Chapter 1

I pushed for nine hours.

I never heard her cry.

The Healer carried her out the door.

And put her in the arms of the woman my mate actually chose.

"Don't make that face, Elara," Selene said. "Carrying something doesn't make it yours."

Then the door shut, and it was me, the blood, and a machine counting my heartbeat out loud.

Three years ago they did the exact same thing with my son.

I was twenty-one, split open, shaking, begging. Kieran Thorne took Rowan out of the birthing room himself. He said it on his way through the door, without turning around.

"He goes on Selene's papers. Don't start building anything in your head."

I still had enough in me to scream then. I got one leg off the bed before two Healers pinned my shoulders down, and I lay there listening to my son get quieter and quieter down the hall.

I learned after that. I learned fast.

For three years I came up to the main house every morning to "assist the Luna with the household," which meant standing in a corridor, holding my breath, listening to my son talk on the other side of a door.

That was the whole thing. Eleven seconds of his voice. Enough to get me to tomorrow.

Then Selene decided the noise was upsetting him, and even that stopped.

Now they had my daughter too.

I lay in that room until the sky went gray. I didn't cry. There was nothing in me left to do it with.

Six days later, before the Healer cleared my stitches, Selene's assistant texted me: Luna wants you at the house. 9 a.m. Don't make her wait.

I went.

She was in the sunroom with my daughter on her lap. Six days old, wrapped in Ironclaw silk I didn't choose, in a house I wasn't allowed to sleep in.

She looked up and smiled. "There she is. God, you look rough. Are you sulking at me?"

"No, Luna."

"Good." She shifted the blanket, bored. "Let's go through it one more time, since you keep losing the thread. Kieran signed a contract with you because his grandfather's trust needs blood heirs, and because your father's twenty-two percent is the only reason the Council hasn't taken him apart. That's it. That's the entire arrangement."

She lifted my daughter and kissed her forehead.

"You're a breeder. Your job is handing pups to me. Don't dress it up as something else."

Outside, sleet started ticking against the glass.

Her smile went out. "You walked in here with an attitude on your face. That's disrespect. Go stand on the terrace until you can get it under control."

The terrace at the Ironclaw Estate is old stone. There's silver run through the mortar — the way the old packs built, back when they wanted rogues off the grounds. Six days out, still bleeding, in a dress with no weight to it, I stood on silver in freezing rain and watched through the glass while Selene rocked my daughter and hummed like a woman in a diaper commercial.

First it burned. Then my legs went numb. Then I stopped being able to find them at all.

When the gray started crawling in at the edges, I heard tires on gravel. Kieran's voice came through the window.

"Somebody want to explain why she's standing out in that?"

"She was pouting at me. You know how I am, Kieran. I say things straight. I'm not going to walk on eggshells for a breeder."

The last thing I heard before the ground came up was him saying, "Forget it. Get her inside."

I woke in a guest room at nine at night. Kieran was in the chair beside the bed, still in his suit, tie pulled loose, eyes red from the flight.

"You're up." He rubbed his jaw. "Healer says you're running a fever and your blood's thin. Selene didn't think it through. Don't hold it against her."

I looked at this man.

At seventeen I'd kept a piece of his fur in a box. At nineteen I'd written things about him I never showed anyone. At twenty-one I signed a mate contract and honestly believed it was going to turn into something.

"Understood," I said. My voice came out flat. "Luna Ashford is your mate. I know exactly what I am in this house. I don't have any complaints."

He went very still. That wasn't the Elara he knew.

The Elara he knew cried. Bargained. Bit her lip and went quiet with her eyes dying. Now there was just nothing behind them at all.

"The paperwork," he tried. "Both of them are going to be listed under—"

"Good. They're lucky," I said, and I even smiled a little. "I couldn't have given them any of that. I'm glad the two of you are raising them."

Glad. He swallowed hard.

His phone lit up on his knee. Selene. Dinner. Rowan won't go down until Daddy comes.

He stood. At the door he turned back.

"Elara. She can't carry. She's never going to carry." A pause. "And I owe her. She took a silver bolt through the chest for me. I was right there. I watched it go in." Another pause, restless, like the words were rubbing him wrong. "Be decent to her."

Then, quieter:

"If you catch again — that one's yours."

He left.

I stared at the ceiling until his footsteps died out, then asked Mira, the only person in that house who was mine.

"The merger closed last week, didn't it? My father's foundation, his Council seats — all of it's locked in?"

"Yes, my lady. Everything's holding."

I smiled at the ceiling.

"Good. Then I can go now."