Chapter 6

Chapter 6

ANTONIO

Annalisa’s constant drama was wearing my patience thin.Christiana spent the evening trying to calm me down, though I could see the exhaustion in her pale face. She finally fell asleep a little past nine.

I sat in the chair beside her bed until her breathing evened out. I stood by the window, staring into the dark pack grounds, telling myself that this was what mattered. My true mate was safe. In three weeks, the rejection would be final, and everything would be the way it was supposed to be.

I left the room quietly and pulled the door shut behind me.

I had intended to go to Annalisa’s room to satisfy her demands for my scent, but the anger inside me hadn't faded. How could she lie about a pregnancy and then play the victim? I hated deception. If she wanted something from me, she could come beg for it herself.

I turned toward my office. As I passed the upper landing of the grand staircase, voices drifted up from below.

Two of the parlour maids, crouched over the foyer floor below. One of them was wringing out a cloth into a bucket. The water that came out was faintly pink.

I stopped.

Blood?

My chest tightened sharply. Their words made me uneasy.

"Adia should not have done it without permission," the first one murmured, scrubbing at something on the floor. "Taking the car out like that, using—"

"What was she supposed to do? "The Luna was bleeding on the floor and the Alpha had already walked away."

A pause. The wet sound of the cloth against marble filled the space. My pulse picked up, faster than I wanted it to, a cold unease settling in my chest.

"Being a Luna and not his fated mate." The first maid shook her head slowly. "I don't know how she has carried it this long. Four years in this house and never once—"

"She carried it because that was what was asked of her," the second one said. "That's all she has ever done."

I did not move. What are they saying?

The blood on the floor was Annalisa’s? That can’t be right. She was fine when I left her. She had just been lying there. I told her to stop pretending and walked away.

She was exaggerating. She had to be.

I turned from the landing before the maids looked up. I needed to know what actually happened.

I sent for the maid who had helped Annalisa after I had gone within the next ten minutes.

She came to my study. She stood straight, her hands folded in front of her, and she looked at me without flinching in a way that most of my staff did not manage.

"Where did you take her?" I asked.

Adia held my gaze for a moment. Then she gave me the address.

I was in my car before I had even thought it through.

I told myself it was practical. The pregnancy test had come back negative, which meant Annalisa had been lying, which meant whatever had happened on that staircase tonight was a separate matter that I had not caused. But the blood on the floor sat in the back of my mind and would not be filed away cleanly.

The hospital was quieter than I expected for the hour. I was heading toward the main ward when I heard the voices.

Two men in scrubs, standing near a break room doorway, their backs to me, cups of coffee in hand. Their voices were low and tired.

I slowed without meaning to.

"Bad night," one of them said. "The Luna that came in earlier—"

The other one exhaled. "I heard."

"Came in bleeding. The pregnancy was already unstable — needed consistent proximity to the mate, the Alpha's pheromones specifically, for the heartbeat to hold." He paused, wrapping both hands around his cup. "Without that, these early-stage pregnancies don't have a chance. And with the fall on top of it—"

"The baby didn't make it," the other one said. It was not a question.

"No. It died before she even reached the doors." A heavy silence fell over them. "She didn't cry. She didn't say a word. She just sat there in the dark after we told her. Then, she left."

I stopped dead in my tracks.

My hand curled into a violent fist at my side. My breathing turned shallow, the air turning to ash in my lungs.

The baby... was real? And it's gone.

I turned and walked back the way I had come. My mind completely numb.

The drive back to the estate passed in a blur. No. It doesn't make sense.

There was no pregnancy. That was what the test had told me. That was what I had been certain of since the beginning. That was the position I had held and defended and not moved from.

Except now there was a doctor saying the opposite. A real pregnancy. An unstable one. One that had needed me — and hadn’t survived.

That thought didn’t settle. It kept repeating.

No. That’s not right.

Annalisa must have faked the hospital visit. She set this up.

A blinding wave of panic hit me. I slammed the brakes in front of the mansion, sprinting up the stairs, completely ignoring the staff who bowed to me. I took the east corridor at a dead run, halting in front of Annalisa's bedroom door. My lungs burned as I tried to think of what to say.

I pushed it open, my mouth already forming her name just to stop shut at the darkened room and no sign of someone living here.

“Annalisa?” No answer. A cold weight settled in my chest.

I reached for the light and stood in the doorway as it came on, and I looked at a room that was empty. The surfaces were bare. The small things that had occupied her dressing table were gone. The wardrobe door was slightly open, and what was inside it was not much.

I crossed to it and looked.

A few things remained. The formal pieces, the Luna dress, the ceremonial things that were the pack's property and not hers. Everything else was gone. Whatever she had been able to carry, she had taken.

My hand gripped the edge of the wardrobe so hard the wood cracked beneath my claws.

I slammed into the mind-link, my voice roaring with a raw, panicked fury. “Reyes! Find Annalisa immediately!”

A sudden, physical pain gripped my chest, forcing me to my knees. My heart felt like it was tearing in half. My mind violently replayed the memory—Annalisa begging on the floor, bleeding, while I wrapped my arms around Christiana and told her I hoped the baby would die.Our child dying all because I did not care about them.

I killed my own pup.

Footsteps sprinted down the hallway, stopping outside the threshold. Reyes was breathing heavily, his face pale.

"Alpha," Reyes gasped. "There is no sign of the Luna anywhere. Her scent completely vanishes at the pack boundary."

I forced myself upright, “Shut the city down,” I roared, "Gather every single warrior. Find her. Bring her back to me no matter what!"

Reyes bowed and sprinted off, leaving me completely alone in the hollow, empty room.

I had to bring Annalisa back. I had to fix this.