Chapter 3

AURORA 

The pain didn't stop. If anything, it got worse, like something inside me was being torn apart violently. I dragged myself off the floor, one hand pressed against my stomach, the other clawing at the wall for something to hold onto.

I needed help. I needed someone, or anyone really.

Willow was screaming inside me now, making a sound I'd never heard from her before, her voice so high and panicked and completely useless because neither of us could do anything to stop what was happening. 

I could feel her trying to push forward to take over, like maybe the wolf side of me could fix what the human side couldn't. But she couldn't either. We were both just scared, bleeding, and completely alone.

I stumbled out into the hallway, my legs barely holding me up, and I called out, or at least I tried to. What actually came out was so thin and broken, not even loud enough for anyone nearby to hear.

"Please," I whispered. "I need help."

But nobody came.

What would happen to my baby now? Would it even survive this? 

Then I thought about Dylan, probably still in his room with Ivy, not even thinking about me at all. I thought about how many years I'd spent in this pack, growing up here, training here, falling in love here, and how in this one moment when I actually needed someone, not a single person was in sight.

Somewhere far off, I heard the sound of a door not too far away, maybe two doors down, and hope flared up in my chest so fast it almost hurt more than the pain in my stomach. I opened my mouth to call again, gathering all the strength I had left.

"Help me," I managed, my voice barely above a whisper. "Someone, please help me."

The door didn't open. Whoever it was either didn't hear me, or didn't care enough to check. I kept moving, with one hand on the wall, dragging myself past room after room of a place I used to think of as home.

My vision started going blurry, the hallway stretching, looking longer than it should have been. I reached for the wall again to steady myself, but I missed completely, my hand grabbing at nothing but air.

The last thing I remembered was the cold floor against my cheek, and underneath that, the sound of my own heartbeat, getting slower and slower as it thudded in my ears.

And then there was nothing.

DYLAN

Word reached me within the hour. Aurora was badly hurt, and they didn’t think she was going to make it. Someone had found her collapsed in the hallway outside her room, in a pool of blood, and nobody knew how long she'd been lying there before she was found.

For just one second, something in me cracked. I was already moving toward the door before I even realized I'd stood up, my whole body running on instinct, a part of me still remembering every single year we'd spent together.

My father caught my arm before I even took three steps. "Where do you think you're going?" he asked.

"Aurora's hurt. I need to see her."

"There's nothing you can do for her now," he said, his grip tightening around my wrist, hard enough to hurt. "It's already bad, Dylan. Going by what they're saying, she might not even make it through the night."

"You don't understand," I said, my voice breaking slightly. "I need to see her. I need to know she's okay."

"Do you?" My father's eyes narrowed. "Or do you just need to feel like a good man for five minutes before you go back to doing what needs to be done?"

The question got to me more than I wanted it to. "I just need to be there."

"You need to stay exactly where you are," he said, lowering his voice like he was letting me in on some great secret. "With Ivy. Tonight of all nights, people are watching. If you go running off to Aurora's bedside now, what does that say about the engagement? About us?"

I stood there in the doorway, torn. Somewhere down that hall, Aurora was lying there, broken because of choices I'd made, and somewhere behind me, Ivy was waiting with her family's name and everything that came with it.

"She's carrying my child," I said quietly, like saying it too loud might make it more real than I could handle.

My father didn't even flinch. "All the more reason to stay away. Let it be handled quietly."

I hesitated. God, I hesitated so long I could feel the seconds passing, each one heavier than the last. Aurora's face flashed in my head, and I couldn’t help but recall the way she'd looked at me in my room just hours earlier, still hoping I'd choose her even after everything.

My father's grip tightened one more time. “Choose carefully, Dylan.”

I looked toward the hallway. Somewhere down there, Aurora was fighting for her life, and my child was fighting with her.

But all I had to do was walk away.

And after everything, even with the baby, after years and years of loving her the only way I knew how, I turned around and walked away from her.

I knew exactly what I was doing when I made that decision.

I just didn’t understand yet how much it would cost me.

I only told myself it was temporary. I told myself I'd go check on her later, once things had quieted down and nobody was watching so closely. I told myself a lot of things that night as I walked toward Ivy's room with my father's hand on my shoulder, guiding me like I was a child.

Ivy was waiting up for me when I stepped into her room, sitting by the window with a glass of wine like nothing in the world was wrong. She looked up at me and must have seen something in my face, because her smile vanished for half a second before she smoothed it back into place.

"Everything alright?" she asked.

"Fine," I said, though nothing about it was fine. "Just pack business."

She nodded and went back to her wine, and I sat down across from her and told myself, over and over, that I'd made the right call. I almost believed it. I almost believed a lot of things that night, sitting in that warm, bright room while somewhere in this same house, the woman I'd loved my whole life was bleeding out, the life slowly leaving her body minute by minute.