Chapter 5

Sera

When I woke up, I was staring at a water-stained ceiling tile and breathing in the sharp, sterile smell of disinfectant. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and my mouth tasted like I'd been chewing on rust. I blinked a few times, trying to get my eyes to focus, and slowly the room around me came into view — a small, cramped space with peeling linoleum floors and a single flickering fluorescent light overhead. The pack's lower district medical room. I'd been here once before, years ago, when I'd sliced my hand open on a broken bottle.

A woman in a faded white coat was standing by the counter with her back to me, reading something on a clipboard. She was middle-aged, with her hair pulled back in a tight bun and the kind of face that had seen too much and stopped being surprised by any of it. When she heard me shift on the cot, she turned around.

"You're awake," she said. Her voice was flat, clinical. "Good. How do you feel?"

"Like I got hit by a truck," I said, and my voice came out hoarse. I tried to sit up, but she put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down.

"Stay put. You fainted. Neighbors found you by your truck and brought you in." She set the clipboard down and pulled a rolling stool over to the side of the cot. "I ran some basic tests. Blood sugar was low, like I thought, but that's not all."

My stomach clenched. "What do you mean?"

She hesitated, and that hesitation scared me more than anything she could've said outright. She picked up the clipboard again, flipped through a couple of pages, and then looked at me with an expression I couldn't quite read. "I'm waiting on one more test to come back," she said carefully. "But I need to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with me. Have you been experiencing any unusual symptoms lately? Nausea, fatigue, abdominal pain?"

"I — yes," I said. "The past couple weeks. I thought it was just — I don't know, stress, or — "

"When was your last cycle?"

The question hit me like a slap. I opened my mouth and then closed it again, because I didn't know. I couldn't remember. I'd been so focused on everything else — on the dream, on the wolf I thought I'd felt stirring inside me, on keeping my head down and my hands busy — that I hadn't even noticed.

"I don't know," I said finally. "I — it's never been regular, so I didn't think — "

The doctor's expression didn't change, but something in her eyes softened just a little. "The test will be ready in a few minutes," she said. "And when it is, we need to have a very serious conversation."

My heart was pounding now, hard and fast, and I could feel the cold sweat starting to break out on my forehead. "What kind of conversation?"

She opened her mouth to answer, and then the door slammed open.

Two men in black uniforms stepped into the room, both of them broad-shouldered and stone-faced, and I knew before they even opened their mouths that they were from the main estate. High pack. Enforcers.

"Sera Voss?" the first one said. It wasn't a question.

I sat up slowly, even though my head was still spinning. "Yes."

"The Alpha wants to see you. Now."

The doctor stood up so fast her stool rolled backward and hit the wall. "She just woke up," she said sharply. "She's in no condition to — "

"The Alpha's orders," the man said, and his voice was flat and final, the kind of voice that didn't leave room for argument. "She comes with us."

The doctor's jaw tightened, and for a second I thought she was going to argue anyway. But then she just looked at me, and I saw something in her face that made my stomach drop — something that looked almost like pity.

"At least let me tell her — " she started, but the enforcer was already moving toward the cot.

"Now," he said.

They didn't give me time to put my shoes on properly. They just hauled me up by the arms, one on each side, and marched me out of the medical room and into the cold morning air. I tried to pull free, but their grips were iron, and my legs were still shaky enough that I wasn't sure I could've stood on my own anyway.

"What is this about?" I said, and I hated how small my voice sounded. "What did I do?"

Neither of them answered.

They shoved me into the back seat of a sleek black car — not the same one from this morning, but close enough that my stomach twisted — and climbed in on either side of me. The doors slammed shut, and the driver pulled away from the curb without a word.

I sat there with my hands clenched in my lap, my heart hammering against my ribs, and tried to think. The Alpha wanted to see me. Caden Ashveil, the man I'd spent five years carefully avoiding, the man whose name made grown wolves go quiet, wanted to see me. And the only thing that had changed, the only thing that could've possibly put me on his radar, was this morning's collision with Lyra Solenne.

She told him, I thought. *She went straight to him and told him I was rude to her, or I threatened her, or — *

But that didn't make sense. I hadn't threatened her. I'd barely even raised my voice. All I'd done was refuse to bow my head, and surely that wasn't enough to —

The car turned onto the boundary road, and I felt the air change. We were heading north. Toward the high district. Toward the places where people like me didn't go unless they were being dragged.

I pressed my hand against my belly, where the ache was still sitting low and heavy, and I thought about the doctor's face when those men had walked in. The way she'd looked at me. The way she'd tried to tell me something and been cut off.

What were you going to say? I wanted to scream at her. What was so serious that you couldn't wait?

But she was already gone, and I was alone in the back of a car with two men who wouldn't look at me, and ahead of us the road stretched out long and dark, leading toward a place I'd never been and a man I'd never met, and I had no idea what was waiting for me when I got there.

The only thing I knew for certain was that whatever it was, it wasn't going to be good.