Chapter 3

The taxi pulled up outside a building I hadn't seen in years, and for a moment I just sat there in the backseat, staring up at it through rain-streaked glass, my hand still pressed to my stomach. My father must have known the second I called him that I'd end up here instead of his front door. He always understood things about me before I said them out loud.

I paid the driver with hands that wouldn't quite stop shaking and stepped out into rain that hadn't let up once since I'd left Ethan's house. By the time I reached the entrance I was shivering hard enough that my teeth ached, and the building didn't offer much comfort — cobwebs thick across the doorframe, the whole place looking like it had been holding its breath for years waiting for someone to come back.

I pushed the door open and it groaned like it resented being disturbed. Dust rolled out to meet me, and I coughed hard enough to double over, one hand braced against the frame.

"Great," I muttered out loud, to no one. "This is fine. This is completely fine."

It wasn't fine. Nothing about any of this was fine, and saying it sarcastically into an empty, dust-choked apartment didn't change that, but it was the only thing keeping me upright at that point instead of sitting down on the floor and letting myself fall apart completely.

I made it a few more steps before the nausea hit — sudden, sharp, strong enough to make the room tilt. I grabbed the wall and stood there breathing through it, eyes shut, one hand flat against my stomach.

"Not now," I said quietly, almost pleading. "Please, not tonight. I can't do both of us falling apart at the same time."

It passed, slowly. I made it to the couch and sat down hard, dust puffing up around me, and let myself feel — for exactly one full minute — how utterly alone I was. No mate. No pack. No best friend. Just me, a dead apartment, and a heartbeat that wasn't mine, that I hadn't told a single living soul about yet.

Then I made myself get up, because falling apart wasn't going to clean this place or feed this baby.

I found a rag under the kitchen sink, stiff with age, and scrubbed down the corner of the couch where I'd sleep. My hands moved on autopilot while my mind kept circling back to the same question, over and over: *what am I going to do now.* No pack. No income of my own that wasn't tied to a marriage that no longer existed. A baby coming whether I was ready or not.

I found a half-empty box of crackers in the cabinet and some old tea, and made myself eat slowly, because the baby needed it even if I didn't feel like it.

By the time I lay down on the cleaned corner of that couch, wrapped in my own damp coat, I was crying again — quiet, angry tears this time instead of just grief. "We're going to figure this out," I whispered to my stomach. "I don't know how yet. But we will."

---

Ethan sat by the window of his study, staring out at the garden, though there wasn't much to see through the storm except silver rain slicing the dark.

He used to watch her out there most mornings — sleeves rolled up, kneeling in the dirt, talking softly to plants like they could hear her. He'd never told her he watched. It had felt like something private, something that wasn't his to comment on.

Their marriage had never been about love. Arranged, practical, a joining of bloodlines. He'd told himself that for three years, and he'd believed it, mostly. So why did the garden look wrong without her in it. Why did his chest feel like something had been carved out of it.

*No,* he told himself flatly. *I don't love her. I never did.*

"Alpha."

He didn't respond.

"Alpha." Sharper this time.

He blinked, and the room snapped back into focus — Marcus standing a few feet away, arms crossed, watching him with an expression Ethan didn't like being looked at with.

"What," Ethan said, more clipped than he meant.

"That's the fifth time I've said your name." Marcus didn't back down from the tone, which was rare for him. "The elders are waiting. You asked me to fetch you fifteen minutes ago."

"Then why didn't you say something."

"I did. Five times." Marcus's eyes flicked toward the window, toward the dark garden Ethan had been staring into. "You want to tell me what's going on, or should I just guess."

"There's nothing going on."

"Right." Marcus didn't sound convinced, and he didn't try to hide it. "You divorce your mate, mark a new Luna the same week, and now you're sitting in the dark staring at flower beds. Nothing going on at all."

"Watch it," Ethan said, low.

Marcus held his gaze a second longer than a beta usually would with his Alpha, then looked away first, conceding the point without agreeing with it. "The meeting, Alpha. Now, if you're able."

Ethan stood, straightened his jacket like the motion could straighten everything else with it. "I'm coming."

He followed Marcus out, and as he passed the window one last time, he let himself glance at the empty garden — no one kneeling in the dirt, no one humming under her breath.

*I don't love her,* he told himself again, firmer this time, like repetition alone could make it true.

He was still telling himself that by the time he sat down across from the elders, her name lodged somewhere in his chest he refused to look at too closely.