Chapter three

The courtyard was empty except for the wind. I stood at the stone balustrade with my arms wrapped around myself and watched the warriors train in the dirt pit below. Wooden swords clacked. Someone laughed. A sergeant barked at a recruit to keep his elbows in. I knew every one of them by name.

I had stitched Garrett's shoulder when a rogue blade caught him. I had sent fresh meat to these barracks when the mountain passes froze shut. Not one man in that pit knew I was about to vanish from their lives."Sunfall's elders are already writing letters."My father's boots crunched on the frost behind me.

"About what?" I didn't turn.

"They want Lyra restored to her rightful place." He came up beside me and looked down at the pit, calculating. "A true Sunfall daughter beside a Moonlight Alpha. It secures our seat on the High Council. The elders were never pleased with a second-choice arrangement."

"I'm a Sinclair too."

"You are." He said it the way someone confirms the spelling of a name.

"I gave this pack three years, Father."

"And we're grateful." He wasn't. "But you were a band-aid, Adele. You held the seat warm so Moonlight wouldn't tear our borders apart. Luca knows it. The elders know it. It's time you knew it."

"A band-aid."

"Don't be tiresome." He waved a gloved hand. "Cooperate with the transition. Hand over the keys. We'll make sure you're looked after."

"Looked after." I laughed, and my breath smoked in the cold. "You sold me once to save your neck. Now you're discarding me to clear her path. Do you even see me as your child?"

His face hardened.

"I see you as a Sinclair. And a Sinclair does what the family needs." He adjusted his collar. "Lyra commands a room. She has presence. People want to follow her. You were always quiet Adele. Accept your role."

"And if I don't?"

"Then you'll be a very quiet disappointment in a very small cottage."

"Mary will visit," he added, as though that were a kindness. "At Midwinter, if the roads allow."

He walked away with His cloak snapping in the wind behind him. He didn't look back.I gripped the cold stone until my knuckles ached. *We are not a ghost,* my wolf growled in the back of my mind. *Challenge her. Make him remember.*

"He doesn't want to remember," I whispered. My eyes stung. "He only wants her."I should have walked away. Gone inside. Started packing.

Instead, I looked up.

The high balcony above the courtyard caught the gray light. Luca stood at its edge, broad and still. Beside him, Lyra's hand rested on his forearm.

He was pointing something out to her. The northern perimeter. The new fortified walls. The supply roads I had spent two winters mapping, line by line, until my eyes burned.

He didn't pull away from her touch.

He just stood there, showing her what I had built, and let her take it.

Lyra glanced down. Her eyes found mine across the distance, and she lifted two fingers in a small, friendly wave.

Then she turned back to Luca and laughed at something he said.

My chest cracked. I turned my face away.

Suddenly The world tilted.

It came out of nowhere, a hot, dizzy wave. The sky swung sideways. The warriors' shouts stretched into a long, thin whine. I grabbed the balustrade, but my fingers felt far away.

*Breathe,* I told myself. *Breathe.*

Nausea rolled up from my stomach and into my throat. I bent over the rail, gagging on nothing.

"Lady Adele?" A young guard had stopped at the edge of the courtyard, hand half-raised.

"Fine," I managed weakly. "Just the cold wind."

"Should I fetch the healer?"

"I am the healer." I forced a smile. "Go back to your post."

He hesitated, then bowed and retreated. I breathed slowly, the way I'd taught a hundred patients to do. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Eventually the sky settled.

The warriors had gone back to their drills. No one had noticed. Nobody ever did, which for once felt like a mercy.

It was the stress. It had to be. I hadn't eaten. I hadn't slept. I'd been betrayed, publicly, twice in as many days. I pressed my palm to my stomach to steady it.

And stopped.

Something fluttered beneath my hand.

It wasn't a muscle twitch. It wasn't hunger. It was small, warm, and deliberate, like a candle being lit in a dark room.

My wolf went utterly still.

Then she moved. She didn't thrash or snarl. She curled slowly around that tiny warmth, golden and fierce, and held it.

*Mine,* she whispered.

"No," I breathed.

But I was already counting.

The last night Luca had come to my bed. The frost on the windows. A bottle half-empty on the nightstand, his hands rough and grieving, my name spoken into my hair as if it were someone else's. Six weeks ago. Maybe a little more. I had told myself it didn't matter. I had told myself a lot of things. I did the math twice. Then a third time, as if arithmetic might change its mind.

The signs had been there all week. The coffee that smelled like smoke. The tea I couldn't finish. The tiredness I'd blamed on grief, and the ache in my chest I'd blamed on my husband.

I had been so busy being heartbroken, I'd missed the other thing entirely.

*A baby.*

My knees went weak. I sat down hard on the cold stone step, pressing both hands to my stomach, and stared at nothing.

Luca's child. An heir to the Moonlight Pack.

Growing inside the woman who was being quietly erased.

A laugh bubbled up in my throat, wild and cracked. I clamped my hand over my mouth. If anyone heard me, they'd think I was losing my mind.

Maybe I was. I wasn't just heartbroken. I wasn't just tired. I was going to be a mother.

And then the fear came next. It slid through me like ice water, one thought at a time.

*My father will use this.* I could see it perfectly. Thomas Sinclair, sitting across from Luca, with his hands folded. *An heir, Alpha. Surely you wouldn't set aside the mother of your child.* He'd turn my baby into a leash. Luca would resent it. I would live in that cage forever.

*Lyra will see it as a threat.* I knew my sister. A rival for the crown, one who carried the bloodline Lyra herself had walked away from? She'd smile and pour me tea and I would never see the cup coming.

*And Luca.* I looked up at the balcony again.

He was laughing. A rare, short, genuine laugh. Lyra said something close to his ear and he shook his head, amused. I had spent three years trying to earn that sound.

He would take the news of a child the way he'd taken my marriage: as an obligation. A chain tied to a woman he'd never wanted. I would not do that to my baby. I would not raise a child to be an obligation and I definitely would not teach a child that love was something you waited for at a closed door.

My wolf pressed warm against my ribs.

*We leave,* she said.

"We leave," I agreed.

 I smoothed my coat down and tucked the ends in tight over my stomach, out of habit.

*Not yet,* I thought. *First, the hospital.*

Because I needed proof. I needed a scan, a number, a date. I needed someone who could keep a secret. I thought of Helen's sharp blue eyes and steady hands. If anyone could tell me the truth without telling anyone else, it was her. I crossed the courtyard quickly. Anyone watching would have seen a wife walking to the hospital to hand over some final administrative duty.

Willing to myself keep my eyes forward. I didn't look at the balcony. I didn't need to. I could feel him up there, the way you feel the sun on the back of your neck. A stranger who had shared my bed. A man I had loved with my whole battered heart.

"They think they're erasing me," I whispered to the cold. "They think they're throwing me away."

My hand pressed flat against my stomach.

"They have no idea what I'm taking with me."

Behind me, the courtyard rang with swordplay and shouting. Above, a man laughing on a balcony, never knowing the whole future of his pack was walking away.

My wolf lifted her head, golden eyes burning.

*Let them try to touch it,* she said quietly. *Just once.* I smiled. It wasn't kind. "Let them try," I agreed.

Then I walked into the shadow of the archway and did not look back.