~ 1: Six Months to Live

~ 1

~ Mia ~

"It's just a headache, Mia. Honestly, for someone who studied medicine, you should know not every headache is a medical emergency." 

Darian didn't look up from the patrol reports on his tablet as he spoke. His coffee sat untouched, going cold, while across the table my son, Nick, stuffed eggs into his mouth and my mother in-law buttered her toast with surgical precision.

I stood at the edge of the dining table, gripping the back of my chair to stay upright. The pounding behind my eyes had kept me awake all night. This morning the nausea had been so bad I'd barely finished making breakfast.

"Darian, please. It's not just a headache. Recurring dizziness, morning nausea, pressure behind the eyes…  these are neurological symptoms. They've been getting worse for weeks. I need a proper scan, and I'd like you to come with…"

"Neurological symptoms." My mother in-law set down her knife. "Listen to her. A few years in a classroom and she thinks she's a healer. You are not a real doctor, Mia. Stop diagnosing yourself."

"Mother, I completed my medical training. I know what I'm…"

"You know how to frighten yourself, that's what you know." She dabbed her mouth with her napkin. "Healers love to scare people. They'll run a dozen expensive scans and tell you you're stressed. Is that what you want? To waste the pack's money on your nerves?"

My throat tightened. "Then let me at least call Dr. Halden. He could come to the house, examine me quietly…"

"The private physician?" Her voice went sharp enough to cut. "Have you lost your mind? If the family doctor is seen walking into the Alpha house because the Luna has a headache, the whole pack will be talking by nightfall. Pack members wait in line at the clinic for real illnesses. And the Luna summons a healer to her bedroom?"

"I'm not trying to…"

"You are the Luna of East Lake. You live in this house, you want for nothing. Do you know what they'd say? 'She's grown spoiled. She thinks she's above us.' You are supposed to be humble. Approachable. That is your one job, since the Goddess saw fit to give you no wolf to do any other."

Since the Goddess saw fit. As if my empty place where a wolf should be was a personal failing I'd chosen.

"Mom, you're being dramatic." Nick didn't even pause between bites as he spoke rudely to me, just as always for a while now. "Can I have more juice?"

I moved automatically for the pitcher. The room tilted. I caught the table's edge.

"Mia." Darian's voice held that familiar note of irritation. "I have the Elder council this morning and the West Mountain delegation arriving tomorrow. I don't have time to sit in a clinic waiting room because my wife read too many of her old medical textbooks."

"I'm not asking you to miss the council. Maybe after…"

"We'll talk about this later." He stood, chair scraping the floor. "Take something for the pain and rest. You'll be fine."

He grabbed his coat and keys, then turned to Nick. "Come on, buddy. I'll drop you at school."

"Finally!" Nick jumped up. "Can Aunt Fanny pick me up today? She promised me a tour in the new park!"

"We'll see. Grab your backpack."

I opened my mouth to remind them that Nick had to be home on time so he wouldn't fall behind on his assignments again. But Darian was already striding toward the door, our son happily trotting after him.

"Wait... Darian..."

The door slammed. My mother in-law was already gone from the dining room.

The silence that followed felt suffocating. 

…

"The gray ceremonial jacket goes in front. Darian will need them when West Mountain arrives, and I won't have the Alpha of East Lake looking rumpled."

I stood in the walk-in closet, working through Darian's clothes while my mother-in-law supervised from the doorway. Reaching up to hang the jacket, the shelf swam in front of me.

Not now. Please, not now.

The nausea rose like a wave. I lunged for the doorway, but my legs wouldn't obey. I dropped to my knees and retched, right there on the closet floor, spattering the hem of a garment bag.

"Oh. My. God!"

I looked up through watering eyes. Her face had twisted in disgust.

"You're revolting! Those are the designer bespoke suit Fanny brought back from the northern packs last winter! Do you have any idea what those cost? What they mean?"

"I'm sorry," I gasped, wiping my mouth with a shaking hand. "I couldn't…"

"Moon Goddess, why did my husband… bless his soul, ever mated Darian to you?" She pressed a hand to her forehead. "Clean it. Every trace. Do you hear me?"

She stormed out.

I knelt on the closet floor, tears slipping down to mix with the mess, and reached for the cleaning supplies.

