Chapter 5
Sera's POV
Tristan lunged for me, and his hand caught my arm hard enough to slow the fall, but not hard enough to stop it.
I hit the broken edge of the railing and the world went white for a moment, and then the pain came all at once.
It was low, deep, radiating out from somewhere beneath my ribs.
I lay there on the steps and I did not move.
"Sera." Tristan's voice sounded very far away. "Sera, look at me."
I looked down instead.
There was blood.
It was spreading across the stone of the step beneath me, and for one long second I did not understand what I was looking at.
Then I understood exactly what I was looking at.
"Dr. Angel," I said, and my voice came out strange. "Someone get Dr. Angel."
"What's wrong?" Tristan's hands were on my shoulders now, his eyes wide. "Sera, talk to me, what hurts..."
"Get her," I said again, and this time I screamed it. "Get her now!"
I had never seen Tristan look afraid before. Not like this. Not the kind of fear that stripped everything else off his face and left only the raw animal underneath.
Behind him, Willow stood frozen on the steps.
Her hand was pressed to her mouth, and her eyes were wide, and everyone around us would have read that as shock.
But I caught something else in her expression, something underneath the shock, something that looked almost like she was satisfied.
I didn't have time to think about what that meant.
The pain came again, sharper this time, and the world tilted, and then there were hands lifting me, and shouting.
The last thing I saw clearly was the blood on the stone steps before everything went dark.
I drifted in and out.
I remembered fragments of memory out of order.
My hand pressed against my stomach.
Dr. Angel's voice from days ago saying, 'This pregnancy is fragile.'
The gala, the lights, Tristan's voice announcing another woman's name to three hundred people.
The moment I decided not to tell him.
I remembered thinking, somewhere in the haze, that if the baby survived this, I would tell him everything. I would stop hiding it. I would let him choose, and if he chose wrong, at least I would know.
That thought hurt worse than the pain in my body.
I heard voices above me and I recognized Dr. Angel's voice among them.
Then there was nothing at all.
When I opened my eyes again, I was in the medical wing, and Tristan was sitting beside my bed.
His face was gray.
"Sera," he said, and his voice cracked on my name. "You were pregnant."
I didn't answer right away. My mouth was dry and my body felt hollowed out, scraped clean.
"Dr. Angel told me," he said. "She had to. I didn't understand what was happening and she had to tell me."
I looked at him and I felt something in my chest crack wider.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked. "Sera, why would you keep something like this from me?"
"I found out the same night you announced her," I said. "The same night, Tristan. I stood in that hallway and I found out I was carrying your child hours after you told the entire pack you were taking a second mate."
His jaw worked, and he said nothing.
"I didn't want to tell you," I said. "I didn't want this baby to become a bargaining chip. I didn't want you to stay with me because of an heir instead of because you chose me. I wanted you to choose me, Tristan, not the child."
"I would have..."
"You don't know what you would have done," I said. "Neither do I. That's exactly why I didn't tell you."
He put his face in his hands.
Dr. Angel stepped into the room then, and I saw it in her face before she said a single word.
"Sera," she said quietly. "I'm so sorry."
"The baby," I said.
"The baby is gone."
The room went very silent.
I stared at the ceiling and I did not cry, not right away, because some part of me had known the moment I saw the blood on the stone steps.
Tristan made a sound beside me that I had never heard him make before, something low and broken, and for one strange moment I almost reached for him.
Then I remembered why I was on those steps in the first place.
I remembered the pendant, and Willow's hand closing around it, and Tristan telling me to calm down while I begged him to see what was happening in front of him.
I did not reach for him.
Dr. Angel found me alone an hour later, after Tristan had stepped out to make a phone call.
"There's something I need to tell you," she said. "Willow's omega, Mira, came by earlier. She was shaking. She wouldn't say much, but she kept asking if the baby was alright."
I went very still.
"How would Mira know I was pregnant?" I asked. "I told no one but you."
"I don't know," Dr. Angel said. "But Sera, given the fall, given the timing...I want to run additional tests. There are certain herbs, certain substances, that can weaken a pregnancy already as fragile as yours was. I can't prove anything yet. But I don't think this was only the fall."
I thought about Willow sitting in my armchair the night before with a cup of tea already poured beside her like she'd been expecting me.
I thought about her comments, sharp and precise, designed to provoke.
I thought about Mira standing behind her, watching everything.
"Run the tests," I said. "Whatever you need to run."
Tristan came back into the room twenty minutes later, and I could tell immediately that something had changed in his face.
"Willow's having a panic attack," he said. "They're asking for me."
I looked at him.
"Are you leaving?" I asked.
"She's frightened, Sera. She heard about the fall and she thinks it's her fault and she's..."
"I just lost our child," I said. "An hour ago. I am lying in this bed and our child is gone, and you're telling me you need to go comfort her."
"I'll be right back," he said. "I promise."
"Stay," I said. "Tristan, please. Stay with me right now."
He hesitated.
It was only a few seconds, but I felt every one of them, and I understood in that silence something I had refused to understand for a long time.
Then he turned and walked out of the room.
I lay alone after that, staring at the ceiling, and I did not cry.
My wolf was not so restrained.
She curled somewhere deep inside my chest and grieved in a way I could not, and I let her, because I had no strength left to hold either of us together.
The balcony door had been left open for air but then suddenly, I heard a groan, low and pained, coming from just outside on the balcony.
I went still.
This hospital was near a dense border in the pack, so hearing wolf sounds wasn't really out of the norm, but this was different.
The scent hit me a second later... blood.
And underneath it, threaded through it, something bitter and sharp that made my wolf recoil even in her grief.
It was poison.
