Chapter 2

I sent the message and pressed my back against the corridor wall, phone clutched to my chest, listening to my own heartbeat.

Inside Helena's study, the conversation continued.

"Is this really fair to her?" Helena's voice was frayed at the edges—the voice of a woman who had raised two sons and loved them both past the point of wisdom. "If it weren't for the baby, she would have followed you into that grave. She doesn't eat, Cain. She doesn't sleep. The bond sickness alone—"

"Vivienne only has six months left." His exhale was long and deliberate. The sound of a man who had already buried his guilt somewhere deep and packed the earth down tight. "This is the one thing she asked of me. I can't turn my back on that."

A pause.

"Seraphine and I have a lifetime ahead of us. The bond will still be there when I come back. I'll make it up to her—every single day, for the rest of both our lives. Don't worry about it, Ma."

Something inside my chest tore.

Not figuratively. The half-bond—that silver thread connecting me to an alpha I'd mourned for months—contracted like a living thing in pain. I'd thought it was grief doing that. I'd thought the ache behind my sternum was what the elders described as mourning-pull, the way an unfinished mate bond lingers after death.

It wasn't grief.

It was him. Alive and warm and ten feet away, and I had been walking around with his heartbeat tangled in my ribcage this entire time, too broken to recognize it for what it was.

I made it back to my room on legs that barely held. My knees buckled the second the door clicked shut behind me. I hit the floor—cold hardwood, moonlight cutting white stripes across the boards—and sat there, phone pressed to my stomach, trying to remember how to breathe.

Rowan called before I could.

"What happened?" His voice was sharp and immediate, already alert. My brother had always been a light sleeper. "Talk to me. You said Cain was dead—"

I opened my mouth. What came out wasn't words. It was something older than words—a sound that lived below language, below thought, the kind of thing that only escapes when the body gives up trying to contain it.

Rowan was quiet.

He always knew when to be quiet. It was the thing I had loved most about him since childhood, that particular stillness—the way he could hold space without filling it.

When he spoke again, his voice had shifted registers. Low. Controlled. Planning.

"Day after tomorrow. I'll have a plane down by midnight. Leave everything. I'll handle the rest."

The line went dead.

I sat on the floor, still holding the phone to my ear, listening to the silence where my brother's voice had been.

A knock.

"Seraphine? You awake?"

Roman's voice. Cain's voice—softer, or so I kept telling myself, though I was beginning to suspect I'd invented the difference to survive.

He pushed the door open. He was carrying a mug of something warm, chamomile by the smell of it—the pack healer had recommended it for the bond sickness, and Roman had taken the instruction seriously. He froze when he saw me on the floor.

"Hey." He set the mug down and crouched, his hands hovering near my shoulders without touching. An alpha's restraint—approaching an unmated female slowly, leaving the choice to her. "What happened? Are you hurt? Is it the baby?"

Six years. I knew every line of that face, every tell. The slight crease between his brows when he was worried. The way his jaw set—almost imperceptibly—when he was lying.

Right now he was doing both.

I slid the phone under my thigh and looked up at him.

"I'm fine. The pup kicked hard and I lost my balance."

Pup. The word sat strangely in my mouth. I had started thinking of it that way only recently—the pack's word for it, softer somehow than baby, more animal and more honest.

He exhaled—that familiar release of tension through his shoulders—and helped me to my feet with both hands, careful and deliberate, like he was handling something irreplaceable.

"This kid's already a handful." The corner of his mouth lifted. That half-smile. I had loved that half-smile for six years and now it felt like pressing a bruise. "Wait till he's born. I'll teach him some manners."

He guided me to the edge of the bed, pressed the mug into my hands.

"Drink this. Get some rest." His thumb grazed my knuckle—quick, unconscious, the ghost of a reflex he hadn't thought to suppress. "Don't lie there with your mind running. Cain wouldn't want you hurting yourself like this."

Hearing him speak his own name in the third person—casual, practiced, utterly convincing—while the warmth of his hand still lingered on my skin—

I looked up.

"Are you sure you're not him?"

His eyes flickered. One small fracture in the glass, there and gone in less than a second, so fast I might have imagined it if I hadn't been watching for exactly that.

Then the half-smile resettled, easy and rehearsed.

"Get some sleep, Seraphine. Grief does things to the mind." He rose, stepped back toward the door with that unhurried alpha's grace that had once made me feel safe. "I'll take you to the pack healer in the morning. The checkup matters—we're not skipping it."

The door clicked shut.

I sat in the dark, holding the untouched chamomile, and let six years move through me like a tide going out.

The night we met—Cain cutting across the full-moon gathering with too much confidence and not enough subtlety, telling me I was the most remarkable omega he'd ever scented. I told him that was a terrible line. He said it wasn't a line. He was right. For six years, he was right.

The claiming ceremony he'd proposed under an open sky, the pack gathered at the forest's edge, his voice breaking when he asked. His hands shaking against my face when I said yes.

Then the pregnancy. The way he'd pressed his forehead to my stomach and whispered, Perfect timing, love. This pup's coming to celebrate.

I didn't know when the man who said those words had become the man behind that door. I didn't know how to make those two people fit inside the same body.

I set the mug on the nightstand and didn't drink it.

Morning came too fast.

He knocked at seven. Showered, composed, performing the devoted brother-in-law with the ease of someone who had rehearsed the role until it sat flush with his skin.

"Ready? Car's out front."

We were halfway down the main staircase when Vivienne's voice drifted from the landing above.

"Cain—" A beat. "I mean—Roman?"

She caught herself, but not fast enough. The name hung in the air between us, thick as woodsmoke.

"I don't feel well." She stood at the top of the stairs in a silk robe, one hand pressed to her temple, her dark hair loose around her shoulders. "Can you stay? Just today?"

He didn't look at me.

He didn't hesitate.

He turned on his heel and took the stairs two at a time, one hand finding her waist with the ease of long habit, of muscle memory, of a thousand practiced gestures I had never been meant to witness.

"Did you take your tonic? Sit down—stop moving around. What if you shift and hurt yourself—"

And then, over his shoulder, the briefest glance:

"Sorry, Seraphine. She's not well. The driver's outside—he'll get you there safely. The healer's expecting you."

I watched Vivienne's face over his shoulder.

She let her eyes find mine for exactly one second.

The corner of her mouth moved.

I turned. I walked out the front door alone. The heavy oak swung shut behind me, and I pressed my palm flat against my stomach—against the small, steady warmth of new life—and stood for a moment on the stone steps, letting the cold morning air hit my face.

I did not cry.

I was already past crying.

I was already planning.