After I Died, My Mate Lost His Mind

It was my sixth year as a Pack slave, six years in silver chains, and today I had finally finished it. Aldric's Pack debt, paid off in full. Cael's wolfsbane antidote, signed and released.

But Cael, when I handed him the vial, only glanced at it and set it back down on the desk.

"I'm not actually poisoned, Seren. Our parents aren't dead, either. The Rogue raid six years ago—I arranged that. The only one who got hurt that night was you."

And my mate, Aldric Vance, fell in behind him with his own.

"I never lost my Pack rank either. Every time I told you I had overnight duty, it was because I didn't want to sleep in that basement den with you. I went home to the estate."

"I was going to give you another three years," he added. "But the silver scent has gotten into your skin. Cael and I can't stand to be in a room with you anymore."

My hand was still on the receipt for the debt. I couldn't seem to move it.

Cael slid the receipt out from under my fingers and dropped it into the wastebin by the desk.

"The account's empty, by the way. Every chit you earned in chains, I returned to the Pack treasury in your name. Reparations for the wolves who died in the raid. Consider it a peace-offering for your stillborn daughter's spirit."

He smiled, a little.

"Silver-blood money is foul. None of us would touch it."

Cold crept under my skin. I didn't understand why they were doing this to me.

Then my parents walked into the room, and something inside me finally gave way.

They stood at a distance, the way you stand from something contagious.

"You did this to yourself, Seren. You used your status as our blood daughter to torment Vesper at every turn. We only wanted to teach you to behave."

"Swear to us, right now, that you will never harm Vesper again. Do that, and you can still be our daughter. Otherwise, this Pack disowns you for good."

In the silence after their words, I felt the folded paper in my coat pocket.

The diagnosis from the Pack physician, dated yesterday. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

I had come here today thinking that would be enough. Pay Aldric's debt. Pay for Cael's antidote. Let the rest take care of itself.

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.

Twenty-four hours, then. I would make twenty-four hours work.

Aldric saw that I hadn't spoken. He stepped forward and brushed a tear off my cheek.

"Do you understand now, Seren? If you had only stopped competing with Vesper. If you had only stopped hurting her, again and again. The three of us could have been a real family."

I slapped his hand away. My voice came out raw.

"You don't get to say family. The raid was Vesper's. My daughter died in her hands—"

"Our daughter didn't die." Aldric's voice didn't shift. "I handed her to Vesper the same night she was born. So you can stop blaming Vesper for something that never happened."

Something closed in my throat. After a moment I forced the words out. "You... what did you just say?"

He looked at me like I was being slow.

"She's my heir, Seren. Did you think I'd let her grow up dragging silver chains behind her mother? Vesper is gentle. Patient. A child needs that."

I went still.

Six years ago, when I'd woken in the clinic, I'd had broken bones in seven places and an empty womb. Aldric's eyes had been red. He'd told me the raid was my fault—that I'd insisted on leaving the den that night, that the Rogues had followed me back, that my daughter had been born dead because of it. That my parents had been killed because of it. That even Cael had spiraled into chronic wolfsbane poisoning from the grief of it.

The clinic had given me an option, even then. Refuse rehabilitation, take the dispensation, slip away. Months, at most. I would have gone gently.

But I'd looked at Cael in his bed, his skin going gray. I'd looked at Aldric, who couldn't sleep through a night without weeping. I had not been able to leave them.

So I dragged what was left of my body through six years.

All of it, for a joke.

My jaw shook. There were tears at the corners of my eyes.

"Why didn't you just let me keep believing it? Why couldn't you let me die in the dark?"

"Because Vesper wants another child." Cael said it the way he might say Vesper wants the curtains drawn. "A son, this time. But she has always been delicate. She can't carry one herself. So it has to be you."

I stared at them like I was looking at strangers. Like I was looking at people who had lost their minds.

"Vesper has suffered enough," my mother said softly. "We only want her to have what she wants. You will have other children, Seren. After."

Aldric reached up and ran his fingers through my hair, the way you would gentle a pup who hadn't learned the rules.

"And it's a chance for you. A chance to show your parents you really do accept Vesper."

They were calling who pitiful?

I would never forget the dark room from when I was small. The silver pins the Rogue woman heated in the fire and pressed against the inside of my arms, until I screamed myself into spasms. Every time I cried out for my mother, she would laugh. Who do you think you're calling for, you Pack runt? My own daughter is taking your mother's love right now. Save your breath.

I rolled up my coat sleeve and showed them the inside of my arm. Silver burns, old and new—the ones from the Rogue woman, then the shackle marks over those, then fresh blisters from this morning's bloodwork.

"Tell me again who's pitiful. You swore to me, all of you, that you would make that Rogue and her bastard daughter pay. That I would never be cast out again—"

"Seren Ashby. Stop lying." Cael swept my arm aside.

I had nothing in my body to brace with. I stumbled and hit my hip against the edge of the desk.

"Vesper's biological mother gave a deathbed statement. No one ever laid hands on you as a child. The marks on your arms are from running with Rogue gangs as a teenager. From the embarrassments you brought to this family."

My mother's mouth twisted. "Children who aren't raised in their parents' den from birth always carry so many secrets. It looks like the decision we made six years ago was correct. A child cannot be raised by a liar."

I held their eyes. Something hot was rising in my throat.

"And the Rogue's daughter. She can?"

"Enough." Cael's voice came down on the word like a blade. His eyes had gone fully dark. "You think Vesper deserves to hear that come out of your mouth? You think you have the right?"

He took hold of my wrist. His thumb pressed straight into the silver burn at the base of my hand, hard enough that fresh blood seeped up under the cuff.

"Six years," he said quietly. "And you still haven't learned anything."