Chapter 1

Ivy's Pov

Dr. Hayes walked in with his clipboard and that look on his face which made my stomach drop before a single word was spoken, and he sat down in front of me and said, "Mrs. Caldwell, I'm so sorry. The baby could not be saved. We need to perform the induction as soon as possible." He gave me a file and then added quietly, "He was a boy….almost fully developed."

I heard him but I just couldn't feel it yet. My wolf left me the moment I fell. It was like my body had already shut down the part of me that was allowed to feel things, because if I felt this right now, in this room, alone, I would not survive it.

"We need Alpha Noah to sign the consent forms before we proceed," Dr. Hayes said. "Has he arrived? Is he on his way?"

My hands started shaking in my lap. I pressed them flat against my thighs. "He won't come," I said hoarsely.

Dr. Hayes frowned. "Mrs. Caldwell, Pack protocol requires the Alpha's signature on procedures of this nature. If you could just reach out to him—"

"He won't come," I said again, louder this time, steadier. "Give me the pen. I'll sign it myself."

He looked at me for a long moment and then he handed me the clipboard without another word. I signed my name slowly and clearly and gave it back. My hand did not shake once and I was proud of that.

Three days ago I was at the Ironveil alliance banquet, eight months pregnant and still playing the perfect Luna because that was the only version of myself this pack had ever accepted. Noah stood beside me in his black suit looking like everything an Alpha should be, and for a few hours it almost felt normal. Almost felt like we were actually husband and wife and not two strangers sharing a last name. Then Amy walked in and I lost him to her in the space of a single second the way I always did.

She was the Beta’s daughter and Noah's childhood sweetheart who had suddenly appeared after an accident she claimed to have which almost took her life and Noah thinks it's his fault.

She crossed the room toward him in a white slip dress, reached for Noah's arm and I watched him light up in a way he hadn't looked at me in years. I turned away so it wouldn't hurt too much.

The next few minutes happened so fast, I don't know exactly how I ended up in the water. There was a commotion near the pool edge and Amy made a sound, Noah moved fast, and the next thing I knew his shoulder crashed into mine and the cold hit me like a wall and I was going down hard and heavy.

Eight months pregnant with my gown wrapping around my legs, dragging me under. I screamed but the water swallowed everything. I pressed one hand over my belly and kicked and fought with everything I had in me because my son was in there and I was not going to let him die. I clawed my way toward the surface until the guards grabbed me and pulled me out.

I hit the wet floor on my knees, coughing water out of my lungs, and I looked up through the hair plastered across my face and Noah was holding Amy. She had not even gotten wet. She was pressed against his chest with both hands gripping the front of his suit, shaking and sobbing, and he was rubbing her back and talking to her softly like the rest of the world had stopped existing.

"Amy, hey, look at me. Are you hurt? Did you hit anything?" His voice was low and careful which struck a painful chord in my chest, Noah has never used that voice with me.

"I'm okay," she whimpered against his chest. "I just got scared. I thought I was going to fall—"

"You're fine. I've got you….I've got you." He pulled her tighter and pressed his lips to the top of her head.

I was still on my knees on the wet floor. Still coughing. Still pressing my hand over my belly praying my son was okay. A guard crouched beside me and reached for my arm but before he could help me up, I heard the whispers first, then the voices, growing louder the way they always did in a room full of people who had never liked me.

"What was Luna Ivy even doing standing so close to the edge?"

"Eight months pregnant at a formal banquet and she's stumbling around near the pool."

"Honestly, what did she expect? She should have stayed home and eaten like a pig."

One of Noah's ranked warriors, Elder Greta, stepped close with her arms crossed and looked down at me on the floor like I was an embarrassment to the pack. "This is neither the time nor the place, Luna," she said tightly. "You've already caused a scene."

I had caused a scene? I was the one soaking wet on the floor with my unborn son's life hanging in the balance, and I had caused a scene.

"Noah." My voice came out cracked and raw. I looked at him across the few feet between us. He was still holding Amy. "Noah, I need — I think something is wrong, please—"

He glanced over his shoulder at me. One glance. His brow barely moved. "The guards are with you," he said, and turned back to Amy. "Come on, let me get you somewhere quiet. You're still shaking."

