Chapter Five - Too Late

Kades pov

The Beta had been talking for the better part of an hour, and somehow he still hadn't said anything.

That wasn't true. He'd said plenty. He'd said his daughter deserved better than a side room. He'd said the pack was watching. He'd said that an Alpha who kept a barren Luna while the mother of his heir lived like a guest was an Alpha inviting questions.

"I need what your daughter is carrying," I said, when he finally paused for breath. "That is all I need from her. I'll keep her fed, housed, and guarded for as long as she carries it, because the pup is mine. After that, she is whatever her usefulness makes her."

The Beta's jaw worked. "My daughter is not a—"

"There is one Luna in this house," I said. "It is not Talia, and it will never be Talia. Don't mistake what I'm doing for something it isn't."

I'd chosen Elira for a reason. A girl with no family, no wolf, and no one to run to. A Luna who owed me everything and could never take any of it from me. A Luna who never fought me, never contested a decision, never asked for a seat at the table—worth more than a hundred warriors who would have wanted a say.

That was the point of her. The title was mine to give, and mine to keep on her.

I'd left her behind that door to cool off. One day, two at most, until she remembered who she was and who I was. I'd meant to collect her apology tonight, once the Beta was done.

That's when it happened.

It started in my chest, cold and sudden, like something inside me had been unplugged. My wolf, silent for hours, lunged awake and slammed against my ribs, a single word clawing up through the back of my skull.

Her.

I didn't remember standing. I only remember the Beta's mouth still moving, and then the hall doors banging behind me, and the pack parting in front of me like water.

The Alpha House was quiet when I reached it. I took the stairs three at a time and shoved open the door of her room.

Empty.

The bed was made. The closet door stood open, half the hangers bare. There was no note. Nothing but the faint cold trace of her scent, already fading, leading out of the room and down the hall.

She had run.

I stood in the middle of the room and felt the anger rise through me like heat through stone. She had dared. After everything I'd put my name on, after every title and protection I'd given her, she had simply walked out, as if she could leave anything I had claimed.

"Find her." My voice came out low and even, which is how everyone in the pack learned to be afraid of it. "Gamma. Now."

He was there in seconds, face pale. "Alpha—"

"How long?"

"Hours, we think. The guards report no one saw her leave. But Alpha—" He hesitated. "There's something you should know. After you left her in the room, she asked the guard for water. He refused. She was quiet for some time after that. Then he heard a sound and, when he looked in, she was on the floor. Talia found her."

Something went very still in me.

"Which guard."

"Alpha—"

"Which guard."

They brought him in. He didn't make it past the door before I had him by the throat against the wall.

"She is Luna of this pack," I said. "She is mine. I ordered a door locked. I did not order her denied water. Her punishment is mine to decide, and you presumed to decide it for me."

"Alpha, she—she'd defied you, I thought—"

"Take him to the cells," I told the Gamma. "He can think about what he thought."

They dragged him out. I didn't watch.

"Talia," I said. "Bring her to me."

She arrived composed, one hand curved over her stomach, eyes already wet. "Kade, I don't know where she went. I found her on the floor, barely conscious. I tried to help, truly I did, but she said such terrible things. That she hated me. That she'd curse my child. I didn't want to tell you, I thought it would only upset you—"

I stared at her face, looking for the lie. I couldn't find it. Her performance was too good.

But the story didn't sit right.

I had watched Elira absorb five years of cruelty from elders who never deserved her patience. I'd watched her cry alone rather than make a scene. In five years she had never once wished harm on anyone, not even the people who plainly wished it on her. She was incapable of cursing a child. She'd have wept before she wished that on a stranger.

Which meant Talia was lying.

It was useful to know. I filed it away, cold and exact, the way I filed everything.

"You may go," I said.

She hesitated. "Kade—"

"Go."

When she was gone, I went back into the room and began, methodically, to take it apart.

I searched the drawers, the closet, under the bed. I wanted a direction, a destination, a name. I found a few things I'd given her—jewelry, the scarf from our second winter. I found her sewing basket, empty. I found the nightstand.

Behind the lamp, half-hidden in the shadow, was a small crushed gift box with a ribbon still clinging to it.

I knew it. I'd seen it in her fist in the courtyard, white-knuckled, the whole time I was announcing Talia's pregnancy to the pack. I'd never asked. What Elira held in her hands had never mattered enough to ask.

I picked it up. The paper was soft from handling, the lid creased where she'd clutched it.

Inside was a single test.

Two pink lines.

I stood very still.

I'm pregnant too.

She'd said it to my face, steady as stone, and I had called her a liar.

Every piece of the last two days rearranged itself in my head. The courtyard. The way she'd said I have something to tell youas I walked away. The water she'd asked for, behind a door I had ordered locked. She'd been carrying my child the entire time, and she had been on the floor of that room, alone, and I—

My hand closed around the box.

Not guilt. I don't make a habit of it. What came instead was colder and far more useful: the clean, simple knowledge that my legitimate heir, the child of an Alpha and his Luna, was somewhere out there in the dark, in the body of a woman who had no wolf, no allies, and no right to take either of them out of my territory.

She had taken what was mine and walked out the door with it.

"Gamma."

He was already in the doorway. He'd probably been there the whole time.

"Every tracker. Every patrol. Seal the borders, check every road, every rogue den, every human town within three days of here. Wake the packs on our boundaries and tell them I'm asking for her. I don't care what it costs."

"And if we find her, Alpha?"

I looked at the box in my hand. The test. The two pink lines.

"Bring her home," I said. "Unharmed. Alive, and carrying. Whatever it takes."

The Gamma bowed and left.

I stayed in the empty room a moment longer, the box heavy in my fist.

She was mine. She did not leave.