I would probably never sire pups again. And the one pup I had prayed for day and night turned out to belong to someone else.
I drifted in and out of consciousness through the night. Below my waist, everything had gone numb long ago. My wolf had gone quiet. Not sleeping. Not resting. Just quiet, in the way a wounded animal goes quiet when it stops believing help is coming.
The door burst open with a single kick. Caspian Stormfang strode in with a handful of guards behind him. The smell hit me before I could focus my eyes: polished steel and northern pine and the sharp musk of territorial marking, aggressive and deliberate, filling the small room like a claim.
He glanced at me, drenched in blood, then settled himself at the table and poured a cup of tea as though he had all the time in the world.
"Don't blame me. After all, the pup in Seraphina's belly is mine. Can't very well have him calling another wolf father, can we?"
I braced myself against the wall, barely upright. "So you'd rob me of ever siring pups again?"
Caspian let out a short laugh. "Now that's unfair. Seraphina was the one who laced the food. Seraphina was the one who decided you wouldn't keep the ability. I merely... mentioned the idea."
I stared at him, nails digging into my palms until I felt skin break.
He rose and walked over to me. "Though, you should count yourself lucky the pup isn't yours. Imagine it growing up and calling me 'Father.' How would you stomach that?"
"Bring the tonic over. Make him drink it. Help build up his strength."
The guards pried my jaw open and forced the liquid down my throat. I recognized the taste. Severance Root. Bitter as wolfsbane, but worse. Wolfsbane killed the body. This killed everything else.
I thrashed, tried to spit it out, but they held me fast, fingers clamped around my face. The root hit my stomach and I felt it immediately, a wrongness spreading outward, reaching for the place where my wolf lived. Not pain. Silence. A silence that was growing, swallowing the low hum that had been there since the day I was born, the presence that had breathed when I breathed and howled when I howled and had never, not once in my entire life, left me alone.
Caspian crouched in front of me and patted my cheek, slow and deliberate, every touch a humiliation. "Can't have you coveting Seraphina down the line. Can't have you producing more heirs and stirring up trouble."