Chapter 3

Madeline’s POV

They put me in a room to have the baby all by myself.

It wasn’t the maternity suite with the soft lights, warm blankets, and all the expensive equipment. All I had was a small cot in a plain room with a locked door. 

There was no nurse or midwife to assist me, and no husband to hold my hand through the worst of it. They had decided I wasn’t worth the effort. All I had was myself, gritting my teeth through contractions that came faster than I was ready for.

Werewolf babies could survive early deliveries far better than human babies, but seven months was still far too early for me to be giving birth alone.

I kept waiting for someone to walk in and tell me this was all a horrible mistake. That the council would sort it out, Alexander would come to his senses, or somebody would remember I was still a person even after everything they'd decided about me. 

But nobody came. The cot creaked every time I shifted, and the only light in the room came from a single bulb overhead that flickered every few seconds like it might give out completely and leave me in the dark to do this alone.

Through the door, I could hear council members still arguing. Their voices sounded really urgent, and every few minutes I caught a bit of it.

"...can't let her keep it..."

"...the girl's dangerous, Tyler's death alone should be enough..."

"...it's not even confirmed to be his..."

That last one made me want to scream, but another contraction hit before I could waste my breath on them. 

They were talking about me like I was a problem to be dealt with, not a person in labor twenty feet away who could hear their words.

"Please," I gasped to the empty room. "Please, somebody help me."

Nobody came.

I don't know how long it took. The hours all blurred together through the pain I faced alone. But eventually, through the fear and exhaustion, I heard the sound I’d been waiting so long for.

A baby’s cry filled the room.

Then another cry joined it.

My eyes flew open immediately. In front of me were two babies.

Two girls. Twins.

I stared at them in disbelief because I hadn’t even known there were two.

I held them both, one in each arm, for a few precious minutes. Their tiny faces were red, scrunched up, and absolutely perfect, and for those few minutes, nothing else in the world existed. Not the council, the accusations, or even Alexander.

I counted their fingers and whispered the names I’d chosen for them into the quiet. For those few minutes—even though I was exhausted and bleeding and utterly alone—I was happier than I had been throughout my entire two years of marriage to Alexander.

But it didn't last because the door banged open soon after that.

Alexander walked in, not even bothering to spare a single glance at me. His eyes went straight to the babies in my arms like I was just the surface they happened to be resting on.

Harper was right behind him, already talking before he'd fully stepped through the door.

"The midwife said one of them didn't make it," she said. Her voice sounded so wrecked and sorrowful, and it was so convincing that I almost believed her myself for half a second. "She stopped breathing right after birth. I'm so sorry, Alexander."

"That's a lie!" My voice tore out of me, sounding really raw and desperate. "They're both alive! Look at them, they're both right here, breathing. Both of them—"

Nobody looked at me. That was the thing about being called a criminal in front of the entire pack. After that, nothing I said counted as truth anymore. My voice had stopped mattering from that moment onward.

Alexander reached down and took one of the girls from my arms.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Harper said the other one didn’t survive,” he said coldly. “This is the only child.”

“She’s lying! Alexander, look at her. Just look at both of them!”

I tried to hold on, I really did, but I was weak and bleeding, and he was stronger than I could ever hope to be in that moment.

"Alexander, please, listen to me—"

He still didn't bother looking at me. He just turned around and walked out with my daughter in his arms, the door slamming shut behind him with a sound that felt final in a way I didn't have any words for yet.

I was alone again, bleeding, holding one baby against my chest and feeling a hollowness where the other one used to be; an emptiness that had nothing to do with my body and everything to do with the part of me that had just been carried out that door.

I don't know how long I cried. But it was long enough that my throat felt raw and scratchy, long enough that the baby in my arms fell asleep despite it, exhausted from her own arrival into a world already trying to tear her family apart.

The door opened again sometime later and Harper walked in.

I flinched, expecting more cruelty, more lies, more of whatever fucked up game she was playing. But her face looked different this time, softer, almost kind.

“He’s going to kill you,” she said quietly, glancing back at the door like she was scared of being overheard. “Once he’s done with the baby and this all settles, Alexander’s going to kill you, Madeline. The council has already decided. Tonight’s your only chance.”

I stared at her. This was the same woman who had spent years making my life miserable, yet she was standing in front of me warning me to run.

“Why?”

Her eyes darted to the baby in my arms.

“I’m not doing this for you,” she replied.

My stomach twisted. “Then who are you doing it for?”

Harper looked toward the door again. “You don’t have time to understand everything. You have just five minutes. Use them wisely, Madeline.”

I didn't move. I just couldn't. Every instinct in me screamed that this was a trap because Harper Winston did not save people. She’d spent two whole years making my life miserable just because she could, and she had zero reason to start caring about me now.

“What happens if I stay?”

Her expression hardened. “You’ll die.”

A chill ran through me.

Harper stepped closer and lowered her voice. “So stop asking questions and start thinking about how you’re going to get out of here.”