After My Miscarriage, I Sent the Fetal Specimen to His Mistress's Baby ShowerChapter 1
I was four months into carrying my pup when my mate, Theron Ironmaw, brought another woman into our den. She was seven months along.
"Sera, Corvina Thornveil was Fenris Greyfang's mate. He just passed during the rogue attack and left her and the pup with nothing. I couldn't turn my back on them. Don't worry, it's only temporary. Once she finds a pack willing to take her in, she'll move on."
I was too soft-hearted to say no. I never imagined "temporary" would stretch into two months.
At first, I didn't think much of it. Not until the night I rose from bed, restless with the ache in my lower back that came with carrying, and stumbled onto a scene that stopped me cold.
My mate. And his dead blood-brother's woman. Together by the window, where moonlight pooled across the floor like spilled silver.
Every drop of blood in my body turned to ice.
My wolf went utterly still inside me. Not a sound. Not a whimper. Just a silence so absolute it felt like something had died in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
I stood outside that door for three full hours. In that time, they went at it three times. His scent, that scorched iron and dry cedar bark, was tangled so thoroughly with her cloying honeysuckle-and-vanilla that I couldn't separate them. Couldn't find him in it anymore. The smell hit me in waves, each one worse than the last, and my wolf still made no sound. She had gone somewhere deep and dark and unreachable, curled in on herself like an animal that already knows the wound is fatal.
Watching Theron's face twist with pleasure, over and over, I felt my heart being carved open with a blade, one slow cut after another.
He hadn't touched me since I'd gotten pregnant. Said he was afraid of hurting the pup, that his wolf ran too close to the surface during intimacy and he couldn't risk it with me carrying.
But Corvina was nine months along now, and that hadn't stopped them. Not once. Not twice. Three times.
When Theron finally finished, it was five in the morning. A thin gray light was creeping through the curtains, and somewhere beyond the estate walls, a lone wolf howled at the fading moon. The sound threaded through me like a needle pulling grief behind it.