Chapter Two

‘What does death feel like?’ I’d asked my mother many years ago when I was no more than a girl. She’d been startled by the question; her response came a while later. ‘Freedom,’ she’d finally answered, ‘Death is freedom because it takes away all your worries and fears.’

Turns out that was a lie.

“She’d fallen into a coma. Marcene believes her chances of survival are little to… none.” Alpha Jefferson’s voice broke through my unconsciousness. I felt his hand against my cheek as he tucked a piece of hair behind my ears.

“Shame.” His voice came again, but this time it was cold, unrecognizable… distant.

“Ah. And there I was thinking Eloise here had managed to do the impossible by penetrating that cold, stony heart of yours,” said the voice I recognized as the Beta’s.   

“It takes more than a pretty face to do that, Gideon,” said Jefferson. “But I must admit, she is a rare gem. Rare, yes, but unreplaceable…no.”

Was I imagining this too? I had to be.

“I should have taken her delayed pregnancy as a sign to cut things off, maybe then I wouldn’t have waited two whole years to be met with this disappointment.” 

“So, what do we do with her now?” questioned the Beta.

“What else is there to do with a comatose?” Jefferson asked like the very question disgusted him,  “She’s dead to me.”

Those words stabbed right through my heart like daggers.

‘Our mate would never say that,’ my wolf assured, but I could hear the doubt in her voice too.

‘Have you forgotten what he’d done to us?’ I questioned and this time she had no response to give.

I’d thought I knew Jefferson, but now I was left wondering what was real and what wasn’t.

Mates were supposed to love each other; they were supposed to be inseparable so what had gone so wrong? What had been my mistake?

“You seem to forget one important detail,” Gideon went on after a moment of silence, “She’s the Luna, it won’t be easy writing her off. The pack would most definitely want an explanation.”

There it was again, that gut feeling that this wasn’t just a dream or a part of my imagination.

“This won’t be the first case of a woman dying in labor alongside her unborn child now, would it?”

  A chill washed over me.  I still recalled his desperate pleas that I kept my eyes open, had I imagined the fear and regret I’d heard in his voice? No, I hadn’t. Jefferson might have shown me he was not the man I'd always painted him to be, but what we had was real. I knew it.

“And her parents?” Gideon asked on, bringing my thoughts right back to my parents, the only two people who truly ever loved me.

“They’d have their hands full when I make them managers at the Exporting Department. Trust me, the death of their adopted daughter would be the least of their worries.”

Jefferson had once spoken to me about his intention of promoting my parents to work as managers in the pack business sector.

This was real. All of it.

‘It can’t be,’ my wolf argued, but we both knew the truth. 

 It had all been an act. Every moment we’d spent together, every promise he’d made, was nothing more than a lie.

Above all the vile things Jefferson had done, this scared me the most.  We’d been together for two years and never once had he broken that façade, never once had he given me a reason to doubt what we had, not until now.

 I heard the ward curtains beside me close shut, then their footsteps faded away.

  I was finally alone, and only then did a single tear escape my lid.

***     

The pain started three days later—pain unlike I’d ever felt before. I felt it in my abdomen, but then it spread through my whole body, leaving me in complete agony.

‘What is happening?’ I questioned my wolf who’d been very silent since the Alpha’s last visit.

‘He’s cheating on us,” she whispered, her voice so silent I could have missed it. She sounded broken, a reflection of my own self.

The pain only grew worse, unbearable, until I was silently wishing for death.

Death never did come.

‘Allow me to take the pain,’ pleaded my wolf.

‘No. It’ll kill you.’

‘If you die, we both die. Allow me to take the pain,’ she insisted.

I didn’t want to, but I could no longer bear it, and so I let her take the pain. That day, and every other day that followed until I could no longer feel her presence. She wasn't the only thing that had gone missing, the mate bond too was no more. I was finally…free.

On my death bed, I swore to myself that If I ever did make it out of here alive, then I was going to make Jefferson Scott pay for every pain he’d made me suffer, for every lie he’d made me believe. I was going to strip him of every single thing he held dear, just as he’d done to me. 

And with that promise burning at the back of my mind, I’d found my purpose again. I’d found a reason to live.

I felt the slight fluster of my eyelids, and slowly I pried them open. Awake.