Chapter 2

Nichole pov

"Shit, shit, shit."

I was already ten minutes behind and the parliament office was a fifteen minute walk, Tate's suit still in the garment bag over my arm and my shoes not properly fastened because I hadn't had time to sit down and do them right. I had overslept, which never happened, except that recently sleep was the only thing my body seemed genuinely interested in. I could drop off anywhere, I woke up more tired than when I'd closed my eyes.

The nausea hit me at the top of the stairs, the same way it had every morning this week — it made the smell of breakfast unbearable and meant I'd eaten almost nothing in days. I pressed my hand against the wall, breathed through it, and kept moving.

I was probably coming down with something. The stress, the cold corridors, the not eating, that was the logical explanation.

The other explanation flickered through my mind for exactly one second before I shut it down. Pregnant. The symptoms were textbook early pregnancy — the exhaustion, the nausea, the food aversion. I knew that, I had read enough medical literature to know that.

But I also knew that three years had passed without it happening once, and Tracy's voice had been living in my head long enough that I had simply stopped considering it a possibility. A hen that won't lay for three whole years. It wasn't that, it was never going to be that.

I shook it off and ran.

I made it to the parliament building with two minutes to spare, breathing hard, and that was when I ran directly into Councilman Reeve's personal attendant coming through the gate from the other side.

The garment bag swung wide. I grabbed it and missed, and it hit the ground. The attendant looked down at it, then up at me, with an expression like I had done it on purpose just to inconvenience him.

"Watch yourself," he said.

"I'm sorry, I didn't see"

"Of course you didn't." He stepped closer, dropping his voice in a way that was somehow worse than shouting. "You know what you are? You're an embarrassment. To this pack, to that title you're wearing like it belongs to you." His eyes moved over me slowly. "The daughter of a murderer, playing Luna. It's pathetic. Genuinely pathetic."

Two other staff members had stopped nearby, watching, and neither of them moved to help. I bent down to pick up the garment bag, my knee still sore from yesterday, and the attendant put his foot on the corner of the bag before I could lift it.

"I'm not finished," he said.

"Here." A hand reached past me, lifted the attendant's foot by the ankle with calm authority, and set it aside as I looked up.

Auburn hair, warm green eyes, an open expression that had no business being this relaxed in the middle of a parliament gate standoff. He picked up the garment bag and handed it to me, then turned to look at the attendant.

The attendant finally left without another word.

"Are you alright?" the stranger asked, turning back to me.

"Yes. Thank you." I checked the garment bag, smoothed the front of it. "You didn't have to do that."

"I know." He was already unwinding the scarf from his neck, and before I could protest he crouched and pressed it carefully against my knee where the fabric of my gown had torn at the old injury. "That needs proper attention."

"I'll manage."

"I'm sure you will." He stood, something almost like amusement in his expression, but gentle. "Take the scarf anyway."

Someone called his name from across the courtyard, I didn't catch it clearly and he glanced over his shoulder.

"I'll return it," I said. "If you tell me your name."

He was already walking, waving it off. "Don't worry about it."

A few minutes later I knocked on Tate's office door."Come in."

He was behind his desk, jacket off, sleeves rolled to the elbow. He didn't look up when I entered. I crossed the room and set the garment bag on the side table.

I was turning to leave when he said, very quietly, "Stop."

I stopped. He rose from behind the desk slowly, crossed the room to where I was standing and his nostrils flared, once, and his eyes went dark.

"Whose scent is that."

"I fell," I said, keeping my voice low. "Someone helped me."

"Someone." He stepped closer. "A man."

"He helped me and left, it was nothing."

"You smell like him." His voice had dropped low.

He moved toward me and I stepped back and my back found the wall. "Did you think I wouldn't notice? Did you think I don't know exactly what you are?"

"Tate, I didn't"

"Don't." His other hand found my wrist and the word died in my throat.

The mate bond did what it always did. My body had never learned to separate the bond from the man, the warmth from the harm, and that betrayal — my own biology working against every piece of sense I had was its own kind of humiliation on top of everything else. He knew it too, he had always known it.

He turned me around, pushed me back until I hit the edge of his desk, and made me bend over it. I grabbed the desk with both hands and stared at the wall in front of me.

