Chapter 9: Sold My Necklace To Save My Baby

The pawn shop on Canal Street smelled like old cigarettes, cleaner, and desperation.

Perfect for a nobody.

The bell over the door was broken. The man behind the bulletproof glass didn't look up from his newspaper. He was older, Lycan, scarred ear, retired enforcer type. He could smell what I was — human, pregnant, heartbroken, three-week secret hiding in my belly — and he didn't care.

I stood there dripping rain onto his dirty floor. My dress from Thorne Tower was torn at the hem. My ID badge was still clipped to my chest because I forgot to return it. I forgot a lot of things in the last six hours. Like how to breathe.

"What?" he grunted.

I opened my fist.

In my palm was my mother's necklace.

A tiny silver wolf head. Not big. Not flashy. One real diamond for an eye, cloudy but real. My mother saved two years working double shifts to buy it for my eighteenth birthday.

"For your first shift," she whispered that night. "So you never forget you're Luna-born, Sera. Even if you serve coffee to Kings."

I never shifted. At eighteen, nothing. At twenty-two, nothing. The doctor said I was too weak, too human.

But my mother's wolf lived in that necklace.

"How much?" I whispered. My voice was gone from crying.

He put the paper down. Took the necklace through the slot under the glass, held it to the yellow light.

"Silver's real. Diamond's shit. Small chip. Fifty."

Fifty.

"Fifty dollars?" My throat closed. "It — my mother — it's real —"

"Yeah, real small. Fifty. Take it or leave it, girl. I get ten of these a day. Boyfriend broke up, need bus ticket, same story."

He wasn't wrong.

I had $3.42 in my bank account. The $500 Alexander threw on his office floor was still there. I didn't take it. I wouldn't take blood money for my baby.

The last Greyhound North leaves Port Authority at midnight. One way to Anchorage is $47 if you take the long route. If I missed it, I'd wait two days for the next cheap one, and I had nowhere to sleep. Elena's wolves were watching the tower.

My hand went to my stomach. I wasn't showing. Three weeks is too early. But I held it like it would fall out.

Fifty would get me on that bus with $3 left for water. Fifty would buy my baby's future.

"Okay," I whispered. The word tasted like blood.

He slid money under the glass. Two dirty twenties. One ten. Sweaty.

I slid the necklace through.

His fingers closed over it. My mother's hands — putting it around my neck five years ago — flashed in my mind.

"Receipt?" he asked.

I shook my head. I didn't want proof I sold the last piece of being someone's daughter.

Outside, the rain had stopped. I clutched the $50 and walked twelve blocks to Port Authority with my bare neck cold. First time since eighteen with no weight on my chest.

At the counter, the woman didn't look up.

"Destination?"

"Anchorage. One way. Midnight. Long route."

"Forty-seven."

I slid the bills over. She gave me a paper ticket and $3 in coins.

"Gate 17. Driver don't wait for nobody."

Nobody again.

I sat on the cold floor to wait. Eight hours. I watched families. A father with his little girl on his shoulders, both laughing, same black hair. Like my baby might have.

The poppy seed kicked. I know three weeks can't kick. But I felt it. A flutter.

"We're okay," I whispered to my stomach, to the bare skin where the wolf sat. "I sold my past to buy your future. That's what mothers do."

At 11:47 PM, my phone buzzed.

Unknown number.

I almost didn't answer. Nobody calls a nobody.

But the stupid mate bond made me answer.

"Seraphina Cole."

"Don't get on that bus."

Alexander.

His voice wasn't the ice King. It was raw. Drunk. Wrecked.

"I know you sold — June told me — I tracked the pawn on Canal — Sera, don't —"

"How did you get this number?"

"I've always had it. I never deleted it. Not once in three years. Sera, where are you?"

For one terrible, weak second, I wanted to tell him. Gate 17. I'm scared. I'm pregnant with your heir and I have $3.

Then I remembered his face when he said nobody.

"Goodbye, Mr. Thorne," I whispered.

I hung up. Turned phone off. Took the SIM out, snapped it with my teeth, dropped it in the trash.

Goodbye, Alexander.

Goodbye, Manhattan.

Goodbye, silver wolf.

At midnight, the bus hissed. Doors opened.

"Anchorage! Long route! Let's go!"

I stood, holding my stomach with one hand, $3 in coins with the other.

"Anchorage," I said.

Behind me, outside Port Authority glass, a black Maybach — his Maybach, Thorne crest on the plate — screeched to a halt, door flying open too late.

We pulled away.

I didn't look back.

But in the pawn shop window on Canal Street, my mother's silver wolf necklace with the diamond eye was already gone.

Someone bought it at 11:55 PM for $200.

Someone who would keep it five years and bring it back and say, "I think this belongs to your son."