4

Elara pov

I came to slowly, fluorescent light stinging behind my eyelids. A doctor leaned over the bed, voice low and careful in the register reserved for the worst kind of news.

"I'm sorry. We couldn't save the pregnancy. The procedure needed the Alpha's signature — should I call him?"

I don't think I said anything. My silence must've read as consent, because he was already dialing before I'd processed *we couldn't save the pregnancy* — four words that quietly rearranged the next several months of my life.

He held the phone out. Some numb, obedient part of me took it.

"I had a miscarriage," I said. My voice sounded far away. "I need your signature."

A pause. Then he laughed — easy, disbelieving. "When were you even pregnant? Why didn't I know? Stop joking, love, Seraphine's in labor right now, this really isn't the time—"

Behind his voice, a baby's cry. Then a second one. Voices erupting into congratulations.

"She had the twins," he said, grinning through the phone. "Can you believe it? Twins, both healthy. You should see them, Elara—"

I hung up. There wasn't anything left worth saying.

"He's a little busy with his sister-in-law," I told the doctor, who was hovering by the door, clearly unsure if he should stay. "I'll sign it myself."

He murmured something sympathetic and left me alone with a clipboard and a silence that had actual weight to it.

I don't remember most of the ride home. I remember arriving, the same way I'd arrived in our room the day his brother died — present, with no memory of the trip. Some mechanical part of me had apparently decided to keep functioning without asking permission, because I found myself pulling suitcases off the closet shelf before I'd consciously decided to leave at all.

The butler found me folding shirts I didn't remember choosing and asked, carefully, if I was alright. I told him only that I was leaving. I didn't have anything else to give him. He nodded like he understood more than I'd said and left me to it.

Before I finished, I sent one message, to the one person who'd quietly offered me somewhere else to go. *I want to leave. Can you come get me now?*

I'd just zipped the last bag shut when I heard the front door, then his footsteps down the hall, unhurried, like it was any other evening.

He sat beside me on the bed and reached for my hair, gentle, the same gesture he'd used a hundred nights to settle me when I couldn't sleep. I moved before it landed.

"What were you doing today?" Real hurt in his voice, like I owed him an explanation. "Thank the Goddess Seraphine's alright. My brother's kids were born safe." A tired laugh. "They're so tiny, Elara. You'll love them once you see them."

I didn't say anything. I couldn't find where to start.

"They're adorable," he went on, filling the silence the way people do when they mistake quiet for calm. "You'll definitely—"

"Someone else's kids are that adorable?" I said.

He blinked, actually confused. "What do you mean, someone else's? They're my brother's."

"So you do know that. If you hadn't said so, I might've thought they were yours."

He stood up, already drawing breath to argue — and I stood with him and slapped him before a word got out.

The sound hung there longer than it should have. My palm stung. My eyes burned for reasons that had nothing to do with the slap — five years collapsing down into one unbearable evening, every soft morning and murmured promise curdling in my chest right alongside the grief. Some stubborn part of me still wanted him to close the gap and make it make sense again. I hated that part of me a little.

"Our baby died today," I said, "while you were carrying her to the hospital and telling me I was joking. The doctor said if I'd gotten there in time, ours might have survived."

He looked at me, my handprint already going red on his cheek, and for one second I let myself think he was finally about to get it.

"I know you've always wanted a child," he said instead, voice going soft and reasonable in the worst way. "But that depends on fate, Elara. You can't force it just by wanting it enough." A pause, gentler, somehow worse for the gentleness. "Did watching her give birth upset you that much? Go rest. I'll check on you later."

I laughed. There wasn't anything else left to do with the sound. "So you still don't believe I was pregnant at all."

He pulled me into a hug, patient with what he clearly thought was grief talking. "Fine. Fine — you were pregnant. I was wrong. I'm sorry."

I only felt disgust, standing there breathing in that same jasmine, not mine.

Thinking he'd smoothed things over, he pulled back and asked, easy as anything, if I'd make the soup Seraphine liked. Something to help her get her strength back.

Before I had to answer that, my phone buzzed. A different message, from someone else, someone who'd been waiting patiently on a much simpler kind of loyalty.

*I'll be there in ten minutes, my princess.*

"Okay," I told Ronan, and meant it for someone else entirely.

He left satisfied, sure he'd fixed whatever had briefly been wrong with me. I closed the last suitcase and carried it out to the car myself, hands steadier than I expected.