Chapter 4

I woke before sunrise the next morning with a strange, nauseating heaviness settling in my stomach. At first, I blamed it on the exhaustion from the previous night — I hadn't slept properly, my mind cycling endlessly through the conversation with Chase, the rejection, the sound of my father's footsteps as he escorted him out of our home.

But when I sat up, the room tilted unexpectedly, and I pressed a hand to my forehead, trying to ground myself.

"Belle?" My mother appeared in the doorway, already dressed for the day, concern etching lines around her eyes.

"I'm fine," I said automatically, the lie coming too easily.

She gave me the look that had always meant she knew I was lying. "You don't look fine."

"I'm just tired."

Before I could say anything else, my stomach turned violently. I barely made it to the bathroom, my body purging itself with an intensity that seemed out of proportion to anything I had eaten. My mother was beside me within seconds, gathering my hair away from my face.

When it finally passed, I sat on the cold tile floor, embarrassed and utterly exhausted.

My mother crouched beside me, studying my face with the kind of careful attention that meant she had already begun drawing conclusions. "How long have you been feeling like this?"

I shrugged, too tired to consider lying. "A few days."

She studied me for a long moment. "Belle."

"What?" I asked, though something deep inside me already knew.

Her expression changed entirely. "Have you considered that you might be pregnant?"

My heart simply stopped. "No," I said, the word coming out too quickly, too defensive.

My mother didn't push. She simply helped me stand on shaky legs. "Let's get you checked."

I wanted to refuse. Every instinct screamed at me to deny it, to insist that my body was simply reacting to emotional trauma. But something deep inside me knew she was right.

We drove to a neighboring pack's hospital, and I was grateful for the distance. While my mother filled out the paperwork, I sat alone in the waiting room, staring at my hands as though they belonged to someone else. I kept thinking about Chase — about the last time we had been together, before the rejection, before Kacie, when I still believed I knew exactly what my future would look like.

A nurse eventually called my name. The examination didn't take long. Everything was clinical, impersonal, and yet it felt like the most significant moment of my life.

When the doctor returned to the room, she sat across from me and smiled gently. "Belle, you're pregnant."

For several seconds, I heard nothing. Pregnant. My eyes dropped to my stomach, as though I could see through the surface to the evidence of this new truth.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Approximately four weeks along."

Four weeks. Which meant this had begun before the rejection, before Kacie, when Chase had still been mine — or so I had believed. A baby. His baby. Our baby.

The thought should have made me happy. But now, all I could feel was terror. Because yesterday, Chase had told me to stay away from him and Kacie. And now I was carrying something that would forever connect us.

My mother came in when the doctor left, and one look at my face was all she needed. I reached for her hand, holding on as though she were the only solid thing left in a world that had completely shifted its axis. Her eyes filled instantly with tears. She pulled me into her arms. "Oh, sweetheart."

I cried into her shoulder, not because I regretted my baby — I knew instantly that I would never regret this child. I cried because I was terrified. Terrified of raising a child alone. Terrified of Chase's reaction.

"What do I do?"

My mother pulled back and held my face between her hands. "You don't have to decide everything today."

"But Chase—"

"Does he know?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Do you want him to know?"

I looked down, remembering his words with perfect clarity: Stay away from me and Kacie.

My heart hardened like stone. "Not yet."

She squeezed my hand. "Then not yet."

I rested my palm over my stomach, feeling the weight of this secret settling into my bones. And for the first time since Chase had rejected me, there was something I wanted to protect more desperately than I wanted to be loved.

My child.

We left the hospital through the side entrance, moving quickly toward the parking lot where my mother's car waited. I was halfway there when I noticed someone standing across the lot.

Kacie.

My blood ran cold. This hospital wasn't in Sterling Pack territory. What were the odds she'd be here at this exact moment? Her eyes met mine, then traveled slowly downward, settling on my hand resting protectively over my stomach.

She knew.

She walked toward us with deliberate steps, and I felt my mother tense beside me. "Kacie," my mother said, her voice carefully neutral.

Kacie didn't acknowledge her. "You're pregnant."

I said nothing.

When she smiled, it wasn't the smile of someone happy for me — it was the smile of someone who had just found an obstacle and begun calculating how to remove it. "He doesn't know," she said. It wasn't a question.

My mother grabbed my arm. "Belle, get in the car."

"Don't bother," Kacie said.

Several wolves stepped out of the tree line behind her, not yet shifted but radiating danger like heat off a flame, blocking our path to the car.

"Kacie, what are you doing?"

She looked at my mother. "What I should have done before you had the chance to become a problem."

My mother's face went pale. "You won't touch her."

Kacie's eyes slid back to me, moving over my body the way they had the night of the rejection — slow, deliberate, cataloguing. "Look at her. Soft, round, barely holding herself together over one pregnancy test." Her mouth curved. "And she thought she'd stand in front of packs like mine someday. Chase's heir, growing inside that body."

Heat crawled up my throat, humiliation tangling with rage until I couldn't tell them apart. "Say what you actually mean."

"I just did." She tilted her head, almost thoughtful. "A Luna is supposed to look like strength. You look like something that needs to be protected. I wonder which one that baby is going to take after."

"Kacie, enough," my mother said, stepping in front of me.

"Then you should have thought about that before bringing her here," Kacie said, unmoved. "Before letting her carry his heir in a body that couldn't even hold his interest."

My mother pushed me toward the far end of the lot. "Run."

"No."

"Belle." Her voice took on a desperate quality I had never heard before.

"I'm not leaving you."

Her eyes filled with tears. "You're a mother now."

The wolves moved.

"Mom!" I grabbed her hand. She held on for one desperate second, our fingers intertwined, and then something tore us apart with brutal force. A wolf had her arm, dragging her away from me. I screamed — a sound of pure rage and terror.

My mother screamed my name as they pulled her backward.