Chapter 2

Madeline’s POV

They didn't knock or ask to come in. Two guards just pushed the door open and grabbed my arms roughly, like I was already guilty of something, and pulled me out into the hallway in my nightgown with my eyes still red from crying just moments ago.

"What the hell are you doing? Let go of me!" I tried to twist out of their grip, but it didn't matter. They were trained, strong in a way I'd never be, and I was seven months pregnant and completely terrified.

They marched me down two flights of stairs to the council hall, and when the doors opened, I understood why nobody had bothered explaining anything to me. Half the pack was already there, waiting, as if they'd known this was happening before I did, and I was the last person in the entire pack to find out about my own life falling apart.

I scanned the crowd for one friendly face and didn't find any. No one stepped forward to even ask if I was okay, or ask why I was being dragged into a room full of people at midnight in nothing but a nightgown, seven months pregnant, and shaking. 

I remember thinking, in some distant, disconnected part of my brain, that I should be more scared than I was. But mostly I was just confused. My mind kept going over the same question. What did I do?

"Poison," someone said from somewhere in the crowd.

"Alpha Tyler," another person said, and my stomach dropped straight through the floor.

Alpha Tyler was Alexander's father. The former Alpha was the only person in that entire family who had ever been kind to me. We always drank tea together in the kitchen and he would ask about my day, as if my answer actually mattered to him.

"He's dead," a woman near the front said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "And she did it."

"That's not true," I said, my voice already breaking. "That's not true, I would never—"

But nobody was listening, and that scared me a little more than the accusation itself. I could see on every face turned toward me that they'd already decided I did it. 

Harper stood off to the side of the room, arms crossed, looking entirely too calm for someone who was at a murder trial. Next to her was a man I had never seen in my life. He looked older, nervous, and wouldn't meet my eyes.

I searched the crowd for Jack, Alexander's Beta, half hoping he'd say or do something, since he'd always at least been decent to me. 

But even Jack was standing near the back with his jaw clenched tightly and his eyes on the floor. For a second, it looked like he wanted to say something. Then his eyes met Alexander’s, and whatever he’d been about to say died on his lips.

"Tell them what you saw," Harper said to the strange man, her voice as gentle as anything.

"I saw her," the man said, pointing straight at me, his hand shaking. "In the kitchen. I saw her put something in Alpha Tyler's tea the night before he died."

"That's a lie!" I shouted it so loud that my throat burned. "I was never in that kitchen that night. I don't even know who you are—"

I looked at Alexander. He was standing at the front of the room like a stranger, and right then, he didn’t look like the man I'd ever shared a bed with, laughed with, or hoped to have a better relationship with. I begged him with my eyes to just ask me one question. I needed just one chance to explain myself, and he should have at least given me that as my husband, like any decent person would.

He looked back at me like I was already guilty and he'd already made up his mind.

Two years. Two years of trying to make this marriage into something real, of learning what particular kind of tea he liked and which nights he needed silence instead of conversation, of telling myself the mate bond would eventually mean something to him even if it took time. And this was how it ended. Not with a conversation or a single question asked. Just a room full of strangers and a verdict that had already been decided a while ago.

“Madeline Dawson,” he said. His voice was flat and cold. He didn’t even sound like I was the woman he used to at least pretend to care about. “The evidence against you is enough. Until proven otherwise, you are guilty of poisoning my father, Alpha Tyler.”

He paused, his eyes cold as they settled on me.

“You are stripped of your title as Luna, and you’re no longer welcome in this pack.”

The room went dead silent.

"Alexander," I whispered, because somehow, I still thought if I said his name gently enough, he'd remember I was an actual person.

"You're a criminal," he said coldly. "Get her out of my sight."

A criminal? He just called me a criminal in front of every single person in this pack. In front of the staff who used to smile at me in the halls. In front of people who'd danced at our wedding two years ago and toasted to forever.

The betrayal hit me like a punch, the pain going straight through my chest, and I actually stumbled backward from the force of it.

Then the pain heightened even more—real, sharp, gripping pain that had nothing to do with heartbreak and everything to do with my body deciding, right then, in front of the entire pack, that it was done waiting.

I gasped and grabbed the back of a chair to keep myself standing.

"No," I said, to nobody and everybody all at once. "No, not now, not here—"

Another wave of pain hit me just then, this one worse than the first, and I doubled over. I heard gasps ripple through the crowd, someone say my name, then Harper's voice sharply cutting through all of it, though I couldn't make out the words over the sound of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.

I looked down.

My water had broken right there on the floor, in front of every single person who had just watched my husband call me a criminal and strip away the last bit of dignity I had left.

The room around me blurred. Someone was shouting for help. I felt my knees start to give out, and a pair of unfamiliar hands caught me.

Through all the noise and panic and pain, I found Alexander’s face one more time.

He wasn’t moving toward me.

He wasn’t moving at all.