Chapter 2

Maren shoved through the crowd and dropped to her knees beside me.

"Enough!" Her voice cracked like a Luna's again for the first time in years. "I know better than any wolf alive whose pup she carries. That child is not a bastard. Touch her and you damn this bloodline."

Kane stared at her like she'd grown a second head. "Mother, she never once came to the border. She never left this territory. How could that pup possibly be mine?"

"I never said it was yours," Maren said.

The courtyard went utterly silent.

Delilah moved fast. She tugged Kane's sleeve, eyes shining with pretty tears. "Kane — your mother's been tampered with. Look at her. She's half the woman she was. There are herbs that cloud a wolf's mind, that make you obedient, that make you say whatever you're told to say—"

"You dare—" Maren began.

"Do you really not know why your mother looks like a ghost, Kane?" I cut in. "Do you really not know who did that to her? She's been holding your dying pack together with her bare hands while you played husband with her."

Kane's fist closed on the whip.

And Delilah — sweet, sobbing Delilah — turned and shoved me with both hands.

I went back hard. The iron studs on the manor gate opened my scalp. The world went white, then red, and blood poured down my neck in a hot sheet, and something in my lower belly dropped, a heavy, tearing, sinking pain that stole my breath.

"Healer!" Maren screamed. "Get the royal healer, now!"

Three maids bolted for the road. Kane's warriors stepped into their path like a wall.

Maren rounded on her son. "Are my words worth nothing in my own house?"

Delilah smiled. "Royal healers attend noble ladies. Not adulterous bitches."

"Restrain my mother," Kane ordered coldly. "She's been poisoned against me."

A warrior nearly seven feet tall seized her.

"I am your mother—"

She struggled. He wrenched her arm back until something popped, and she screamed, and Kane didn't even blink.

I clawed my way up the gate, both arms wrapped around my belly. Blood ran down the inside of my legs. I could feel it.

"Kane." My voice was shaking. "If you don't want your entire bloodline erased from this kingdom, you let us go. Right now. You cannot afford what's inside me."

He flicked his wrist.

The whip took me across the knees. I heard the crack before I felt it — then the fire, deep in the bone, and I hit the gravel face-first.

"I cannot tolerate a whore in the Luna's seat," Kane announced to the crowd. "Adultery. Poisoning my mother. One hundred lashes, in public, so every female in this territory understands what happens when she forgets who she belongs to." He looked down at me. "I offered you a way out. You refused. So I'll take the bastard out of you myself."

I dragged myself backward through my own blood.

He walked after me, unhurried.

That whip had been on the border with him for three years. Nobody knew how much blood it had drunk.

One lash to the stomach would end my son.

Kane raised his arm. The crowd cheered. I curled around my belly and shut my eyes.

The pain didn't come.

I looked up. A man in black had stepped between us, the whip's tail wrapped around his bare fist, blood running down his wrist. Silas. He'd been shadowing me for six months and I'd never once seen his face.

"Alpha Thorne." His voice was flat, calm, deadly. "The woman at your feet carries a child of the royal line. She is not yours to strike. Stand down."

Kane's lip curled. "And who the hell are you?"

"If you'll step aside with me for one minute, I'll tell you exactly who I—"

Kane ripped the whip free and swung.

The lash opened Silas's face from temple to jaw. He dropped and didn't move again.

Somewhere a woman screamed. Maren collapsed, dead faint, and they carried her away.

There was no one left in the world to save me.

Kane crouched down, grabbed my hair, and turned my face up to his.

"So that's your protector?" he said softly. "A dog who lives in the dark. Pathetic."

"Kane," I whispered, "listen to me. This pup — he belongs to—"

The whip came down on my belly.