Four weeks after speaking vows that had bound me to a nightmare, the whispers had evolved from poisoned needles into sharpened blades.
At first, they'd hidden their cruelty behind cupped palms and sidelong glances, murmuring when I passed through the corridors of Ironfang Keep like a ghost haunting her own life. Pitying looks that burned worse than outright hatred, sympathetic smiles that felt like slaps.
"Poor thing." "Such a shame." "She tries so hard, doesn't she?"
But by the second week, the pack had grown bolder. The whispers sharpened into cutting remarks delivered just loudly enough for me to hear, each word carefully chosen to find the softest, most vulnerable parts of my spirit.
"She's barren, you know." "Wolf-less Luna—even Selene herself must weep." "She won't last another moon before he casts her aside."
By the third week, the laughter came openly. Cruel and bright as winter sunlight reflecting off snow, it followed me through training yards and dining halls, echoing off ancient stone walls that had witnessed a thousand such cruelties. Warriors would pause their sparring to watch me pass, their eyes glittering with predatory amusement.
And by the fourth week, no one even pretended to show respect when I passed.
No bowed heads. No murmured "Luna" spoken with even pretense of deference. The only wolves who still acknowledged my supposed authority were the guards, and only because they'd been directly ordered by their Alpha to do so. Their grudging nods felt like charity coins thrown at a beggar—necessary for appearances, but given with visible reluctance.
Through it all, Jasper did nothing.
He sat at the high table each morning, broad shoulders squared with unconscious confidence. Storm-gray eyes that had once looked at me with devastating coldness now wouldn't even acknowledge my existence, fixed instead on reports from his Betas or his breakfast plate—anything but the slowly dying woman seated beside him.
When the she-wolves smirked behind their wine goblets, when the warriors made pointed jokes about bloodlines and strength passing through worthy vessels, when even the servants began to "forget" to refill my cup or clear my untouched plates, he let them. His silence became permission, his indifference a weapon more devastating than any blade.
And Serenya? Serenya absolutely thrived in the toxic atmosphere she'd helped create.
She drifted through the keep like a golden specter, her beauty somehow enhanced by my misery. Every corridor we shared became a stage for her particular brand of psychological warfare, her honeyed voice delivering poisoned barbs with surgical precision.
"Don't wait up tonight, sister," she'd purr as she glided past, her jasmine perfume cloying and overwhelming. "You know where he'll be spending his evenings."
Or: "He does prefer warmth in his bed, not ice. Perhaps you should consider taking lessons?"
Or, delivered with a smile that could have cut glass: "Try not to look quite so pale at dinner, darling. The wolves can smell fear, and it makes them restless."
Each carefully crafted cruelty slid beneath my skin like a splinter, festering and poisoning everything it touched. I no longer recognized the hollow-cheeked wraith that stared back at me from polished mirrors. My gowns hung loose on a frame that grew thinner with each passing day, and my voice—on the rare occasions I still bothered to speak—sounded thin and faded, like an echo of someone who'd once existed.
But Millie saw through it all.
My maid had served me since childhood, a steady presence in a world that seemed determined to tear itself apart around me. Quiet, observant, unfailingly loyal, she was perhaps the only soul in Ironfang Keep who still looked at me and saw a person worth protecting rather than prey worth devouring.
"You haven't bled this moon," she said one gray morning as she worked her fingers through my hair, braiding it into the elaborate style expected of a Luna—even a failing one.
I stiffened in the chair before my vanity, every muscle going rigid. "You're mistaken."
Her hands paused for only a heartbeat before continuing. "I am not."
Heat flooded my cheeks, though whether from shame or something else entirely, I couldn't say. "It's stress. Nothing more. The body responds to difficult circumstances."
"Perhaps." Her tone was diplomatically neutral, but when her eyes met mine in the mirror, they were sharp with the kind of knowledge that came from years of attending to the intimate details of women's lives. "But you retch most mornings before dawn. You grow faint when you rise too quickly. And you are perpetually exhausted, no matter how many hours you spend sleeping."
My throat closed, cutting off whatever weak protest I might have offered. I had hidden it, I thought. The bone-deep sickness that sent me stumbling to my chamber pot each morning before sunrise. The dizzy spells that left me clutching furniture for support. The crushing weariness that made even simple tasks feel like climbing mountains.
