"Enough! All of you, shut up! 'Seraphina' and 'Corvina'? Do none of you have any sense of right and wrong? This isn't the dark ages. An Alpha doesn't get to keep a mate and a mistress! Theron broke the bond. That's on him! And even if I did hit Corvina, she had it coming!"
My outburst stunned the room into silence. For one breath, the Alpha aura that had been pressing down on everyone wavered. Theron's eyes narrowed.
"Theron was only kind to me and the pup because of my late mate!" Corvina sobbed, crawling to Theron's legs. The scent of vanilla and honeysuckle surged again, so thick it coated the back of my throat. "The pup fell from a height. I don't even know if he'll survive. Theron, please, don't waste any more time. Call a healer!"
"Don't be scared. I won't let anything happen to him."
Theron turned to leave with the pup in his arms.
And in that moment, I felt something warm and wet sliding down between my legs.
The sensation froze me with terror.
My wolf went silent. Completely, utterly silent. As if she had stopped breathing. As if she already knew.
I looked down. A shock of red was spreading beneath me.
"Theron, my pup... our pup!"
The words tore out of me, raw and broken, and I reached for the bond. Reached for it with everything I had left. Pulled at it like a rope in the dark, desperate for him to feel what I was feeling, desperate for his wolf to hear mine.
He didn't turn around. He didn't even slow down.
"Seraphina, I've never been more disappointed in you. Get yourself home. I'll be staying at the Healing Hall with Corvina and the pup for the next few days. And you'd better pray her pup is all right. Because if he's not, I won't let you off."
Every last one of them followed him out the door.
The room emptied. The silence that filled it was absolute. Not peaceful. The kind of silence that exists inside a wound.
I stayed on the floor. The cold seeped through my clothes, through my skin, into the place where my wolf had been pacing only moments ago. She wasn't pacing anymore. She lay curled at the bottom of me, nose tucked against her tail, and she would not lift her head. The blood kept spreading, warm against the cold stone, and I pressed my hands harder against my stomach as if I could hold everything inside me together by force.