Tate didn’t say anything. He pulled my dress up to my waist and tugged my underwear down just enough. Then he undid his pants, took himself out, and pushed into me in one hard movement.

Something felt different, I couldn't have named it — not then, not with my hands gripping the desk and my mind focused entirely on getting through it but my body registered something unfamiliar, a heightened sensitivity that made every movement sharper than usual.

No condom as usual there never was. Tracy had told him I was barren, a hen that wouldn't lay, and he had believed it completely, so the thought never crossed his mind. One less thing for him to consider as I pushed the thought away and held on.

He held my hips tight and started moving—fast, deep, steady. Each thrust pushed me against the desk. The edge dug into my stomach as my legs shook from holding myself up.

I could hear the sound of our bodies hitting together and his breathing getting heavier, but he stayed controlled.

A knock came at the door.

I froze as my whole body tightened around him.

“Alpha,” Jonathan said from the other side. “The North Maple people are here. They’re waiting in the east room.”

Tate didn’t stop, instead he kept going, harder now.

“Alpha,” Jonathan said again. “They’ve been waiting a while.”

My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. I pictured Jonathan opening the door, the visitors seeing us, the story getting out to every pack by tonight.

“Please,” I whispered. Tears were already running down my face. “Please, I’m sorry. I was wrong. I’m sorry. Please”

I’d said those words so many times they came out automatically. I hated how easy they were now.

Tate paused — just for a second. I felt his eyes drop to me, felt the shift in the air like he was really seeing me for once. Something changed in the way he held me, but then it was gone. He started moving again, same as before.

“Tell them five minutes,” he said to Jonathan, voice calm like nothing was happening.

“Yes, Alpha.” Jonathan’s steps went away.

He gripped my hips harder, drove in deep one last time, and held there. I felt him spill inside me, hot and wet, filling me completely. He stayed buried until he finished, breathing hard against my back.

Then he stepped back. I heard him fix his pants, tuck in his shirt, shrug on his jacket like it was nothing.

I slid down to the floor, feeling hollow. My dress was still up around my waist as I pulled it down and smoothed it flat with my hands over and over.

Tate looked at me. “Everyone already knows you’re trash,” A pause, something shifting almost imperceptibly behind his eyes. “But you are my trash, you could walk in here naked and nobody would care. So don’t you dare go near other men.” He adjusted his sleeves. “Clean this up before you go.”

He walked out as the door closed quietly behind him. I stayed on the floor a moment longer than necessary, smoothing my dress flat with both hands.

Tate hadn't always been like this. I had watched Tate from the edges of middle school. I was an omega born into poverty, living only with my father. It was no surprise that I became a target for bullies.

Once, when I was thirteen, three girls bullied me and cut my notebook. Tate saw them and said in a calm, firm voice, “Give it back to her.” They handed it over right away. He never knew my name and walked away before I could even thank him. I stood there holding the notebook to my chest, my heart beating too fast, thinking he didn't have to do that.

From that moment on, I had a crush on him. Not just this time, but many times afterward, he lent a helping hand when I was bullied, even though he might not have known who the poor girl he was helping was, and even though it might all have been out of a sense of justice.

Four years ago, I received my acceptance letter, but the money my father and I had wasn't enough to get me the permit. So I had to sneak to the edge of the pack in the middle of the night, preparing to slip away quietly under the cover of darkness.

It was Tate, a member of the patrol team at the time, who discovered me but let me go.

He never saw my face. He never knew it was me he let go. I used to find comfort in that—the idea that somewhere inside him there was still quiet mercy.

But maybe I was only fooling myself.

Everything changed when my father killed his father. From that day on, I knew there would be no chance for Tate to love me, and every minute of pain was mine to bear.

********

The pharmacy was three blocks from the parliament building, tucked between a dry cleaner and a convenience store, the kind of place nobody from the pack's upper circles would be caught dead in. I went in with my head down, found the aisle without asking for help, and stood in front of the shelf for longer than I needed to.

I was being ridiculous, for three years nothing. It wasn't possible but I bought it anyway. The bathroom at the far end of the public hall was empty. I locked the door, followed the instructions I already had memorised and set the test on the edge of the sink.

A few minutes later, I looked down.

Positive.