But Millie had seen everything. Millie always saw.
"Call it what it is," she murmured, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "And let Healer Ysolde confirm what we both already suspect."
I shook my head frantically, terror making my pulse race. "No. If the healer tells Jasper, if the pack discovers—"
"Do you think he would claim you then?" Millie's question was gentle but unflinching. "Or do you think he would find new ways to shame you? If this is true, you need to know. Not for him." Her hands stilled in my hair, and in the mirror I saw her expression soften with something that looked dangerously like hope. "For the child."
The word hit me like a physical blow, driving the air from my lungs in a sharp gasp. I spun in my chair, staring at her with wide eyes, heart hammering against my ribs so hard I was certain it would bruise.
Child.
It was impossible. And yet... my hand drifted unbidden to my stomach, trembling fingers pressing against the silk of my gown as if they could somehow feel through flesh and bone to the truth beneath. The mate bond between Jasper and me still pulsed faintly in my chest—that cruel thread of silver that connected us whether we wanted it or not. Could something precious have grown from that single, brutal joining?
"Millie," I whispered, my voice cracking like thin ice.
"I'll fetch Healer Ysolde." She didn't wait for my protest, didn't give me time to voice the terror clawing up my throat. She was gone before the panic could reach my lips, leaving me alone with possibilities that felt too fragile to examine.
I sat frozen in my chair, palms slick with sweat, breath coming in shallow gasps that did nothing to ease the tightness in my chest. My stomach churned with more than morning sickness—with fear, with desperate hope, with the crushing weight of knowing that whatever grew within me would become just another weapon in Serenya's arsenal if she discovered the truth.
From the courtyard below, the pack's laughter drifted through my window like smoke from a distant fire. Mock battles and jest, camaraderie I would never share, belonging I would never claim. If they knew—if Serenya knew—she would twist it into something ugly. Poison it with her venom until even this small miracle felt like another mark of shame.
And Jasper... what would Jasper do?
The door creaked open. Millie returned as silently as she'd left, but she wasn't alone. Behind her came Healer Ysolde, moving like a gray-cloaked shadow with her braids coiled tight against her skull and her leather satchel clinking softly with vials and instruments I didn't want to contemplate.
She bowed—more out of habit than respect, I suspected—her weathered face as unreadable as granite. "Luna."
The title felt like mockery in her mouth, another reminder of how thoroughly I'd failed to live up to expectations. I clasped my hands in my lap to still their violent shaking. "I... I may be ill."
Her pale eyes narrowed, studying my face with the clinical detachment of someone who'd seen every variation of human suffering over her long career. "We shall see."
Her hands were steady and impersonal as they moved over my body—pressing against pulse points, prodding at my stomach through the thin silk of my gown, listening to the rhythm of my breathing with focused attention. She asked questions I could barely force myself to answer, each query more intimate and embarrassing than the last.
Millie hovered by the fireplace throughout the examination, her presence a silent anchor of support in a world that seemed determined to strip away everything I'd once held dear.
When Ysolde finally finished, she folded her hands with deliberate precision and fixed me with a gaze sharp enough to cut bone. She did not raise her voice—her words were meant for my ears alone.
"You are with child."
The world stopped.
Air vanished from the room, sucked away by the sheer impossibility of what she'd just confirmed. My lungs emptied in a single, devastating gasp, and for a moment that lasted an eternity, I couldn't remember how to make them fill again.
With child.
The words echoed in my mind like thunder rolling across an endless plain, drowning out everything else—the pack's distant laughter, Serenya's imagined whispers, even the cruel silence of the mate bond that connected me to a husband who despised my very existence.
Life stirred within me. Fragile as spun glass, fierce as wildfire, precious beyond any treasure the Drevyn vaults could hold. My hand flew to my stomach, fingers splaying wide as if I could somehow protect this impossible miracle through will alone.
A spark blazed to life in my chest, faint but undeniable. Not the cold silver of the mate bond, but something warmer. Something that belonged entirely to me.
Not barren. Not broken. Not the empty, worthless vessel the pack believed me to be.
For the first time in four weeks of systematic destruction, I let myself breathe. Let myself hope. Let myself believe that perhaps I still had something worth fighting for.
Something that would be worth whatever hell was about to rain down upon us both.