Three Heartbeats

The lower cells were just as cold as I remembered.

I had only been down here once, years ago, when a rogue wolf was held for a night. I remember thinking how dark it was, and how I would never wish it on anyone. Now the iron door slammed behind me, and the sound went through my bones.

"Wait!" I grabbed the bars. "How long?"

The guards did not answer. Their boots echoed up the stairs, and then there was only the drip of water somewhere in the dark.

I sat down on the stone bench and pulled my knees to my chest. The cell was tiny. A thin blanket, a drain in the floor, and one small window high up, no bigger than my hand. Through it I could see a single square of grey sky.

I waited to cry. I thought the tears would come, since everything inside me felt too full to hold. But all I felt was a strange, heavy quiet. Three years of marriage, and he had not even asked me what happened. He had only asked me to swear it, and when I swore, he did not believe me.

Sable, I whispered. Am I a fool?

No, my wolf said softly. You loved honestly. That is not foolish.

Then why does it feel like it?

She did not answer. But she curled up inside me, warm and quiet, the way she did when I was small and scared. I held on to that warmth and tried not to shake.

Hours passed. The grey square of sky turned orange, then black.

My stomach churned again, worse this time. I barely made it to the drain before everything I had eaten came up. I gripped the cold wall and breathed until the dizziness passed. When I finally leaned back, I was soaked in sweat, and my hands were trembling.

That is the third time today, Sable said carefully.

It's stress.

Wren.

It's stress.

Wren, she said again, gently. When did you last bleed?

I froze.

The cell was silent. I counted back in my head, once, then twice, and my heart began to hammer in my ears. Six weeks. It had been six weeks. I had been so busy with the pack, with the festival, with Kael's long silences, that I had not even noticed.

My hand moved slowly to my stomach.

No, I whispered. No, it can't be. Not now.

I think, Sable said, very quietly, I felt something yesterday. A tiny pulse. I did not want to scare you.

Tears blurred my eyes. For the first time since the stairs, I could feel my own heart again, and it hurt. I sank down against the wall with both hands pressed to my belly.

A baby. Our baby. A child of Kael's blood, and maybe of Dorian's, and maybe of Ronan's. A tiny heartbeat, growing in the dark, in the middle of the worst week of my life.

I had dreamed of this moment for years. I had imagined telling them over dinner, with candlelight and a surprise cake. I had pictured Kael's face, and Dorian's loud laugh, and Ronan's shy, wide smile.

Instead, I sat in a prison cell, and they were upstairs, comforting the woman who had lied about me.

The door at the top of the stairs creaked open.

I wiped my face fast and straightened up. Footsteps came down, slow and uneven, and a small lantern bobbed through the dark. It was Hazel, the pack healer, a plump grey-haired woman with kind eyes who had delivered half the pups in Silverfang.

"Luna," she said, hurrying to the bars. "Moon bless you, child. Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine."

"You are not fine. You are white as milk." She set down her basket and pushed a thermos of warm broth through the gap. "Drink. They told me not to come, but I would not be able to sleep if I did not."

I took the broth with shaking hands. It was hot and salty, and it stayed down.

Hazel studied me. Her eyes moved over my pale face, my damp hair, my hand resting on my belly. And then something in her expression shifted, softened, and sharpened all at once.

"Child," she said slowly. "When did you last bleed?"

I could not answer. I only looked at her, and my eyes filled again.

"Let me see your wrist."

I held it out through the bars. She pressed two fingers to my pulse and closed her eyes. The silence stretched so long that I thought my heart would break through my ribs.

Then Hazel's eyes flew open.

"Moon Goddess," she breathed. "Wren. There are three heartbeats."

"Three?"

"Yours. And two more." Her voice was almost a whisper. "Twins, Luna. You are carrying twins. Strong ones. I have not felt pulses like these in thirty years."

The cell spun around me. Twins. Two babies. Two small lives, beating quietly inside me while the whole world fell apart.

Sable made a soft, wondering sound. Two, she whispered. I felt two.

I pressed both hands over my mouth. Tears ran down my face, and I did not know if I was laughing or sobbing. Hazel reached through the bars and held my cold fingers tight.

