CHAPTER THREE: The Lock

Lena POV

The knock is two knuckles, evenly spaced. Gavin's knock.

I don't move. I'm sitting on the carpet with the felt moons laid out in front of me in a row,

and the stuffed rabbit in my lap, and I count the seconds. At nine, the handle turns and

stops against the lock.

"Lena."

I say nothing.

"Open the door, or I use the key."

I listen to his breathing through the wood. Then I get up, slide the lock back, and walk to

the window so I'm not near him when it opens.

He comes in and shuts it behind him. He's changed the shirt again. There's a small paper

cup in his hand from the hospital cafeteria, and he looks at it as if he forgot he was

carrying it and sets it on the dresser.

"I thought we could talk like adults," he says.

"Go ahead." "What are you so upset about?"

I turn around.

"I mean it." He spreads his hands. "I've been gone three weeks. I came home, and I got

the pack through a border crisis. Eleven rogues. Nobody on our side dead. And I walk up

my own driveway, and my wife shoves me in front of sixty people. Then I come in this

morning and you're screaming in the hall. I'd like to know what I did that was this bad.

Specifically."

I look at him for a long time. He means it. That's what's hard to stand. He is waiting for a

list he can fix.

"Specifically," I say.

"Yes."

"You broke the bond."

"Lena—"

"You swore to the Moon Goddess. I was standing next to you. You said her name and you

said mine and you said no one else." My voice is climbing and I let it. "You put another

woman's child in her. And you let her carry boxes into the room I built for ours. You let

her throw out my things in front of the house staff. Is that specific enough?"

"I told you, it's a guest room—" "What's next?" I walk toward him. "Tell me. Does she move into this room? Is that the

plan? Does she get the bed? Then the seat at the head of the table. Then the title. Then

you."

"That's not going to happen."

"It already is happening. I watched it happen at eight o'clock this morning!"

The room goes quiet. He doesn't look away from me, but his face changes. The patience

goes out of it. What's left is the Alpha, with a jaw I know from the council table.

"All right," he says. "Let's say it plainly, since you want it plain."

"Please."

"You've been Luna for five years. In five years there's been no heir. You know what the

elders call that? Failure of duty. They said it to me before the border, and again after. It

wasn't a secret, Lena. It was never a secret." He takes a breath. "Sloane is a warrior. Her

blood is strong. The pup will be strong. For this pack, that's the best news in years. Why

can't you see that?"

I hear what he said. I hear all of it.

The box is on the nightstand behind him. The green ribbon. I can see the corner of the

tissue paper where it came loose when I knocked the lamp. I step sideways without

deciding to, until I'm between him and the nightstand. Some part of me is already

protecting it.

"I'm pregnant too," I say.

He blinks. Then he smiles, a short, tired smile, the one he uses on the warriors when they're trying

to make him laugh. "Don't joke, sweetheart."

"I'm not."

"We tried for five years. Five years. Every doctor, every specialist." His voice softens, and

that's what I can't stand. "I know how much you want it. I want it too. But are you sure?

Did you take a test?"

I should walk over and hand him the box. I want to. My hand is already half raised.

"If I am," I say, "will you send her away?"

He doesn't answer.

I wait. I listen to the house. Somewhere downstairs someone drops something heavy,

and it rolls.

"Gavin."

"Lena, that's not a fair—"

"Yes or no."

He rubs the back of his neck. His eyes go to the window, to the wall, to the carpet.

Everywhere but my face.

"No," he says. "I can't. It's my child too. It's my responsibility." Something in my chest goes quiet. It doesn't hurt. It was supposed to hurt, and I brace

for it, and it doesn't come. I just stop feeling anything below my ribs.

If I tell him now, nothing changes. I have a baby and so does she. She's a warrior with an

Alpha's blood and I have no wolf. I can't fight, I can't shift, I have never once been strong

enough for the people he answers to. This is the thing under every other thing between

us. Nobody ever has to say it for it to be true.

I put the rabbit down on the dresser. My hands are steady.

"Then divorce me."

He laughs once. Then he sees I'm not laughing.

"If you're going to protect her, protect her. Fine. Do it. But I can't be the second woman in

my own house." I hear my voice and I don't shake. "File the papers. Let me go."

I have never seen the change come on him that fast.

His eyes go from brown to flat black in the space of a breath. Under his skin something

moves, the wolf pushing up. The room gets smaller. I feel it in my teeth, in the back of

my knees, the weight of an Alpha's anger that's meant to bring a pack to the ground. I'm

not a wolf. It still bends me forward at the waist.

"No," he says, and it comes from two throats at once.

