Chapter 46
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Chapter 46
Three moons later, her labor howls shake the keep.
He paces outside the birthing chamber.
When a midwife emerges, blood on her apron, he snatches her by the throat.
“Where is she? The pups-
“Twins, my lord! A boy and a girl, strong as young wolves.”
The midwife gasps. “But Lady Lia… she’s lost much blood.”
Inside, Lia lies pale as moonstone, her hair matted to her forehead.
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Two tiny bundles rest at her breast, their soft growls the only sound.
When she sees him, her lips twitch into a smile.
“They have your eyes, she whispers, reaching out with a trembling hand.
His beast roars in triumph at the sight of its heirs, but a foreign emotion gnaws at his insides.
He remembers accusing her of drugging his mead to conceive, of plotting to steal Sadina’s place.
Yet here she is, bleeding for him, offering his pups.
What if he’d been wrong? What if her “schemes” were just a she–wolf trying to
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survive?
The image of Sadina laughing with a rival lord flashes in his mind, but it’s Lia’s exhausted face that lingers.
He takes her hand, careful not to let his claws prick her skin. “Rest,” he rumbles, surprised by the tenderness in his voice.
“I’ll have the kitchen send up warmed bloodwine laced with yarrow.”
The scent of regret is still thick in his nostrils.
He’s just brushed Lia’s damp hair from her forehead, the twins‘ soft growls a lullaby in the shadows.
For the first time, his beast isn’t snarling for Sadina–instead, it rumbles contentedly at
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the sight of its bonded and offspring.
Let the past die, he thinks, tracing the curve of Lia’s sleeping mouth.
Let the hatred burn away.
But then the door bursts open.
Sadina’s handmaiden stumbles in.
Her eyes are wild, rolling in their socket.
“My lady–she’s-” The handmaiden collapses at his feet. “Lord Fenris–he found out-”
Alex’s heart stops.
The name “Fenris” rips through him like a silver blade.
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The Fenris pack’s heir–known for tearing apart mates who bear “impure” pups.
“Found out what?” He snarls, hauling the handmaiden up by her collar.
With a trembling hand, she thrusts a blood–soaked scroll at him.
The parchment is torn, splattered with what looks like half–dried wolfsbane.
Alex’s eyes burn as he reads, each word a branding iron:
*“My love,
The night you came to my chambers in the crescent moon’s glow–do you remember? You said it was a mistake, a final heat before binding yourself to Lia. But the gods saw fit to bless us: I carry your pup, due in three
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moons.
Fenris discovered the truth tonight.
He smelled your scent on my belly, saw the pup’s marking in the divination runes.
He says a half–Alpha heir is an abomination… that I must be purged to cleanse his bloodline.
If you read this, I am already dead.
But know this: our pup kicked when I whispered your name. I tried to run, but the Fenris warriors caught me. They–“*
The rest of the letter is torn away, soaked in a dark red that stains Alex’s fingers.
The handmaiden begins to keen.
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“She tried to shift! Tried to run through the wolfsbane fields! But Lord Fenris… he used a silver–tipped whip.” The words are a sob.
“He said your seed was a curse, that your pups must die with their mother.”
The servant’s words hang in the air like a death curse.
“TThe lady asked me to ask you for her,had the healers not misread your life–thread,” the wolf whimpers, cowering beneath Alex’s murderous glare,
“had that imposter not come forward with her false ‘fertility’-”
“Would you have chosen Lady Sadina?”
The servant’s question rips through him.
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Images flash: Lia’s “good luck womb” that healed his cursed body, Sadina’s bloodied fareware letter, the Fenris heir’s silver whip.
It all makes sense now. The healers were bribed.
Lia had plotted this from the start.
She’d known Sadina carried his pup, known the false diagnosis would force him to take a “fertile” mate.
And now Sadina was dead, their unborn pup torn from her womb.
Hatred erupts like a volcano, scalding his veins and turning his vision red.
He sees Lia’s face in every shadow: her “caring” touches, her “selfless” tending.
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