Locked

Chapter 3: Locked

I make it as far as the window before the door opens behind me.

I don't turn around. I stand there with my arms full of trampled blankets and broken dolls, staring out at the training yard where, only yesterday, I imagined Kade returning to a lavish dinner and a red dress and a gift box he'd never gotten the chance to open. The irony of it sits like a stone in my throat. Below, the last of the crates from the nursery are still being unloaded from the cart, dark wood furniture stacked against pale stone, and somewhere beyond them I can hear Rhea's voice, light and pleased, giving instructions to a servant about where her things should go.

"Elira."

Kade's voice. Closer than I expect. I hear the door shut, hear the particular quiet that falls over a room when two people are finally, truly alone — the kind of quiet that used to feel safe, back when it meant just the two of us and nothing else.

I set the blankets down on the chest at the foot of our bed, very carefully, as though gentleness with the ruined nursery things might make up for the fact that I have none left for anything else. Then I turn to face him.

"What exactly is it you're so upset about?" His tone isn't cruel, not yet — just tired, threaded through with the particular impatience of a man who thinks he's already explained himself enough times. "I've been home less than a day. I fought off a rogue incursion that's been bleeding three packs dry, and instead of welcoming me home, you've done nothing but lose your temper at me. First in the courtyard. Now this."

Something in me, some final held-together thread, simply snaps.

"What am I so upset about?" My voice comes out low, and then it doesn't stay low. "You want to know what I'm so upset about, Kade?"

He doesn't answer. He doesn't need to. I can see it in the set of his jaw — he's bracing himself, the way he braced in the courtyard, like a man who already knows what's coming and has simply decided to weather it rather than prevent it.

"You made a vow to me under the full moon," I say. "You stood in front of the Moon Goddess and every wolf in this pack and swore there would be no one else. Mate bond, Kade. You know what that word means better than anyone — it's supposed to be unbreakable. And you got another woman pregnant. You let her move into the nursery I built for our child with my own two hands. You stripped it bare while I was asleep on the floor of our bedroom, alone, and you didn't even have the decency to warn me first."

"Elira—"

"I'm not finished." The words come faster now, pulled loose by five years of silence finally giving way all at once. "What's next? Does she move into my bedroom too? Does she take my title along with my nursery? Is that how this ends, Kade — Rhea becomes Luna, and I just quietly disappear, the way everyone in this pack has wanted me to disappear since the day you chose me?"

For a moment, something flickers across his face — guilt, maybe, or the beginning of it. But it doesn't last. His expression hardens instead, settles into something more careful, more deliberate, the face of a man about to say something he's already rehearsed.

"You've been Luna for five years," he says, "and in that time you haven't given this pack an heir. You know what that means to the elders. You know what it means for the pack's stability. Rhea is a warrior. Whatever child she carries will be strong — stronger, probably, than anything either of us could have hoped for otherwise." He holds my gaze, steady, reasonable, infuriatingly calm. "Is that not a good thing, Elira? For the pack?"

For the pack. Not for us. Not even a pretense of it.

Something cold and clear settles over me, cutting straight through the anger. I think of the gift box crushed on my nightstand, of the two pink lines I never got to show him, of an entire evening's hope collapsing under the weight of everything he's just said without noticing what it cost me.

"I'm pregnant too," I say.

The words land in the sudden silence like a stone dropped into still water.

Kade's expression doesn't shift the way I expect it to. There's no lightning-struck wonder, no disbelieving joy. Just a slow, careful frown, the look of a man humoring something he doesn't quite believe.

"Don't joke, sweetheart," he says, and the endearment lands wrong, patronizing where it should be tender. "We've tried for five years with no result. Not once. Are you sure?"

Five years of trying. Five years of hopeful mornings and silent disappointments, and now the one time it finally happens, his first instinct is disbelief.

I don't reach for the gift box on the nightstand. I don't show him the plastic stick with its two solid lines, the proof I'd wanted so badly to share with him last night before everything fell apart. Instead, I ask him the only question that actually matters.

"If I am," I say, "will you send Rhea away?"

Kade goes quiet. It's a small silence, only a few seconds long, but I feel every one of them like a blade sliding slowly between my ribs.

"No," he says finally. "I can't do that. That pup is my responsibility too, whatever happens between you and me."

There it is.

My heart doesn't break, exactly. Breaking would suggest something sudden, something violent. This is slower than that — this is something in me quietly, completely going cold, the way a lake freezes over from the edges inward until there's no soft water left anywhere at all.

It doesn't matter if I'm pregnant. It doesn't matter if I finally, after five years, give this pack the thing it's always wanted from me. Rhea and her child aren't going anywhere either way. I am wolf-less — I always have been, I always will be — and no matter how many nights I spend proving my devotion in kitchens and nurseries and quiet, patient silences, I will never be the kind of Luna this pack actually wants. Rhea can fight. Rhea can bleed on a battlefield and call it love. I can only cook, and wait, and hope, and none of that has ever been enough to make me safe here.

I think of every year I told myself it would get easier, that patience was its own kind of strength, that if I simply endured long enough the pack would eventually stop measuring me against a wolf I could never grow. I believed that, once, fiercely enough to build a life on it. Standing here now, watching Kade choose careful, diplomatic silence over a simple no, I understand how much of that belief was never mine at all — it was something I borrowed from him, from his voice telling me I was enough, over and over, until I mistook the borrowing for truth.