"Gavin—"

"No." He crosses the floor and I back into the dresser, and he stops with his hands raised,

not touching me, shaking. "Never. You hear me? I'll never sign that. There's no divorce.

You are my Luna. You are my mate. You'll die my mate." "Then let me out of it." My eyes are streaming. I don't wipe them. "I'm begging you. I'm

so tired. I've been tired for years, and I smile, and I put on the dress, and every time the

Elders say it I smile, and I can't do it anymore. I don't want the title. I never wanted it. I

wanted you."

"You have me."

"I don't have anything."

A rap at the door, quick and urgent. "Alpha." It's one of the guards. "The Beta's here.

Gideon Brandt. He's waiting in the study. He says it's about Sloane and the pup."

Gavin doesn't look away from me. The black leaves his eyes slowly. His chest is still

moving hard.

"Tell him five minutes," he says.

"Yes, Alpha."

Gavin holds out his palm. "Phone."

"What?"

"Give me your phone."

"Why?"

"Because you're not in the state to be calling anyone." He says it gently. "You'll talk to

someone and say something you can't take back. I'll bring it to you when you've settled

down. Please." "I don't have anyone to call."

"Then it won't matter."

I put the phone in his hand. I don't know why. It's a reflex, twenty years of being told it's

for my own good.

He goes to the door. He looks back once, at the crib mobile on the floor, at me.

"I'll talk to Gideon and come straight back. Don't go anywhere. And Lena." He waits until

I look up. "Don't say that word again. Not to me, not to anyone."

I look at him. I don't answer.

The door closes. A beep. A heavy click, and then a second one, lower.

I cross the room and put my hand on the handle. It doesn't move.

There's a keypad on the inside, too, a little black panel I never use. It's lit red. I punch in

the code I've always used and it blinks at me, once, and goes back to red. He's changed it.

Or locked it from the Alpha app on his phone. I try it six times, then I stop.

I bang on the door with the flat of my hand until my palm stings. I shout his name. Then

Marta's, then anyone's. Footsteps pass in the hall once, and keeps going. I try the

window next. It's a modern pane, sealed, with a stop that lets it open four inches. Two

floors down, the driveway is empty. Nobody looks up.

The clock reads 1:14. At two I'm still standing at the door. At three I'm on the floor next to it with my ear

against the frame. I can hear them at the bottom of the stairs, a man's voice and Gavin's,

low, then nothing. A car starts outside. Doors. Another car.

Around five the air vent over the closet carries voices up from the study. The Beta's, low

and pleased. Sloane's, lighter than I have ever heard it. Then Gavin saying something

short I can't make out. They are all in the same room deciding things about me, and I'm

on the floor listening through a grate.

At six I go into the bathroom. In the mirror my face is gray. Mascara has dried in lines to

my jaw. The green dress is creased beyond saving, and I still haven't taken it off. I drink

from the tap with my hands. It's cold and it tastes like metal. I drink for a minute.

Then my stomach turns over and I'm on my knees on the tile, and all of it comes back up.

It keeps coming after there's nothing left. When it stops, I stay there with my cheek

against the cool edge of the tub, shaking, one hand over my stomach.

"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

I haven't eaten since yesterday morning. I put a cold steak in the fridge last night and

didn't take a bite.

I get up using the sink. The house phone is on the wall by the closet, a white intercom

unit I have never touched. I press the button for the front desk. It buzzes for a long time.

"Yeah." The voice is flat, bored. Rourke, from the gate team.

"This is Lena," I say. "In the Alpha suite. I need water. And something to eat. Crackers,

anything. Please."

Nothing for a second. Then a short, soft laugh. "You hear that?" he says to someone away from the receiver. "The Luna wants a snack."

Another man laughs.

"I'm not asking for much," I say.

"Alpha said you stay put." His voice comes back to the speaker. "Nobody told me to feed

you."

"I'm not well. I'm—" I stop. I almost say it. I look at the door. "Please. Just a bottle of

water."

"Luna." He gives the title a lazy drag. "You went against the Alpha in front of the whole

pack. And you've sat in that seat five years and given us nothing. You think the pack's

food is for people like that?"

"Rourke—"

"Don't waste the kitchen's time."

The line clicks.

I press the button again. And again. It rings out. I hit it eight times, then ten, and then I

put my forehead against the wall next to it and breathe.

The light in the window turns amber, then orange, then gray. I don't turn on any lamps.

At some point I lie down on the carpet next to the felt moons because standing has

stopped working. The room has started to tip, slowly, toward the left. I put both hands

over my stomach and hold them there. "Stay with me," I say. It doesn't sound like my voice. "Please stay."

Down the hall, a door opens and shuts. Laughter. The clink of cutlery on plates. They're

having dinner.

I close my eyes.