“Wolves carrying pups have a specific scent. Hard to miss.” Ramiel shifted his weight, perhaps sensing the sudden tension filling the room. “A pack of three gave chase but she reached the river. Jumped right in, middle of winter. Desperate move.”
I was barely taking in the details he was saying. The only word that echoed in my skull like a gunshot in an empty cathedral waspregnant. Everything else, Ramiel’s voice, Carlton’s presence, the very presence of the room, faded to white noise. She was pregnant. With my...
My vision tunneled until all I could see was my own hands gripping the desk edge, knuckles bone-white against dark wood. The omega I’d condemned, the woman I’d carved and banished, had been carrying my offspring. While I’d stood in judgment, while I’d chosen politics over my mate, while I’d sent her into exile, she’d been growing our child inside her body.
The magnitude of it crashed over me in waves. Each breath felt like drowning. I’d sentenced a pregnant omega to death. Not just death, slow, agonizing death by exposure, starvation, predation. And not just her. My heir. My bloodline. The future of everything I’d built.
Carlton stepped forward, his voice coming from what felt like miles away, continuing the interrogation while I shattered completely.
“Tell us exactly what happened,” Carlton commanded.
Ramiel scratched at his neck, leaving red marks on unwashed skin. “Was running patrol with my pack. I like to know who crosses his territory. We caught her scent near the eastern boundary, followed it to a clearing. Pretty thing, even heavy with pups. Moved wrong though, like the weight threw her off.”
Each word painted images I couldn’t escape. Rhea, alone in winter woods. Rhea, pregnant with offspring I’d never known existed. Rhea, running from rogues while her body struggled with the demands of carrying a child. The medical implications crashed through my shock. Alpha pregnancies required massive resources. Without paternal support, without pack help, the mortality rate was...
“A pack gave chase but she reached the river. Current was running fast from snowmelt upstream. She went in anyway.” Ramiel shrugged like it was nothing. Like describing my pregnant mate throwing herself into freezing water to escape was casual conversation. “One of them was pissed. Pregnant omegas sell high on the black market.”
The growl that emerged from my throat made everyone in the room step back. Even Carlton, who’d seen me at my worst, took an involuntary retreat. The sound was pure possession, pure fury, pure alpha claiming what was mine against any threat.
She’d been carrying my offspring while I condemned her, while I carved her throat. She’d been pregnant during the trial, growing our child while I chose politics over my mate.
Sweet merciful moon, what had I done?
I had essentially handed her a death warrant. For her and our child. She could already be dead. Both of them could be dead because of my choices. The thought dropped me forward, head in my hands, struggling to breathe past the crushing weight of realization.
“Sir? The vehicles are ready.” Carlton’s voice came from very far away.
I looked up to find the office had transformed into controlled chaos while I’d been frozen. Security personnel moved with practiced efficiency, Ren coordinating on multiple phones simultaneously. Someone had pulled up maps on the wall screen, a tiny dot marking Millbrook’s location. Population 8,000 according to the data overlay. The kind of place people went to disappear.
“My pack doesn’t mess with claimed omegas,” Ramiel protested. “The scar meant she belonged to someone powerful. We just wanted the finder’s fee.”
Belonged. Past tense. Even this rogue recognized what I’d tried to deny for months. The bond might be severed but theconnection remained. In her scent, in her blood, in the child she carried.
We moved like a military operation because that’s what Carlton had designed during weeks of preparation. Three SUVs waited in the underground garage, engines running. Medical equipment filled the third vehicle. Enough firepower to handle rogue packs or local resistance occupied the second. The lead vehicle was mine, Carlton driving with Ren coordinating from the back seat.
“A day’s drive to Millbrook.” Carlton said as he guided the SUV onto the highway with smooth precision.
“Then we drive through the night.” I stared at the GPS display, watching miles count down too slowly.
The mate bond, dormant for months, suddenly pulsed with phantom awareness. Not the full connection we’d once shared, but something. Like catching a familiar perfume in a crowd. She was alive. Close.
Carrying my child while I’d wasted months believing lies.
23
— • —
Damon
The woods outside Millbrook reeked of terror and determination, and both scents belonged to my mate. I stood where Ramiel had indicated, breathing in markers that made my wolf claw at my ribs with fury. Her trail painted a story across these trees that I didn’t want to read but couldn’t ignore.
Fear pheromones saturated the area, sharp and metallic. She’d been running hard, crashing through underbrush that had caught her fur and torn skin. Blood droplets decorated thorns like crimson jewels, each one an accusation. My hands shook as I touched one branch, the dried stain still carrying her scent beneath layers of rain and time.
“Three rogues like the rogue said,” one of the trackers reported from his position twenty yards east. He’d shifted to wolf form for better tracking, his dark coat blending with shadows betweenbare trees. “They knew these woods. Drove her toward the water like they’d done this before.”
Carlton coordinated the search with military precision, his team spreading through the forest in formation. Some stayed human with equipment, others shifted for scent tracking. The contrast should have been reassuring. Instead, it highlighted how alone she’d been that night, one pregnant female against multiple hunters who’d made violence their profession.
Her scent intensified near a fallen oak where she’d clearly rested, probably checking for pursuit. I pressed my palm against bark still marked by her presence, closing my eyes to better read the story written in scent molecules. Exhaustion. Pain from the extra weight she carried. But underneath it all, grim determination to survive.
