayal mirrored emotional collapse.

Through swimming vision, I watched James' approaching silhouette blur—not Gavin returning, but another surrogate.

Cold marble rushed to meet me, the moonstone pendant digging into my palm as darkness claimed what little remained unbroken.

The final image burned into consciousness: taillights bleeding into rain-slick streets, carrying him toward another woman's crisis while mine crystallized into permanence.

Consciousness returned in fractured glimpses—blurred scrubs murmuring with Gavin near the doorway. The doctor's gloved hands punctuated the air. "Are you aware that she—"

My throat constricted. "Water, please?" The interruption sliced through the sterile air, words tumbling out like a spent diver breaching surface. Gavin's designer cuff brushed my feverish palm as he passed the paper cup, his gaze already shifting back to white-coated authority. "You were saying about her condition?"

Cold dread snaked down my spine. My eyes locked with the physician's, a silent plea screaming through dilated pupils. The heart monitor's rhythmic beeping crescendoed like a timebomb countdown.

Mercifully, his phone shrilled—corporate emergency codes vibrating with existential urgency. "We'll continue this later," he murmured, already halfway to the elevators.

When the doors swallowed him whole, the doctor tilted her chart. "Your husband remains unaware of the pregnancy?"

"Surprise anniversary gift," I rasped, smile cracking like desert soil. "Your discretion would be... mutually beneficial."

Her pen hesitated—clinical ethics warring with bourgeois discretion—before finally scribbling benign dehydration on the discharge papers. The secret coiled deeper, its embryonic weight now twice as heavy.

"Did you hear? Room 806's got that famous werewolf couple - the Alpha everyone talks about. First time I've seen the Wolf King in person! Mr. Clarke hasn't left his Luna's bedside since they arrived."

"What else would you expect? Did you see how he carried her through the lobby? Straight out of a romance movie."

A sigh. "They've been together ten years but still act like newlyweds. Meanwhile my mate forgets our anniversary..."

Their gossip burned like silver against my skin. There was no mistaking - they could only mean Gavin and Vivian.

"Of course he's attentive—Mrs. Clarke's finally giving him an heir. The Alpha's assembled a whole team of specialists at her slightest discomfort."

That sounded like a joke. Gavin treated Vivian like royalty while I remained the forgotten Luna, left to fend for myself.

After two uneventful nights, the doctors finally let me go.

When I walked out of the hospital gate, my first destination was the Pack Council to collect the Bondbreak Certification.

This proof is a manifestation of the dissolution of our mate bond.

By the time he opened that envelope, I'd already be in Switzerland.