Chapter 3: Bleeding On His Office Floor

The human hospital smelled like bleach and old coffee.

Not like pine and snow and power. Not like him.

Liam left me at the entrance with an envelope. I didn't open it until he was gone.

Five thousand dollars. In cash.

A payoff.

I crumpled it in my fist and walked into the ER anyway because the pain between my legs was getting worse.

"Name?" The nurse didn't look up.

"Seraphina Cole. Twenty-three. I — I'm bleeding."

That got her attention.

Two hours later, I was in a thin gown on a paper-covered bed, staring at a water stain on the ceiling while a tired doctor pressed an ultrasound wand to my stomach.

"When was your last period?" she asked.

"Seven weeks ago," I whispered.

"And you had a fall tonight? In the snow?"

"Something like that."

She frowned at the screen. Then her face softened.

"Well, you didn't fall hard enough to hurt the baby. See?"

She turned the screen toward me.

There was a flicker. A tiny, furious flicker. Like a heartbeat fighting to stay alive.

"You're about four weeks, maybe five," she said. "Strong heartbeat. But your hormones are through the roof and your blood pressure is low. Are you under a lot of stress?"

I started to laugh. Then I started to cry. Loud, ugly sobs that shook the whole bed.

The doctor grabbed my hand. "Honey? Is the father — is he not in the picture?"

The father was a Lycan King who had just paid me to disappear.

"The father," I said, wiping my nose with the back of my hand, "thinks I'm a stray."

She didn't ask more. Human doctors learn not to ask when a girl shows up in the middle of a blizzard with blood on her coat and a rejection wound that looks like a heart attack on the monitor.

"You need rest. Prenatal vitamins. No stress. No running. You're high-risk because of the blood loss tonight."

High-risk. The irony. I had always been high-risk. Too human for the wolves, too wolf for the humans.

She printed a picture. A black and white smudge with that flicker in the middle.

"Do you want it?" she asked gently.

I took it. My fingers left wet marks on the paper.

"Yes," I whispered. To the smudge. To myself. "I want you."

Back in the waiting room, my phone had 14 missed calls from my landlord and one text from an unknown number.

It was Liam: He left for the Pack House in Alaska. He won't be back for 5 years. You are safe now. Use the money. Go.

Five years.

My chest caved in. Not from the mate bond this time. From something worse. Relief and grief at the same time.

He was gone. The man who broke me was gone for five years.

I looked down at the ultrasound picture.

I had $5,000. I had a baby that was half Lycan royalty. And I had a city that wanted me gone.

I did what any girl with nothing left to lose would do.

I bought a Greyhound ticket to the farthest place I could afford with $43 left after the hospital copay.

Agbor. No — Alaska was where he went. I couldn't go there.

I typed "cheapest warm place Greyhound" into the cracked screen of my phone.

Miami. $189.

I bought it.

On the bus, shivering under a thin blanket that smelled like someone else's perfume, I made three promises to the smudge in my pocket.

One: I will never tell him you exist.

Two: I will never let you feel what I felt tonight — weak.

Three: I will come back. Not as a waitress. Not as a stray.

When I come back to Manhattan, I will make the Billionaire Lycan King kneel on the same floor he made me bleed on.

The bus pulled out of Port Authority at 3:17 AM, in the middle of the snowstorm.

Manhattan lights disappeared behind us.

In the penthouse at Thorne Tower, Alexander Thorne stood in his office, staring at a single cupcake smashed into his $20,000 marble floor. White frosting mixed with blood.

He bent down. He picked it up.

And for the first time in twenty-nine years of being a King, he howled.

The whole tower heard it.

Liam heard it from the parking lot and closed his eyes.

"It begins," Liam whispered to the snow.