This is the wall Kade and I have always circled without ever naming. I understand, standing here, that we will circle it forever. There is no version of our marriage where it simply disappears.

"Then divorce me," I say.

The words come out steadier than I feel. Steadier than I have any right to feel, with my whole chest caving in around them.

"If you're going to protect her no matter what," I say, "if her child matters more than the vow you made to me — then let me go. Divorce me, Kade. Set me free."

The reaction is immediate, and it is not what I expect.

Kade's whole body goes rigid, something dark and feral flashing behind his eyes — his wolf, surfacing all at once, close enough to the surface that I take an instinctive step back. A low growl rolls out of his chest, more animal than man.

"No." The word comes out cracked, raw, nothing like the calm, reasonable tone from a moment ago. "Absolutely not. I will never divorce you, Elira. Do you understand me? Never. You are my Luna. You will always be my Luna."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" Tears spill hot down my face now, and I don't try to stop them. "Live here and watch her raise your child down the hall from mine? Watch the pack crown her in everything but name while I fade into some ornamental title no one respects? I can't do it anymore, Kade. I've spent five years being patient, being understanding, being the sensible one — and I am so tired. Let me go. Please. I have had enough of these chains, of this title, of being Luna in name only while everyone waits for me to disappear."

For a moment he doesn't say anything at all. He just looks at me, jaw tight, something raw and wounded moving behind his eyes that I can't quite read — grief, maybe, or the particular fury of a man watching something he refuses to lose slip through his fingers anyway.

A knock interrupts whatever he might have said next. A warrior's voice, muffled through the door, apologetic but urgent. "Alpha. The Beta has arrived. He says it's urgent — it's about Rhea and the pup."

Kade's jaw works. He looks at me for one long moment, and then something in his expression closes, shutters over, decides.

"Stay here," he says. "I need to speak with the Beta. When I come back, we'll finish this conversation — once you've calmed down."

"Kade—"

"I mean it, Elira." His voice hardens, Alpha authority bleeding into every word. "You are not to go anywhere. And you are not to think about divorce again. Do you understand me?"

He doesn't wait for an answer. He crosses to the door, and I hear something I don't understand at first — a heavy click, metal sliding into place — and by the time I reach the handle and twist it, it doesn't turn.

Locked. He's locked me in.

I stand there for a long moment with my hand still on the handle, disbelief giving way slowly to something far uglier. He didn't just leave. He locked the door behind him, like I'm something to be contained rather than a wife he's supposed to love. I press my palm flat against the wood, half expecting it to give, half expecting Kade's voice to come through with some explanation that would make this make sense. It doesn't come.

I wait.

An hour passes. Maybe two — I lose track, watching the light shift across the floor through the window, listening for footsteps that don't come. I pace the length of the room at first, running my fingers along the edge of the bed, the wardrobe, the vanity where the crushed gift box still sits, until pacing takes more energy than I have left to give it. I sit instead, on the edge of the bed, then on the floor beside it, in the same spot where I fell asleep the night before, as though my body has already decided this is where it belongs.

My stomach growls, quiet at first and then insistent, and I press a hand against it, thinking of the small life curled there that needs more than my grief to survive.

"Hello?" I call out, my voice raw from crying, from arguing, from everything the day has already taken out of me. "Is anyone there? I need water. Please, someone bring me water."

Nothing.

I try again, louder this time, knocking against the door with the flat of my hand. "Please. I haven't eaten since morning. I just need water."

Footsteps, finally — slow, unhurried, deliberately careless. A guard's voice comes through the wood, flat with contempt.

"A Luna who defies her Alpha," he says, "and can't even give this pack an heir, doesn't deserve to waste its resources."

The footsteps continue on, unbothered, fading back down the corridor.

I sink down against the door, my legs finally giving out beneath me, and press both hands over my stomach. "I'm sorry," I whisper, to the only one in this entire house who might actually be listening. "I'm so sorry. I should have known better than to think anyone here would help us."

The hours blur after that. Thirst turns from an ache into something sharper, something that claws at the back of my throat every time I swallow. Hunger hollows me out slowly, patiently, the way it must have hollowed me out as a starving child on the border of pack lands before anyone ever thought to take me in. The room tilts, gently at first, then less gently, light and shadow swimming together at the edges of my vision.

I try calling out once more, my voice barely more than a rasp now, but no one comes. Somewhere beyond the door, faint and muffled, I think I hear laughter — Rhea's, maybe, bright and unbothered, drifting up from wherever she and her father and Kade are deciding the shape of my future without me. I wonder, distantly, whether anyone in this house even remembers I'm locked in here at all, or whether I've simply become another piece of nursery furniture, set aside and forgotten the moment I stopped being useful.

I think of red dresses, and gift boxes, and a mobile carved with tiny wolves chasing the moon.

I think of Kade's voice saying never, and the same breath saying no when it mattered most.

I think, absurdly, of the dinner I never got to serve — the venison resting untouched on its platter somewhere in that kitchen, cold by now, uneaten, exactly like everything else I offered this house that no one thought to take.

My vision narrows to a single point of grey light where the window should be. I press both hands harder against my stomach, as though sheer will alone could shield the small life curled there from whatever is happening to the rest of me. "Stay with me," I whisper, to the only one in this entire house who might actually be listening. "Please. Just stay with me."

The last thing I feel before the floor rises up to meet me is my own hand, curled protectively ove

r my stomach, as the world goes dark and silent around us both.