Chapter 3

I couldn't scream.

There was no air anywhere in the world.

My stomach was a furnace. Something hot spilled out of me and kept spilling, soaking the gravel black, and the crowd made a sound like a crowd at an execution.

I got my fingers into the hem of Kane's coat.

"Please." My mouth was full of blood. "A healer. Please. My son — he was moving this morning—"

He kicked my hand away.

"Too late to beg."

Delilah leaned over me, hands folded neatly. "Kane, look. Even now she won't name her lover. She isn't sorry at all."

"A treacherous bitch drowns," Kane said. "But drowning's quiet. I want the whole territory to watch." He straightened. "Chain her."

Two warriors hauled me up by the arms, tearing everything open again. My knees wouldn't hold. They dragged me across the courtyard and I heard hooves stamping on stone and I understood a half-second too late.

They were chaining my wrists to the back of his war stallion.

"Kane. Kane, don't—"

"You betrayed your Alpha," he said, pleased with himself, mounting up. "It's only a parade, Seraphina. What are you afraid of?"

Delilah eyed the silk robe still clinging to my shoulders — the last decent thing I owned. "Look at her. She shames you in front of the whole pack and still dresses like a queen."

Kane's blade flashed twice.

The silk fell away and cold air hit my skin, and the crowd howled with laughter, and my hands were chained so I couldn't cover a single inch of myself.

"You'll regret this," I said. "Every one of you. You'll regret this until the day you die."

Kane spurred the horse.

The world became gravel and fire. My back opened. My shoulders opened. Stones came flying from the roadside and children ran alongside cheering, and the wind swallowed the sounds I was making. Blood painted a long red ribbon from the manor gates, down the market road, all the way to the city wall.

Somewhere in the middle of it, the pain in my belly stopped.

That was the worst part. It just — stopped. Went quiet.

No. No, baby. Stay. Stay with me.

At the city gates, Kane dismounted and looked down at what he'd made of me, and he smiled like a man admiring a job well done.

"This is what betrayal costs, Seraphina." He crouched. "As for the bastard — beg properly, and maybe I let it live."

I didn't care if it was a lie. I'd have licked his boots.

"Please. Please. I'll be your servant, your slave, anything you want, just save my son—"

He fisted my hair and yanked my head up so the crowd could see my face.

"Then confess. Out loud. Tell them what you are."

My lips moved on their own.

"I am a whore. I lay with a male who wasn't my Alpha. I shamed the Blackthorn pack. I am a sinner."

Kane laughed, satisfied at last.

"Good girl. I'll spare your life." He set the point of his blade against the underside of my belly. "But this thing dies with its father's name unsaid."

I had nothing left. Not strength, not pride, not hope.

Just my son, going still inside me.

The blade moved. Cold, then a bright tearing pain low in my body — and at the exact same moment, from beyond the wall, a horn split the sky. Three long notes. The kind of sound that stops a kingdom's heart.

A herald's voice rang out across the gates:

"MAKE WAY. THE ALPHA KING HAS ARRIVED."