I must not be sick, I told myself with each scrub. I can't be sick. They need me. I just need to be stronger.

…

The pack hospital was busier than I expected for a Wednesday afternoon.

"Mara Belmar," I told the reception omega, sliding across the fake identification card I'd paid too much for in the lower district. She barely glanced at me.

That was the one mercy of my life. Fanny had taken over so many of the Luna's public duties — the ceremonies, the school visits, the charity runs — that half the pack wouldn't know my face if I stood on their doorstep. The Luna of East Lake was a name, not a person.

I was filling out the intake form when the atmosphere in the corridor changed.

Even without a wolf, I felt that pressure in the air that meant only one thing. 

Storm and cedar.

Alpha.

Darian walked past the reception desk in the grey coat I'd collected from the tailor three weeks ago, and my heart did something stupid and hopeful in my chest.

He came. He actually came to check on me.

"Darian?" I called softly, but he was already turning the corner, heading deeper into the hospital.

I followed. What else would he be doing here, if not looking for me?

I caught up just as he stopped outside the prenatal wing, in front of a door marked MATERNAL & PUP CONSULTATION.

Darian stood there. And beside him was Fanny.

"Darian, I can't believe it!" Her voice carried down the hallway, bright and breathless. "I'm pregnant! Can you believe it? I'm really, actually pregnant!"

The words slammed into me like a fist.

Pregnant.

The late nights. The way he answered her calls on the first ring and mine on the fifth try. The way he always, always took her side. It all made cruel sense now.

Darian had accepted me once. Then Fanny moved into the Alpha house, and everything changed. When Alpha Wilson insisted he marry me, the distance between us became an unbridgeable chasm. Not even after I gave him Nick. I sometimes try to understand, he is a powerful Alpha, saddled with a wolfless omega for a Luna — I'd heard the way it was whispered at every gathering. His embarrassment. His humiliation. If his father hadn't sworn on his deathbed to hand the Alpha seat to his nephew, Darian would never have taken me as his mate.

I watched my husband place his hand gently on Fanny's shoulder.

"Keep your voice down. Let's wait for the doctor to confirm," he said  but there was a softness in it I hadn't heard directed at me in years.

"I know, I know, but I'm sure, Darian. Oh Goddess, we're going to…" Fanny cut herself off, glancing around, and leaned close to murmur the rest against his ear.

Fanny had no mate. No suitor the pack had ever heard of. And now she was pregnant.

No. No, this can't be happening.

I forced my body to turn. Walking steadily down the corridor, past reception, my vision blurring at the edges, the pounding in my skull rising.

I made it as far as the front doors before the floor rushed up to meet me.

…

"Mrs. Belmar? Can you hear me?"

I turned my head slowly. An older doctor sat beside the bed, a nurse adjusting the IV in my arm.

"What happened?" My voice came out as a croak.

"You collapsed in the lobby. We ran scans while you were out." He pulled his stool closer, and something in his face made my stomach drop. "I need to discuss your results."

He turned a tablet toward me. Cross-sections of the brain. A dark mass, and beside it, a smaller shadow.

"There's a tumor, here, near the brainstem. And this…" he tapped the shadow, "...is an old blood clot. Very old. Untreated for years, possibly decades." He paused. "Mrs. Belmar, may I ask… you're an omega who never presented a wolf, aren't you?"

My breath stopped. "How did you…"

"Because this is why." He tapped the screen again. "The mass is sitting directly against the region where the wolf-bond forms. It's been suppressing it, likely since childhood. Your wolf isn't absent. She's buried."

The room tilted around me. All these years and she was there the whole time.

"Then treat it," I whispered. "Remove it."

His eyes were kind, which somehow made it worse. "The location makes it inoperable… for us. East Lake doesn't have the surgical technology or the specialists. Frankly, no pack in this region does, except perhaps the Red Moon Pack. Their medical academy is decades ahead of ours." He hesitated. "Without intervention, based on the growth rate — you have approximately six months."

Six months.

One hundred and eighty days.

The ceiling blurred as tears filled my eyes.

"We'll schedule a follow-up to discuss transfer options," the doctor said gently. "Is there someone we can contact? Your husband? Family?"

My husband. Who was somewhere in this building right now, with his hand on my Fanny’s shoulder and his pup in her belly.

"No." The word came out flat. "There's no one to call."