Chapter 4

Nicole's POV

Lily didn't waste a second. "I came out here and found her with Alpha Ashford. Alone, in the dark, pressed against the railing. The way she was looking at him, Tate — I was embarrassed on your behalf."

"That is not what happened," I said.

"She's been following him all evening. Every time he moved, she was there."

"That is not true." I turned to Tate, hating that I was pleading but doing it anyway. "We spoke for less than a minute. He came out for air. I came out for air. That was it."

Tate looked at me for a long moment and then he laughed. "You." He tilted his head, something like genuine amusement crossing his face. "Seducing the Alpha of North Maple." He turned to Lily, shaking his head lightly. "Don't worry about it. She forgets herself sometimes. It won't happen again."

My voice came out louder than I intended, years of swallowing things finally pushing back against my teeth. "I was standing on a balcony. I was having a conversation with a guest you invited. I did nothing wrong and you know it."

Lily's expression shifted. I saw it — the flicker of surprise then her hands hit my shoulders and she shoved me into the pool.

The cold hit me. I came up gasping, my dress wrapping around my legs and pulling. I turned in the water looking for the edge.

A ring of people had formed at the pool's edge — staff and guests, faces pale in the outdoor lighting but no one moved.

I looked up at the balcony. Tate stood at the broken railing, hands loose, face entirely still. He looked at me the way you look at a stranger you have decided not to involve yourself with. For three years I had made excuses for every version of his cruelty. I had called it grief, I had called it pain.

I kicked toward the edge. The cramp hit before I got there — sudden and vicious, low in my abdomen as I stopped moving. No. Not here. Not tonight.

A hand closed around my wrist and pulled, and then I was on the tiles, coughing, the cold air hitting my soaked skin. I tried to find the face of whoever had pulled me out but my vision had gone dark.

I woke up in my bedroom. The lamp on the dresser was on. I was dry, which meant someone had moved me and changed my clothes, which meant I had been unconscious longer than it felt.

Dr. Hale already on his feet, moving toward the bed with his stethoscope in hand.

My hand went to my stomach before my eyes had fully adjusted, I made myself pull it back.

How long had I been unconscious? How long had he been in this room?

Tate was by the window, arms crossed. He came. He called the doctor. Something loosened in my chest despite everything and then Dr. Hale reached for my wrist and I pulled it back before he could take it. "I'm fine. I don't need to be examined."

"Stop being dramatic," Tate said. "Let him look at you."

"I just swallowed some water." Dr. Hale was already reaching again, and I shifted back against the headboard. "I'm fine. Really."

"You've said that three times." Tate's voice had taken on the edge that meant his patience had a visible end approaching. "Stop refusing his help and let him."

"I don't want to be examined." My voice came out louder than I meant it to, and Tate's expression hardened into something I recognised immediately, and I rushed to fill the silence. "I'm sorry. I just — I don't want a fuss. I'm all right, I really am."

He looked at me for a long moment with the specific contempt he reserved for things that inconvenienced him in ways he hadn't planned for.

"Ungrateful," he said quietly. "I arranged for a doctor and you sit there refusing his help like a child." He pushed off the doorframe and straightened his jacket. "You should have stayed in the water if you were going to make this much trouble about being pulled out of it."

He turned to Dr. Hale. "Pack up. Go upstairs and check on Luna Tracy, her condition has been getting worse." He didn't look at me again.

The door closed, and in the silence of my room, I understood completely, and finally, what I should have understood a long time ago.

The doctor had never been for me. I pressed both hands flat against my stomach, gently, and held them there until my breathing steadied.

Are you all right? I asked the question silently. I need you to be all right.

Outside, Tracy's bell began to ring. I didn't move to answer it. For the first time in years, I simply let it ring, and lay back on the bed, and stared at the ceiling, and thought.

In two months, maybe less, my body would start to show signs of pregnancy. I could not protect myself here, let alone someone smaller and more vulnerable and entirely dependent on me to make the right decision before it was too late.

Where could I even go?. I had no money of my own, no contacts outside the pack, no identity that wasn't tangled up in Tate's name and my father's crime. I was an omega without a wolf, the daughter of a man every pack in the alliance had been told was a murderer. No one here would help me. No one in any allied pack would risk sheltering me against a sitting alpha.

I closed my eyes and thought harder, and found nothing.

Where? Where can I go where I become invisible? Where the scent disappears and the bond goes silent and Tate can't reach me?