Chapter 3

Elena

Barrett kept talking.

He must have felt me go still, because he pulled back enough to look at my face, and then he started to explain. The Pack's internal tensions. The Vitalis Corp deal hanging in the balance. An Alpha with a publicly human Luna would destabilize the council at exactly the wrong time.

"When the deal is signed," he said, "when Sophia has delivered the heir, I will announce you. I promise that to you."

He said it the way he'd said all his promises. Steady. Warm. Unshakable.

I had believed him for three years.

I pushed him gently off me. My hand landed flat on his chest, and I felt his heart through his shirt, because my body still knew his rhythm whether I wanted it to or not.

"I have heard this for three years, Barrett."

"Elena."

"I have heard this three years." I stepped around him and sat in Dr. Marin's chair at the desk. Sophia's chart was still open. I closed the window. "I think I'm done."

He watched me the way a man watches a dish tremble at the edge of a table. Confident it will not actually fall.

"You're exhausted," he said. "Sit here. Rest. I will come home tonight and we'll talk through all of this. Don't decide anything today."

He leaned down, pressed his mouth to the top of my head the way he had the day I moved in, and left.

The door clicked shut.

I stared at the empty doorway.

I had told my husband it was over, and he had told me to rest.

Somewhere in the last forty minutes he had stopped taking me seriously. I had become a mood.

I laughed once. A small, ugly sound. It did not leave my chair.

Three years of me translating every not yet into he loves me, he just needs time. I was a doctor. I read people for a living. And I had read my own husband wrong from the wedding night.

My phone buzzed against the desk.

A press alert. I subscribed to Ironbound's news feed so I could watch Barrett in public, since no one could know I watched him at home.

The thumbnail showed him at a podium. Sophia at his shoulder.

Alpha Barrett and Press Secretary Sophia Grant tour Vitalis Corp headquarters ahead of landmark partnership.

The article underneath was full of words like "breakthrough" and "shared vision." If the deal went through, Ironbound Pack would gain access to the most advanced medical research network on the continent.

The photo showed them side by side. Both polished. Both wolves.

They looked like a team.

Like a pair.

Part of me wanted to scroll to the comments and find someone who saw through it. Part of me wanted Barrett to walk in the door right now and tell me it was nothing. Neither happened.

I swiped the notification away and opened my messages. I scrolled down, past months of appointment reminders and delivery confirmations, until I found it.

V.C.: Call me anytime, Elena.

Vitalis Corp. The institution Barrett was so desperate to partner with. The name that was suddenly everywhere.

Three years of happiness had buried this message. I'd forgotten it existed.

Now it looked like a door. A way out of a marriage that had been closing around me so tight I hadn't noticed the walls.

I stared at the screen. My thumb hovered over the message. Outside, someone wheeled a metal cart down the hall.

Should I take that step?

I did not sleep that night.

I checked into a hotel two blocks from the hospital, because going home would have been surrender and I had not surrendered. I sat on the end of a strange mattress in my scrubs and stared at the V.C. message until the letters stopped being letters.

At six I showered. I pulled a clean set of scrubs from my overnight bag. I brushed my hair and watched a little more of it come out in the brush than yesterday, and I did not feel sorry for it.

I went to work.

Sophia arrived at Dr. Marin's office at nine.

She was in cream today. Cream blouse, cream slacks, a soft wool coat folded over her arm. The kind of outfit a woman wears when she expects to be photographed leaving a hospital.

"Dr. Halloran." Her voice was sweet. "I need my labs from yesterday. And a prescription for prenatal nutrient support, if that isn't too much to ask."

"Of course."

I pulled her chart. My hands were steadier than they should have been.

"I truly am sorry about yesterday," Sophia said, sitting opposite me. She crossed her ankles the same way she had the day before. "I don't want us to be enemies. I respect you. You are a very accomplished human."

A very accomplished human.

"And Barrett is so grateful to you," she went on, "for being so understanding. I was prepared for something much more dramatic. Most wives wouldn't handle this the way you are."

I printed her prescription and slid the paper across the desk.

"If you were half as proud as you say you are," I said, "you wouldn't be carrying another man's baby for a promotion."

Her face moved once.

Just once. The smile dropped for half a second, something uglier underneath, and then it came back with more sugar than before.

"You're right, of course. It's a hard position for everyone."

She picked up the nutrient bottle I had prescribed and twisted the cap. Shook one tablet into her palm. Swallowed it with the paper cup from the sink.

Then Sophia doubled over. Her hand flew to her belly.

A cold weight dropped through my stomach. Something was wrong. I opened my mouth—

She screamed.

The door banged open.

Barrett.

"What happened. Sophia. Talk to me. What happened? "

Sophia collapsed into him, her body folding, and he caught her with both arms. Her eyes rolled back. She went limp.

I watched Barrett's hands cradle her belly. I watched something I had never seen cross his face.

Panic.

*

The physician upstairs was Dr. Park, a wolf I had trained for two years.

He stepped out from behind the curtain with his clipboard pressed to his chest.

"Tissue traces of mifepristone in her bloodstream," he said, carefully. "Not enough to injure the mother. Enough to end a first-trimester pregnancy. The compound is restricted. A prescribing physician is the only legal source in this hospital."

Barrett's head came up slowly.

From the bed, Sophia's voice came thin and tired.

"I didn't take anything except what Dr. Halloran gave me," she said. "But I'm sure — I am sure — she didn't mean to. She has been under so much strain."

She reached for Barrett's hand.

I watched my husband look back at me.

I searched his face for something. Trust. Recognition. Anything. Eight years of studying medicine. An oath taken the first day I put on a white coat, honored every day since. In all my time at this hospital, not a single patient had ever filed a complaint against me. Not one.

That reputation came from nothing. A human doctor in a werewolf hospital, working twice as hard for half the respect. Every bit of it earned through competence and discipline.

What I found in Barrett's eyes was doubt.

My blood went cold.

I stood at the foot of the bed with my hands pushed into my coat pockets to keep them still.

"Barrett," I said. "Do you actually believe I would do this?"