Chapter 3

Liora’s POV

Johnathan’s laughter was the one sound that could still cut through the heaviness pressing on my chest.

It echoed now, high and wild, as he darted across the clearing with a stick in his hand, pretending it was a sword. The late morning sun lit up his messy curls, and his bare feet kicked up little clouds of dirt as he ran. He was five—too small to hold the weight of our world, yet somehow he was the only reason I hadn’t already been crushed by it.

“Careful, pup,” I called, leaning against the porch rail. “If you fall and break your nose again, I’m not fixing it this time.”

He stopped, grinning at me, dimples flashing. “You always fix it, Mama. You’re magic.”

I laughed, though it cracked at the edges. Magic. If only. My life felt like a string pulled too tight, ready to snap. But I never let him see that. To Johnathan, I was unshakable. That lie kept us both going—until it wouldn’t.

He ran back toward me, clutching his stick-sword. “When’s Papa coming back?”

The question tightened my chest. He asked it often—innocent, hopeful, curious. What could I tell him? That his father was a stranger whose name I’d buried? That the man I promised he would never meet existed somewhere else entirely?

“Papa’s… busy,” I murmured, crouching so we were eye level. “But you’ve got me. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

He studied me, his too-bright eyes searching, before finally nodding. “Yeah. You’re better than any papa.” Then he threw his arms around my neck, and I held him, letting his warmth chase away the cold for a moment.

“Why did you ask?” I pressed, soft.

“No reason, I just had a thought.” He fiddled with his fingers.

“Well, I was thinking of making cupcakes—”

“Cupcakes! I want cupcakes,” he shouted, jumping around.

“Of course you do.” I laughed and led him inside, trying to ignore the ache in my ribs.

Mami stood by the hearth inside and lit a lamp, the small glow making the room feel less unforgiving. Johnathan ran ahead toward the kitchen, imagining himself a hero.

Reality returned the moment Emilia appeared at the edge of the porch, arms folded, face set. “Liora, you’re late for the council meeting.”

I sighed. “Let me guess— they’re already sharpening their claws?”

Her mouth twitched. “Worse. They’re hungry and desperate for someone to blame.” She slapped a folder of reports onto her hip as she joined me, the sound crisp.

We walked toward the hall. “How bad is it this time?” I asked.

“Bad enough they’re talking about selling land to neighboring packs,” she said. “Bad enough hunters are being pulled from border duty to scrape food together. Bad enough that…” Her voice dropped. “Some are starting to say your father’s curse is bleeding through you.”

Of course they were. I must always take that weight. I had been the stain on their fortunes for as long as I could remember.

Inside the council hall the elders sat like judges. Elder Corrin, gray and stern, presided. He glanced at me as if I were in trouble come to call.

“You’re late,” he said.

“My son is five,” I snapped. “He needed breakfast. Forgive me for thinking survival should be measured in cradles as well as council chambers.”

Murmurs crept through the room.

Corrin hammered the table. “We are hanging by a thread. Hunters return empty-handed. Trade routes dry up. Debts pile. And you propose devices and machines none of us understand.”

Heat flared. “Those machines are prototypes that could give us an edge—security, communications, automated routing for trade. If you let me manage deployment, we could reopen routes and stabilize supply lines.”

Corrin’s jaw tightened. “We are in no mood for experiments.”

“You can’t pin the pack’s failures on my blood,” I said, voice steady. “Your mismanagement is what has us here, not me.”

Silence thickened, then the meeting ended. I left before the blame could sharpen into something worse.

Outside, Emilia stuck close, muttering, “One day they’ll choke on their words.” She tapped the folder at her side for emphasis.

“Maybe,” I replied. “I’m drowning in them now.”

That night, I sat at my desk while blue light from the laptop washed my face. I typed lines of code until my fingers ached—the backbone of a program that could revolutionize digital trade for the pack. If the council refused to act, maybe the human world would listen.

Johnathan stirred in the next room, mumbling about heroes. I glanced at him sleeping small and trusting. On the wall above his bed was a drawing he’d made: a tiny stick-boy holding hands with a tall figure in a cape. Above it, in shaky letters: Me and Papa.

My chest ached. I pressed the paper to my lips. How could I give him the life I wanted when I didn’t even know where to begin?

I leaned back and let the meeting replay—the elders’ faces, Corrin’s dismissal. I opened a fresh file and began to tidy the prototype presentation, smoothing the argument until it read like salvation.

Backed into the quiet of midnight, I drafted emails and polished figures. The hours passed and at dawn I hit send to a long list of contacts, then slept with my laptop still warm.

The reply came the next morning.

Subject: Kent Enterprises — Collaboration Proposal

My heart thudded as I read. Kent Enterprises — New York City — wanted my program. They offered funding, technical resources, and commercial channels: secure communications, trade-routing software, and capital to reopen supply lines and buy emergency stores. They were offering more than money; they could give the pack a real path out of collapse.

This could save us.

But risk sat beside that relief. If anyone traced the funds or my work and discovered Johnathan’s bloodline, it could mark him. His blood—unknown, dangerous—might draw the wrong eyes.

“Mama?” His sleepy voice pulled me from the spiral. He stood in the doorway, hair sticking up, rubbing his eyes.

I kissed his forehead and held him close. “What is it, pup?”

He climbed into my lap, fingers brushing my cheek. “You’re crying.”

Tears had fallen without me noticing. I wiped them away. “I’m just tired,” I lied, because some things you keep to yourself to keep them safe.

I stared at the Kent email and then at the crooked drawing on the wall. My promise tightened into something fierce and cold.

“I’ll save you,” I whispered into his hair, voice a vow I could not break. “Even if it costs me everything.”

He yawned and settled against me, breathing steady. For the first time in a long time the ground felt like it might shift under us in the right direction.

Fate, it seemed, was moving again. I was terrified, but the choice was clear.

I would take the risk.

Weeks folded into months. Alex spread his version of the story—loud, smirking—saying he had rejected me because I wasn’t pure, because I’d already given myself away. The pack took him at his word. I became an easy mark: the rogue’s daughter, ruined and expendable.

Then, three months after that terrible night, my cycle didn’t come. I began waking with waves of nausea, faint and sudden, and food—the bread and broths I grew up on—turned my stomach. At first I told myself stress, shock, anything but the truth. But when the nausea sharpened into constant sickness and my chest tightened in a way that would not be soothed, Mami sat me down at dusk and said nothing for a long time.

She sent for the midwife. The woman arrived with a cloth and a small herbal poultice; she watched me with the calm eyes of someone who’d seen too many such things to be surprised. “You’re carrying,” the midwife said quietly. “Three months, give or take.”

Hearing the word made something icy and steady settle under my ribs. I felt the future narrow to a single line: survive.

I made a choice then. To protect what was growing inside me I told the pack I had been attacked after Alex rejected me—that the child was conceived in force. The lie cut me into pieces, but it gave me armor. The whispers shifted from derision to pity. People lowered their eyes. They stopped asking the follow-up questions that would have stripped me bare.

Only Mami knew the whole truth. Not the howl of every detail, but enough. She knew I had not been carried off. She knew my heat had come early, that my body had betrayed me. She had felt the change in me the night I stumbled home; she had seen the way I flinched at touch. She did not ask me to confess. Instead she put her hands on my face and said, “You are not the sum of one night.”

Her face hardened afterward in a way I recognized as resolve. She would not let the pack weaponize this against me. She would not

give them more than the lie I offered them. That was all she needed to know to protect me—and that was all I could ask.