"I must tell the Alpha," she said.

"No!"

She froze.

"Please." I gripped her hand. "Please, Hazel. Not yet. Promise me you won't say a word."

"Wren, he is the father. He has a right..."

"He had a right to ask me what happened on those stairs," I said hoarsely. "He didn't. He locked me in a cell. If he will not believe me about a woman falling down the stairs, why would he believe me about this? He will say I am lying. He will say it is another trick. And she will..."

I stopped. The thought was too horrible to say aloud.

Hazel's face went grey. She understood. A woman who could throw herself down thirty steps to ruin a rival would not hesitate to hurt two unborn children.

"I will keep your secret," she said at last. "For now. But Wren, you must be careful. The council meets at dawn."

"The council?"

Her gaze fell. "They are not kind, child. I heard the Alpha speaking with the elders before I came down. The sentence is already decided."

My blood went cold. "What sentence?"

Hazel did not want to say it. I could see it in the way her hands tightened on the bars.

"Tell me."

"Twenty lashes," she whispered. "With the silver whip."

I did not sleep that night.

The words kept circling in my head. Twenty lashes. Silver whip. Silver burns a wolf like acid. Twenty strikes would tear through my back, my skin, my wolf's strength, and it would not stop there. It could kill a pregnant woman. It could kill the babies in a single morning.

And Kael had agreed to it.

I stared at the ceiling until the window turned grey, and with every hour, something inside me grew harder and clearer, like glass cooling after fire.

Sable, I said at last. If they come for me at dawn, can you protect us?

I am strong, she said. But not strong enough to carry all three of us through silver. Not yet.

Then I have to talk to him. I have to make him listen. If he sees my face, he will remember who I am.

Do you believe that?

I hesitated.

For three years, I had believed Kael Blackmoor was the one person who would never hurt me. I had believed he would choose me, even in a storm. I had believed it so deeply that I had never even imagined otherwise.

And now my hand was on my stomach, and I was counting heartbeats.

I have to believe it, I whispered. Or I have nothing.

Sable was silent. And then, so softly I almost missed it, she said:

Then hope. But prepare.

Footsteps echoed on the stairs.

I rose. My legs were weak, but I made them hold. When the iron door swung open, I was standing straight, hands at my sides, chin lifted.

Three figures stood outside.

Kael. Dorian. Ronan.

They had all come. I should have felt relief. Instead, my throat tightened, because none of them was looking at me. Kael's face was a mask. Dorian's eyes were red, as if he had not slept either. Ronan stared at the floor like a man at a funeral.

"The council is ready," Kael said.

"Kael." I stepped forward and gripped the bars. "Please. Before you do this, let me say one thing. Just one."

His jaw clenched. "You've had your chance."

"I haven't. You never asked me a single question. Not one."

"Wren..."

"I have something to tell you," I said, my voice shaking. "Something important. Something that changes everything. If you will give me five minutes, alone, I will tell you, and then you can decide."

For a heartbeat, the silence was perfect. Hope rose in my chest, small and trembling. Kael's eyes flickered. I saw him waver, and I saw the man I loved fighting to come up from under whatever had buried him.

Then a soft, sweet voice drifted down the stairs.

"Kael? Are you down there?"

Isolde appeared behind him, pale and fragile, with a white bandage wrapped around her forehead. She slid her hand into his and leaned lightly against his arm.

"Please don't listen to her," she whispered. "She'll say anything to avoid the sentence. I'm so afraid, Kael. I don't want her to hurt me again."

Kael's face closed like a door.

"Open the cell," he told the guard.

The lock clicked. The bars swung wide.

"Kael, please," I said, and now the tears were running down my face. "I'm begging you. I'm carrying..."

"Enough."

His voice was ice. He did not look at me. He turned to Isolde, put a hand over hers, and led her up the stairs.

Dorian and Ronan took hold of my arms, gently, but I felt them tremble. Neither of them said a word. They only marched me into the corridor, toward the iron-bound doors of the council hall, where I could hear the low, hungry murmur of the entire pack waiting to watch me bleed.

And in the silver light at the end of the hall, held loosely in the hand of a grim-faced warrior, I saw the whip.