The Empty Room

POV: Eriq

"My daughter is the natural match for you, Alpha," Corwin Morrow said, leaning back in his chair with the ease of a man who had already won.

I had been listening to him for an hour, and every sentence ended at the same place. The Omega was too frail. A pregnant warrior needed servants, midwives, a larger wing, and a Luna with an unbroken bloodline. He had spent ten minutes on the quantity of meat a pregnant wolf required.

"Saskia and I are comrades, Corwin. I'll take responsibility for the child. I won't take another Luna."

"You're making a mistake."

"Elva is my Luna." It came out harder than I'd planned. "She's my only Luna."

That was when my wolf woke. It didn't stir gently. It tore up through my ribs with a snarl that set my teeth on edge and made the bond in my chest burn like a brand left too long against skin. Something was wrong with my mate.

I was on my feet before Corwin could finish his sentence. "This meeting is over."

"Your Luna has made her own choices, Alpha. Let her live with them."

"She is not a choice I made lightly, and she is not yours to discuss."

I ran the whole way back to the Alpha House, boots skidding on wet cobbles. I threw open our bedroom door and stopped dead.

The room was empty.

The blankets were folded at the corners the way she always folded them. Her shoes sat in a neat line beside the wardrobe, and her hairbrush lay on the vanity with one dark strand caught in the bristles. Her scent lingered, sunlight on crushed herbs, and I stood in the middle of it like a man in a house after a fire.

"Elva!"

I tore through the closet and the washroom. I flipped the mattress, kicked over the wardrobe, and the crash rolled down the corridor while servants scattered. She had run to force my hand. That was the only explanation my pride would allow, and I held it with both fists. She was hiding somewhere, waiting for me to come crawling.

"Lucan!"

My Gamma appeared in the doorway with a leather folio under his arm and his wire spectacles already in his hand. He cleaned them whenever he disliked what he was about to say, and I had never known him to tell me a comfortable lie, which was why I kept him close.

"Search every road, every den, every inn within three days' ride," I said.

"The searches are already underway." He wiped the lenses, put them back on, and wiped them again. "Alpha, before you start, you need to hear what the guard on the Luna's door told me."

"Tell me."

"She asked him for water. He refused. She went quiet for a long time and then seemed to collapse. Nobody checked on her again."

The room went cold. "And?"

"The east wall was emptied at dusk, Alpha. The order carried the Beta's household seal. Not yours."

I found the guard in the great hall with his hands clasped too tightly in front of him. I put him against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.

"You refused my wife water?"

"She defied you, Alpha. I thought..."

"You thought." I shoved him again. "A lowly guard thought he knew better than his Luna what she deserved. Dungeon, Dorran. Now."

I turned and found Saskia at the end of the corridor, wide-eyed in a silver gown I'd never seen her wear. It had been in Elva's wardrobe.

"Why were you in her room?" My voice was ice. "What did you say to her?"

"I found her unconscious, Eriq." Her lip trembled. "I only wanted to help. She was so unstable. She said she'd hate us forever, she cursed the baby..."

"She cursed the baby."

"I didn't expect her to run. I swear."

I looked at her for a long time. The tears were real. Nothing she said about Elva was, and I had heard Saskia lie before, with her easy laugh and her perfect timing. I'd always called it spirit. Now I found myself counting the things she'd told me, one by one, and the numbers refused to add.

"Doctor Pell," I said slowly. "Where is he?"

"At my father's estate, why?"

"He confirmed your pregnancy on the road. I remember because you said his hands were cold."

Saskia blinked, once. "Of course. On the road."

"Lucan." I didn't look away from her. "Find out where Doctor Pell has been since midsummer."

"Already on my list, Alpha."

I went back upstairs alone and sat on the edge of our bed. I tried to remember the last time Elva had smiled at me without bracing for a fight, and I couldn't make the picture hold. She had tended every wounded warrior in the pack, even the ones who spat on her. She had bowed her head to elders who called her a hen. She had suffered alone rather than make me choose, and I had named that patience and mistaken it for weakness. Nothing in five years suggested she'd ever curse a child.

I had always believed she would forgive me. Every time she cried, I told myself she would wake up the next morning with her hair braided and her chin high. It had never once occurred to me that she might stop waiting.

My hand knocked the pillow, and something green slid out from beneath it.

A small box wrapped in green silk, the ribbon tied twice.

I remembered her at the gate with it clutched against her ribs, her face open and bright, and me too busy being the wronged man to ask what she carried. The silk felt warm, as though she'd only just set it down. I untied the ribbon with fingers that wouldn't quite work, and lifted the lid.

Two clear pink lines.

My wolf went silent the way a forest does before a storm, and then it howled, a sound that shook the bones of my skull. She'd been pregnant when I shoved past her at the gate. She'd been pregnant when I told her to stop making trouble, and she had carried my child through the corridor and into that locked room alone while I held another woman's hand.

"Alpha?" Lucan said from the doorway, and then he saw my face. He didn't clean his spectacles this time.

"Every hunter," I said. "Every tracker. Every road in four territories."

"Alpha..."

"Bring her back, Lucan." My voice cracked in the middle and I let it. "Whatever it costs."