Chapter 3

Nicole's POV

I was on my knees in the garden when my phone buzzed.

The scorching sun at 2pm beat down so fiercely that my skin stung with pain. Sweat trickled down constantly, finding the wound on my knee from yesterday's fall, sending sharp twinges through it every time I moved.

Mowing the lawn was not technically my responsibility. Nothing about the mansion grounds was, but the assigned staff had walked off the job recently— some quiet consensus among themselves that the omega could handle it — and the grass had reached the point where Tracy would notice and blame me anyway, so I had simply picked up the mower and started walking rows.

I was good at absorbing tasks that no one else wanted. It was one of my more useless talents.

The message was from Tate: Deliver my grey suit. to my office.

No time, no please, no acknowledgement that I had been outside in the heat for hours. I stripped off my gardening gloves and went inside to get it.

His office door was not fully closed. I heard the voices before I reached it and slowed automatically, years of living in this house had made that reflex completely involuntary. Jonathan's voice first, and then Davis, and then two others I recognised as senior council, all of them talking over each other in the urgent, careful way of men raising an argument they had been building for some time.

"The pack is watching, Tate. You need an heir."

"The succession line is vulnerable without one. Every allied pack knows it."

"The destined bond is the only bond that produces a rightful heir. A child from any other woman cannot legally inherit."

"Then you'll wait." Tate's voice cut through all of them.

"We've been waiting for three years." That was Jonathan's voice . "She is your fated mate. Whatever your feelings about the situation, the biological fact is"

"Don't." Something in Tate's voice changed, into something that made the back of my neck prickle even through the wall. "Don't stand in my office and tell me what she is."

"She is a vessel," he said. "If the pack requires an heir and she is the only viable option, then she is a petri dish. That is the beginning and the end of her function here." His voice was very controlled. "What disgusts me is the rest of it. That my child would carry her blood, the blood of the man who killed my father. I am not certain I could look at that child without wanting to"

He stopped himself and no one in the room said anything.

"The kitchen staff have standing orders," he continued, quieter. "The birth control is in her food daily. That remains, until I have decided how I want to handle this, nothing changes."

The suit slipped from my hands. The sound it made was the loudest thing I had ever heard in my life as I heard movement behind the door.

I picked up the package. Knocked twice then walked in. Five faces turned toward me. Jonathan shifted fastest — a smooth, practised reset from caught to cordial that would have been impressive in other circumstances as the others followed his lead, straightening.

"I just arrived," I said, and I held Tate's gaze as I said it, and my voice did not shake, which was the only miracle the day had produced. "I'm sorry to interrupt."

I crossed the room and hung the suit on the stand by the window, then turned back. "Will you need anything before your afternoon meetings?"

Tate watched me for a moment. "No," he said. "Close the door."

I closed it only to see Sophia at the corridor. She was always somewhere she had no business being, she saw me coming and her expression arranged itself into the familiar shape of contempt. Of course she hates me—after all I stole her place.

"Finished running errands?" She stepped deliberately into the centre of the corridor so I would have to go around her.

I went around her as she turned to follow my exit with her eyes, and then I heard it. "What?" She stepped forward, suddenly . "What is that smell?"

I kept walking.

"Hey." Her voice sharpened. "Stop, what is that on you?" She was close now, too close, her head tilting the way a wolf does when it catches something it can't categorise. "You smell— you smell different." Her lip curled slowly, the contempt reshaping itself into something more dangerous. "You filthy trash. What have you done?"

"Nothing," I said, and kept moving, because I needed to get away from her.

She had never bothered to hide her malice toward me, so no matter what she said I was never surprised. I told myself that was all it was. Sophia was looking for a new angle, she had nothing better to do than invent reasons to corner me in corridors.

I kept walking. But a thought caught me mid-stride and wouldn't let go. What if she wasn't joking. What if she had actually smelled something.

I made it to the east bathroom. Locked the door and sat on the floor, my mind racing. A female wolf's scent could change for two reasons. First: external contamination, a foreign smell picked up from the environment or contact. Second: a hormonal shift significant enough to alter the body's chemical signature at the skin level.

I had not been near anything unusual, I had been mowing a lawn. I was also a few weeks late, which I had been feeling was due to stress and disrupted eating patterns.

The test took thirty seconds to show me what I hoped not to know. Two red lines.

Perhaps due to the recent loss of appetite and eating only small amounts of bread it led to Tate birth control failing. I sat on the bathroom floor with a pregnancy test in my hands and thought about what Tate had said through that door. The blood of a murderer, I am not certain I could look at that child without wanting to.

