Chapter 3

Yes, I was pregnant.

Adrian knew.

In my previous life, I used the debt he owed me to secure the marking ceremony. After Ivy attempted suicide, Adrian blamed me for driving her to it.

Then he began forcing strengthening tonic into me.

He said the Blackwood heir needed to be powerful.

When I vomited, he pinned me down and poured another dose between my lips. He did it again and again until the pup grew far too large for my body.

When labor began, I begged Adrian to summon a healer.

He refused.

He trusted the strength of his Alpha bloodline more than my fear.

I still remembered the pain. My limbs shook as I screamed and pushed until blood vessels burst in my eyes, but the pup remained trapped inside me.

Blood flooded the underground room.

I died there.

Our child suffocated before taking his first breath.

After leaving the pack house, I returned to my apartment and rested a hand over the faint movement inside my abdomen.

It was time to end things with Adrian and leave Blackwood territory for good.

I slept for four hours.

When I woke, a message waited on my phone.

[My mother is ill. Come to the pack house.]

Adrian was cruel, but Helena had always treated me like her own daughter.

My parents and the Blackwoods had been close friends. After my parents were killed by rogues, Helena took me into her home and gave me the love of a mother.

I was leaving Blackwood territory. Before I went, I wanted to see Helena and say a proper goodbye.

The moment I opened the door, a basin of freezing water crashed over my head.

Cold soaked through my clothes. My weakened wolf recoiled, and pain pulled low in my abdomen.

The room erupted with laughter.

More than a dozen young wolves surrounded me, some already recording with their phones.

Ivy sat in the center of them.

There was no fear or fragility in her face now.

Only malice.

“Make her kneel.”

A male wolf kicked the back of my knees.

I struck the floor, tearing open the stitches in my injured arm.

Ivy walked toward me with a smile.

“Do you know how much Adrian hates you?”

She crouched in front of me.

“You secretly got pregnant because you thought his pup would force him to keep you.”

She picked up a bottle of wolfsbane liquor.

Two wolves seized my arms.

“You’ve spent eight years using every trick you know to trap Adrian,” Ivy said. “Today, I’m going to make you regret carrying his pup.”

Panic shot through me.

I twisted violently and covered my abdomen with my free arm.

“Don’t touch my baby.”

“I thought you didn’t want Adrian anymore.”

“I don’t. But this child has done nothing wrong.”

The faint wolf pulse inside me fluttered in distress.

He had not asked to be conceived in Adrian’s drunken mistake or become a chain between us.

He was still my baby.

I had failed to save him once.

This time, I had to protect him.

“Hold her still,” Ivy ordered.

More hands seized me. I kicked one wolf in the knee, but another twisted my injured arm behind my back.

Ivy forced the bottle against my mouth.

I clenched my teeth, so someone pinched my nose until I had to gasp.

Wolfsbane liquor poured down my throat.

I choked and struggled, scratching and biting at the wolves holding me, but they only laughed and tightened their grip.

By the time the bottle was empty, fire was spreading through my abdomen.

“If anything happens to my baby,” I gasped, “I’ll kill you.”

Ivy threw the bottle aside and picked up a curling iron. Its metal barrel glowed red.

Everything had been prepared before I arrived.

They had brought me here to torture me.

“If Adrian sees you with a ruined face,” Ivy said, gripping my chin, “maybe he’ll finally stop feeling sorry for you.”

She lowered the burning iron toward my eye.

Then someone screamed.

“Blood! She’s bleeding!”

A violent cramp folded me in half. Blood ran down my thighs and spread across the floor.

I wrapped both arms around my stomach.

One of the wolves stepped back.

“Ivy, this has gone too far.”

Panic crossed Ivy’s face.

Then she saw how desperately I shielded my baby, and her expression turned vicious.

“Good.”

She dropped the iron and kicked at my abdomen.

I twisted aside, taking the blow against my ribs.

She kicked me again.

The second blow broke my guard.

Ivy planted her boot on my stomach and pressed down.

I clawed at her ankle, but the others pinned me to the floor.

Blood spread beneath my body.

The faint pulse inside me weakened.

Ivy’s smile was the last thing I saw before everything went black.