Chapter 5 ： I'd Rather Die

[Sera's POV]

Mira's door opens on the second knock.

She takes one look at my face and pulls me inside, her hands already gripping my shoulders. "Sera, what happened? You're gray. Sit down before you fall down."

I don't sit. I stand in the middle of her little cottage, both arms wrapped around myself, and I make myself say it.

"I need you to end it. The pregnancy. Tonight."

Her hands drop. "What?"

"You heard me."

"No." She shakes her head, backing up a step. "No, wait. Why? I think you love the baby."

"Mira,no,I can't."

"Sera." She grabs my wrist, her voice cracking. "Why? Tell me why. What did he do?"

The truth sits behind my teeth. He cut the bond. He rejected me at the archive table and my soul tore loose and I felt every thread snap. I could say it. I could tell her the bond is gone, that I'm not even his mate anymore in any way that counts.

I can't get the words out. I'm not ready for.

So I give her the other truth instead.

"Because he's going to throw me out." My voice comes flat. "Maybe not tonight. Maybe not this month. But he will. I'm wolfless, Mira. I've always been living on borrowed time in that house." A laugh scrapes out of me. "And when he does, what am I? A discarded Luna with no wolf and no pack. And this child," my hand presses to my belly, "this child becomes a bastard. A fatherless thing an Alpha will never claim. I won't do that to it. I won't bring it into the world just to watch it suffer for what I am."

The tears come before I can stop them, hot and furious, spilling down my face while I stand there shaking.

Mira's arms come around me. "Hey. Hey. Maybe it won't happen like that. You don't know..."

"I do know." I pull back, wiping my face hard with the back of my hand. "Don't. Don't give me hope. He kept me for three years out of guilt because I took a blade for him. That's all it ever was. A debt."

"Sera—"

"And now the debt's paid." I swallow. "Liri's back, Mira. The true Luna. The one the pack's been praying for. She'll give him a real heir, a strong alpha bloodline, everything I can't. And when she does," my voice breaks, "where does my child go? What happens to it then?"

Mira goes quiet. She doesn't argue this time, she knows I'm right.

"Okay," she says finally, "Okay. Sit. Let me examine you first. I'm not doing anything blind."

I lie back on her narrow cot while she works, her fingers pressing my belly, her ear tilted.

Her brow creases. Then it creases deeper.

"Mira." She sits back on her heels. Won't look at me.

"Mira. What?"

"I can't do it." Her voice is careful, "Sera, listen to me. This isn't a normal pregnancy. The child's binding to you. Too deep. If I try to end it now, the backlash tears through you both." She finally meets my eyes. "It would kill you. Do you understand? You end this, you die with it."

I press my hand flat against my stomach and feel nothing, no flutter, not yet.

"So there's no choice," I whisper.

"There's no choice." Mira takes my cold hands in both of hers. "Sera, I know you're scared. But maybe, maybe this isn't the disaster you think. Kai's not cruel to you. I've seen it. The way he watches you across the courtyard. The way he tore three wolves apart for touching your mother. That's not a man paying off a debt." she says. "Maybe he feels more than you know."

A smile pulls at my mouth, thin and bitter, and I let her think it's hope.

She doesn't know the bond snapped three days ago at the archive table. There's no feeling left to bet on. He cut it himself.

But I don't say it. I just squeeze her hands and let her comfort me with a lie.

-------------------------

I walk home through the dark alone.

Maybe there's real feeling there.

The words won't leave me. And against my own will, the memories come, Kai in the eastern woods, throwing his own body between me and the second blade after I'd already taken the first. Kai carrying me back through the trees, his heartbeat wild against my ear, whispering stay with me, stay with me into my hair. Kai in the courtyard, his voice brings three grown wolves to their knees for my mother's sake. Kai's hand at the small of my back, warning the whole pack with one look.

I did love him.

Somewhere in three years of his protection, in the shelter of him, I fell so far. I loved him without noticing, until it's gone.

And now it's gone.

I stop walking.

It was never mine. That's the thing I keep circling back to. From the very first day, the Luna's title, the mark that never came, the man himself, none of it was ever mine to keep. I was just a placeholder.

And she has.

I don't remember deciding to go inside. The great hall is lit low.

And I stop.

Kai is standing by the hearth.

Liri is in his arms.