EMMA'S POV
The bacon hits the griddle and Emma's stomach turns inside out.
She's standing three feet from the kitchen window at Rosie's Diner when the smell reaches her. It's thick and greasy and wrong. Her body reacts before her brain can catch up. Her throat tightens. Her mouth fills with water. Everything inside her wants to come up.
Emma drops the coffee pot on the counter and runs for the bathroom without explaining anything to anyone.
She makes it to the toilet just in time.
Her body convulses and heaves and it's violent enough that she grips the toilet seat until her knuckles turn white. Nothing comes up because she barely ate breakfast. Just dry heaves that feel like her body is trying to reject something deep inside. Something fundamental.
When it finally stops, she sits on the bathroom floor feeling hollowed out.
This is the second time this week. Monday it was eggs. Now it's bacon. Emma used to love bacon. She used to love everything about working at a diner. The smell of coffee, the sizzle of meat, the sound of the grill. Now her body acts like the food is poison.
She pulls herself up using the sink and splashes water on her face. Her reflection is pale. Too pale. She looks like a ghost of the person she was three months ago.
Three months.
It's been three months since the compound. Three months since Marcus and Elena. Three months since the bond broke and Emma ran into the forest like a wild animal.
The first month was hell. She drove eight hours in a daze, not really thinking, just running on instinct. She found a cabin in the mountains that belonged to her mother's family. A place on old family property that no pack member knew about. She stayed there for weeks barely moving, barely eating, barely surviving.
The bond was dead but her body wasn't. Her wolf was quiet inside her. Broken. Like something inside Emma had died too.
When she finally forced herself to get up, she needed money. She couldn't survive on nothing. So she drove to the nearest town and found work at a diner under a fake name. Emma Rivers. Not her real last name. Just Emma and a made up surname and no one has asked questions.
Sophie, the older woman who works the lunch shift, found her on the bathroom floor and brought her water without making a big deal about it. Sophie's kind like that. She doesn't ask personal questions. She just exists next to Emma in a way that feels safe.
Now Sophie's knocking on the bathroom door.
"Emma? You okay in there, honey?"
Emma opens the door and Sophie is standing there with concern on her weathered face. She's in her sixties and has that tired look of someone who's worked too many years on her feet.
"Just stress," Emma says and it's not completely a lie. She is stressed. She's living under a fake name in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. She's terrified someone from the pack will find her. She's alone in a way that feels like drowning.
Sophie studies her for a moment like she's trying to see through Emma's skin to whatever's underneath. Then she nods and hands Emma a bottle of water.
"Drink this. And eat some crackers when you get a chance. Sometimes our bodies need a break from heavy food."
Emma nods and Sophie goes back to work. The diner is busy today. The lunch rush is starting. Emma splashes more water on her face and forces herself back to the counter.
She makes it through the shift on pure willpower.
By the time five o'clock comes around and she's supposed to leave, every muscle in her body aches. Her breasts hurt. Her legs feel like they're made of cement. Her head is pounding like something is hammering behind her eyes.
She drives home in silence. No radio. Just the sound of the truck engine and the sound of her own breathing.
The cabin appears through the trees like it always does. Small. Quiet. Safe. She parks and gets out and immediately walks to her bedroom because she can't stay awake another second.
It's only five thirty in the afternoon.
Emma collapses on the bed and sleep takes her like she's drowning.
She dreams of Marcus.
In the dreams, he's not the cold stranger from the hall. He's the Marcus who used to hold her like she was precious. The Marcus who whispered things in her ear that made her feel like she mattered. The Marcus who looked at her like she was the only good thing in his world.
But in the dreams, he keeps choosing Elena. Over and over again, he chooses Elena and Emma keeps dying from the choosing.
She wakes up at three in the morning gasping.
Her heart is pounding. Her skin is covered in sweat. The nightmare clings to her like tar. She gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom and stands under the shower for an hour trying to feel normal again.
Nothing works.
By morning, Emma's brain won't stop thinking about her body.
The sickness. The exhaustion that's so complete it feels like depression but different. The way her breasts hurt so much that she can't wear her normal bra. The way food tastes wrong. The way her emotions feel fragile like she's one bad moment away from breaking.
She knows what this could mean.
The thought has been lurking at the edges of her mind for days now. She's been pushing it away. Ignoring it. Pretending it's not possible.
But what if it is?
What if the bond breaking didn't kill the baby?
Emma sits on her kitchen counter and her hands start shaking so hard she can barely hold the coffee mug. She's a wolf. She should be able to smell it on herself. She should know if she's pregnant. But her senses have been weird since the bond broke. Everything's muted. Like someone turned down the volume on all of her abilities.
She needs to know for sure.
Emma doesn't want to know for sure.
If she doesn't know, she can pretend everything is fine. She can pretend she's just stressed. She can pretend she's not carrying Marcus's child. She can pretend that she doesn't have to go back. That she doesn't have to face him. That she doesn't have to become entangled with him again.
But if she knows, everything changes.
She gets dressed and gets in the truck. The drugstore is in the next town over. Twenty minutes away. She tells herself she's just going to look. Just to see. Not necessarily to buy anything.
By the time she's standing in the aisle in front of the pregnancy tests, her entire body is shaking.
There are so many options. So many brands with so many claims. She picks one at random because she can't think straight. Her hands are trembling as she takes it to the register.
The cashier is a teenage girl who doesn't look at her face. She just rings it up and puts it in a plastic bag and Emma pays with cash because she doesn't want any record of this purchase.
The drive back to the cabin feels like driving toward a cliff.
Emma's knuckles are white on the steering wheel. Her breath comes shallow. Every instinct in her body is screaming at her to turn the truck around. To drive back to the cabin and throw the test in the trash. To never know. To just keep pretending.
But she doesn't turn around.
She drives straight home.
She parks the truck. She gets out. She walks inside the cabin. She locks the door like someone might burst through it and stop her.
Then she pulls the pregnancy test out of the plastic bag with hands that won't stop shaking.
Two pink lines. That's what she's been terrified of. Two pink lines means her life is about to explode all over again.
Emma walks to the bathroom.
She sits on the toilet and pulls down her pants.
And then she's going to take this test and her entire world is going to change forever.
Her heart is pounding so hard she thinks it might break through her ribs.
She closes her eyes and brings the stick up between her legs.
And inside her chest, the dead mate bond suddenly pulses.
It pulses like something just woke it up.
Like something just became alive inside her that was supposed to be impossible.
Emma's eyes snap open in shock.