Chapter Five

Dahlia's POV 

What did I do to deserve this? 

I would never kill anyone. Yes, I'd killed a rabbit once, and Madam Boston had berated me afterward. Does that sound like a woman who murders an Alpha? 

Does that sound like anyone who has ever taken a life with intention and cold blood and whatever stillness you need inside yourself to do something like that?”

  

That is when the crying started again, which I was not going to pretend I had any control over anymore. It came in waves now.

I would be sitting here completely still, staring at the cave wall, telling myself to think practically—find water, find food, stay hidden—and then the memory just arrived. 

The way everyone had looked at me that night made me wail louder. The circle of faces, all of them gone cold overnight, people I had shared meals with and bowed to and tried so hard to be good enough for, and they looked at me like I was already guilty.

Like the accusation was the verdict. Like, I did not even deserve a few seconds of doubt in my favor.

Madam Boston would have given me those seconds.

The thought of her makes the crying worse. She was the one person in that entire pack who looked at me like I was a person first and a complication second. She used to bring me tea I had not asked for because she said I had the face of someone who needed warming up, and I never told her that the tea was the first genuinely warm thing I had received in years.

I wish she were here. I wish she could walk through the mouth of this cave with her heavy step and her disapproving eyebrows and sit beside me and say she believed me. 

If one person just said the words, I could breathe properly again, but she is not here. It is just the baby I am carrying and me, and the cold that rises through the stone floor, no matter how I shift my weight.

What did I do to deserve a life that, every single time it looks like it is finally turning around, finds a new and creative way to collapse? I had been doing everything right.

Things with Darryn were not perfect, but they were becoming something. I was going to be a mother. I had allowed myself, in the very private parts of myself I do not show anyone, to feel something that resembled hope.

  

Luna Jane. I do not want to, but it finds me in the quiet of this cave, and I cannot always chase it back out. 

That was not rumor, not gossip; that was something I witnessed with my own eyes more than once: the specific, bone-deep hatred of a woman who had been trapped too long beside someone who does not see her. She hated Alpha Darius in a way that was quiet and total, with nowhere to go.

No, hating someone and killing them are not the same country; they are not even the same continent. I know what it is to hate someone you are also afraid of, and that kind of hate makes you smaller, not larger. 

  

I do not believe Luna Jane killed him. I don't. I just don't have anyone else to suspect, and that is a very uncomfortable place to live with yourself.

“Arghhh,” I clutched my tummy. The baby makes itself known around what I think is midday.

Right, food. I have to find food.

The forest around the cave was not generous. I know enough to recognize what not to touch—Madam Boston taught me that, too, of all things, one slow afternoon when she decided I needed to know how to survive because she said I had the energy of someone the world keeps trying to get rid of—but what is safe is sparse and small. 

The berries I found along the eastern tree line are barely enough to fill a palm. I eat them anyway. I stood in the cold with my feet wet from the undergrowth, eating handfuls of wild berries like something the forest pities, and I told myself it was fine. People have survived worse than this.

Then my stomach disagreed with that assessment completely and without any warning whatsoever.

I threw up everything, all of it, and I was on my knees in the dirt heaving up the only thing I had eaten in God knows how long, and my stomach was cramping up. 

This is the lowest I'd ever been. This was lower than the night Darryn looked at me like I was a stranger in his house, lower than the accusation, and lower than the exile.

I cried my eyes out until I felt the baby kick, its way of telling me that I had bigger things to worry about. 

  

I wiped my face on my sleeve, and I got back up, because there was a baby who needed me to keep standing, even when standing was the hardest thing I had ever done. 

Hours later, after forcing myself to take a nap to ease fatigue, I was aroused from my sleep by the sound of twigs snapping that comes at dusk. I pressed myself into the back of the cave and told myself it could be anything. 

“Well, well.” He stepped into the mouth of the cave with three warriors behind him, and my blood turned cold. 

“Dahlia,” he drawled. "We have been looking everywhere for you.”

  

"I didn't do it." My voice came out steadier than I expected. "Dmitri, I need you to listen to me. I did not kill Alpha Darius. Whatever they told you, whatever evidence they think exists—"

"I know," he said. “Don't worry, you don't have to say anything more.” 

“What did you say?” I stepped back.

"I know you didn't kill him," he said, and he smiled, and the smile was the worst thing I had ever seen on a human face. "I know exactly who killed him. I have always known."

"Then why?" My voice was breaking, and I couldn't stop it. "Why did you tell Darryn those lies? About me. About the baby. Why did you go to my husband and say those things and make him believe—" 

I choked on my own words as I saw the moment Darryn's face changed and watched the last small warmth in his eyes go out like a candle someone cupped their hand around.

"Because it was useful," 

"You destroyed my marriage." I was shaking now. "You destroyed everything I had. You know I am innocent, and you are still going to—"

"When you reach Goddess Selene," he said, lifting his hand, "you can ask her the rest of your questions. She will have considerably more time for you than I do."

He lifted his hand, ready to strike me, and all that came out of me was a shrill scream, and the world was engulfed in flames.

That was the only way I could describe it—something tore open in the air, the cave, and fire came down.

I could see Dmitri's face change for the first time in my life. The pleasantness was gone; in its place was something that looked almost like awe right before the light swallowed everything.

The last thing I saw was him looking down at me before the world went blank.

Two hours later…

I tried to open my eyes, but my eyes were not yet accustomed to the lights in the room. 

“Where am I?” I clutched my throbbing head that had a bandage wrapped around it. 

Unlike the cold and rough floor of the cave, I was lying on something soft. There were clean, dry clothes on me that were not mine. The smell of herbs filled the air, making me nauseous.

The door suddenly opened, and a woman stepped through it. She was thin in a way that looked like illness rather than nature.

  

“Dahlia,” she called out to me with a smile spread across her lips. She looked at me like she had been waiting for this moment for so long that now that it was here, she did not entirely know how to survive it.

"You're awake," she said softly.

"Where am I?" My voice was hoarse. "Who are you?”

"My name is Illara," she said as she stopped at the foot of the bed. Her hands were pressed together in front of her, knuckles pale with the effort of holding herself still.

  

"I'm your mother." She introduced herself, and I looked at her like she was cuckoo. My mother?

Seriously, was I dreaming? Because there was nothing funny about this anymore. First, I was in a cave; then Dmitri showed up; now I'm here with a woman who claims to be my mom.

“I'm dreaming, right?” I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I probably passed out after eating those berries.”

“My child,” she tried to touch me, but I pushed her hand away while moving as far as I could without squishing my baby.

“Get away from me!”