But I knew with what Tate left unsaid he—wanted to kill the child he had with me.

Before today, some naive piece of me had believed if I could ever have a child, that even if Tate would never love me, he might love our child. That the child would be safe even if I wasn't. But with what I heard today that thought has been dissolved.

An abortion, or an escape. Those were the options my mind produced as Tracy's bell shrieked through the house.

I shoved the test under the sink cabinet, stood up, smoothed my clothes, and went upstairs.

She was in the middle of her room in yesterday's dress, which meant she had slept in the chair again.

"You took long enough." Her eyes swept me "You look like a ghost, what is wrong with you?"

"Nothing, Luna Tracy. Shall I start with the shoulders today?"

"Come here then." She waved me over impatiently, and I crossed the room, and the moment I got close enough her face contorted.

"What is that?!" She reared back like I'd struck her, one hand flying to her chest. "You've been wearing perfume! You know my respiratory system is sensitive! Are you trying to kill me?!" Her voice rose. "Your father killed my husband and now you come in here trying to suffocate me with your stench! You vicious girl! I'm going to have Tate divorce you and throw you out — you'll have nothing, you'll be trampled by the whole pack."

She was already reaching for the mind link. I could see it in her eyes, that slightly unfocused look of someone opening a channel, and I backed toward the door.

"I'll fix it immediately, Luna Tracy. I'm so sorry."

I was down the stairs and into the kitchen in under a minute. Bay leaf juice. I had read about it once in a paper — a histamine trigger, crude and painful, that flooded the skin's scent markers with the chemical signature of allergic response and temporarily buried everything underneath. It was the least elegant solution imaginable and was also the only one I had.

I pressed three leaves into boiling water, strained it badly, and drank it faster than was wise.

The reaction was almost immediate. Red spots crawled up my forearms and throat, my skin pulling hot and tight, and I gripped the counter and breathed and prayed to the Moon Goddess who had already done her absolute worst to me this year please. Not this. Don't let this reach the baby. Please.

Right here, in this kitchen, drinking something disgusting and terrifying and praying over it — this was when I understood that the decision was already made. I wanted this child. I wanted to give birth to this child and get out of this house and raise them somewhere that would never teach them that they deserved to be treated this way.

I just didn't know how yet. The kitchen door opened. Tate stopped in the entrance, his eyes moving over the rash on my arms and neck with a sharp, involuntary assessment, and then — something flickered across his face. "What's that smell," he said.

"Allergic reaction." I held up my arms as evidence, keeping my voice at the careful pitch of mild inconvenience. "The soap in the east bathroom, I think. It's happened with strong fragrances before."

He looked at me for a long moment, and then"Come out," he said, and stepped back into the corridor, and I followed him because I had no choice.

"You interrupted my meeting." His voice was cold. "You upset Sophia, you almost sent my mum into a respiratory episode, I have been more than lenient and I will not continue to show mercy." He straightened his jacket "The Alpha of North Maple Pack is arriving this afternoon. You will be at the dinner as Luna, you will not embarrass this pack."

*********

I wore enough perfume to the dinner that the woman next to me shifted her chair two inches to the left, which was fine. It was doing its job. I stood where I was placed, smiled when the occasion required it.

I slipped out onto the balcony during the third course because I needed a few seconds to catch my breath.

"You're looking better than the last time I saw you."

I turned. The auburn-haired man from the corridor was standing at the railing with a glass of water, his jacket off, looking out at the grounds below with the ease of someone who had also come here to escape the noise.

Something in my chest loosened fractionally. "I would have brought your scarf if I'd known you were coming."

I told you not to worry about it." He smiled. "Keep it."

Someone called his name from inside and he straightened, setting his glass on the railing. "Enjoy the air," he said, and went back in.

I turned back to the garden below.

"You shameless thing."

I didn't have to turn around to know Lily's voice. Lily Hayes — Tate's cousin, Jonathan's mate, and one of the three girls who used to corner me in the school corridor with my notebook. She had followed me here. "Seducing our guests now? In the middle of my cousin's dinner? Do you have no limit? Have you no shame at all?"

"We spoke for a few seconds."

"I saw how you were looking at him." She stepped forward, pointing. "You are an embarrassment. You are a stain on this pack and on Tate's name and I don't know why he hasn't cut you loose yet everyone else can see what you are."

The balcony doors opened behind her and Tate stepped out, eyes moving from Lily's face to mine. "What," he said quietly, "is going on out here."