He walked her away from the pool without looking back once.

They took me to the hospital by ambulance. Noah came once and stood in the doorway in his banquet suit, looked at me lying there with monitors on my belly and an IV in my arm, said "you look fine," and left after four minutes. After that I called him twice that night and three times the next morning and he read every message and said nothing back. 

But I found out where he was from Amy's page. She posted a video of him standing in her apartment surrounded by gold and white balloons, laughing with his whole chest, holding a banner that read Happy Birthday My Amy. She had captioned it, "he never lets me down." I read that caption and I set my phone face down on the mattress and I pressed both hands over my stomach and I felt it.

 That small fierce flutter that had kept me company through five years of loneliness was gone. My son was gone. That baby had been strong. The doctors had told me themselves that even without his father's pheromones, the kind that a werewolf fetus needs to fully develop in the womb, my boy had held on. He had fought so hard to be here. It was his own father who killed him.

I went through the surgery alone. I signed my own discharge papers. I took a cab home, changed my clothes, walked to my desk, and pulled out the folder I had been keeping in the bottom drawer for two weeks. The divorce agreement. I had signed my half already. I set it on the kitchen table and I sat there in the dark and I waited for him, my whole body shaking. I wasn't going to cry…no, I won't.

Noah walked in at midnight still dressed from Amy's party with his jacket draped over one arm. He stopped when he saw me sitting there and had the nerve to look annoyed. "Why are you still up?" He dropped into the chair across from me and crossed his arms. "You're pregnant, Ivy. You should be in bed. Do you even care about this baby at all?"

I felt something in my chest snap clean in half. I slid the folder across the table. "Reject me Alpha, Tonight."

He looked down at it. Looked up at me. "What is this?"

"A divorce agreement. I already signed it. Now you sign it and reject the mate bond."

Noah leaned back and let out a short cold laugh that made my skin prickle. "What are you making a fuss about? Is this still about the party?"

"Noah—"

"Amy has half a year left, Ivy. Half a year." His voice was flat and hard, "Why are you being so petty about this?"

I looked at him and I felt nothing warm. "How long she has left has nothing to do with me. Why should I keep enduring this?"

His expression shifted, going cold in that particular way of his. "I thought we had already reached an agreement."

I laughed and told myself I won't cry, I'm done doing that. "An agreement?" I let that word sit there for a second. "She wanted to relive her first love so I had to smile and watch you fall for her all over again in my own home. She wanted to experience a wedding so you handed her the ceremony I spent six months planning, Noah. Six months….and she wanted to see the world so you took her to every place you ever promised to take me." I stopped. The anger was making my voice shake and I hated that. "That was our agreement?"

We had been married for five years and never had a wedding because when I married him the pack refused. My mother had been convicted of betraying the pack before I was old enough to defend her name, and that stain never left me. No ceremony was allowed. I became his Luna quietly and I worked for years to make this pack worth something. I pushed us into the top three intercontinental rankings almost by myself. The pack finally came to Noah and said we deserved our ceremony. I planned every detail of it. Six months of my life. Amy asked for it once and he gave it to her the same week.

"I'm done." I pressed my fingers against the papers. "..and I mean it. Sign it, reject me, and after that you can do whatever you want with her. I don't care anymore."

Noah pulled the agreement toward him slowly and scanned it, and then something changed in his face. He looked up. "What about the child?" His voice was cool. Measured. "Are you planning to take my heir from me?"

My throat closed. I opened my mouth but the words were right there until his phone rang.

He glanced at the screen and his entire face softened instantly, every wall down, every bit of coldness gone, and he answered before I could say a single word. "Amy? Hey—" His voice dropped. His brow creased with the kind of worry he had never once aimed at me. "What do you mean you fainted? Don't move. I'm coming right now."

He was already standing and grabbing his jacket. He looked at me once, briefly, like I was something he would deal with later. "We'll finish this tomorrow."

The door closed behind him. And my son was still gone. Noah still didn't know and he had just walked out to save her without ever waiting for my answer.