NORA

I woke up to the sound of machines beeping softly somewhere close to me and a stillness in the room that felt wrong before I could even fully open my eyes. My head was heavy and my body ached in ways I did not have words for yet and for just a few seconds between sleeping and waking I did not remember anything.

I turned my head slowly and looked at the empty space beside me on the hospital bed. No baby. No blanket wrapped around a small warm body. No sound of breathing that was not my own. Just an empty space where my child should have been and a silence in the room that pressed down on me like something physical.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows even though every part of me screamed in protest. My lower abdomen felt like it had been torn open and put back together badly and my arms were shaking just from the effort of lifting myself.

I looked around the room with eyes that were still swollen, nearly shut from all the crying I had done before I lost consciousness.

The doctor was standing near the window with his back partially turned to me, writing something down on his clipboard and deliberately keeping his gaze away from mine.

"Doctor." My voice came out thin and rough, barely loudable for anyone to hear. "Where is my baby?"

He did not turn around immediately. He kept writing for a moment longer than was natural, his pen moving across the paper with a deliberateness that told me he had been expecting this question and had already decided how he was going to handle it.

"Doctor please." I pushed myself further upright, ignoring the pain that fired through my abdomen when I moved. "I cannot see my child anywhere. Where have they taken my baby?"

He finally turned and looked at me and in his eyes there was something that was not quite guilt and not quite pity but lived somewhere uncomfortable between the two. He opened his mouth and then closed it again and looked back down at his clipboard.

"Your baby." A voice came from the doorway and every hair on my body stood up at the sound of it.

Kael was standing there with one hand resting against the doorframe, watching me with an expression that was completely unreadable. He looked rested. He looked calm. He looked like a man who had slept well and woken up without a single thing weighing on him.

He gave the doctor a look and the doctor gathered his clipboard and walked out of the room without another word to me.

"You took him." I said quietly, my voice was not capable of much more than that right now. "You actually took my baby from me while I was unconscious."

Kael pushed off the doorframe and walked into the room with both hands in his pockets,like he had all the time in the world and nothing I could say was going to change the direction of this conversation.

"You need to calm down." He said, like the way people say things when they have already won and they know it.

"Where is my child Kael?" My voice cracked on his name. "I want to see my baby right now. I just gave birth. You cannot keep my child away from me."

He stopped near the foot of the bed and looked at me and for just a moment something moved across his face. Something that might have been human if it had stayed long enough for me to identify it. But it passed as quickly as it came and what replaced it was that familiar blankness that I had spent so many months trying to reach through and never once succeeding.

Then the door opened again and Lena walked in.

She was carrying my baby.

Everything in me surged forward at once. Some deep and desperate and unstoppable part of me that had nothing to do with thought or reason. I pushed myself off the bed before I had even made a conscious decision to move, grabbing the side rail to keep me from going straight to the floor, my legs shaking violently beneath me, as my abdomen screamed with every movement, and I reached out toward her.

"My baby." The words came out of me like something that had been locked up and was finally breaking free. "Give him to me. Please give him to me."

Lena looked at me the way someone looks at an inconvenience they have already planned around. She took one deliberate step backward and pulled my child closer against her chest and smiled.

"I am sorry," she said, and the words carried no apology in them at all. "This child is in my care now."

I stared at her. Then I turned to Kael because some part of me was still holding onto the idea that there was a line somewhere that even he would not cross. That watching me reach for my own child with shaking arms and tears already streaming down my face would be enough to make him stop this.

He nodded.

One slow single nod.

My legs gave out from under me and I went down. Not all the way to the floor but down onto the edge of the bed with my hands gripping the sheets and my whole body folding under the weight of what that nod had just confirmed.

My mind was spinning and the pain in my abdomen was mixing with a completely different kind of pain that was spreading outward from somewhere in the center of my chest and filling everything.

"Kael." I looked up at him with whatever was left of me. "You cannot do this. Please. I am his mother. I carried him. I went through everything I went through to bring him here and you cannot just take him from me like this."

A pack elder walked in through the door.

I had not even heard him approach. He was an older man, carrying a folder of papers under one arm, and he did not look at me with cruelty the way Kael and Lena did. He looked at me with something worse.Like I was simply a matter that needed to be formally concluded.

"We are ready," the elder said to Kael.

"What is this?" I looked between them. "What is happening right now?"

Kael pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down and crossed one leg over the other and looked at me like he was about to explain something simple to someone slowly.

"You signed the custodial rights over to Lena the week after we were married," he said. "You signed the divorce papers three months into the pregnancy. You signed everything that needed to be signed a long time ago Nora and you did not understand what any of it meant at the time and that is not my problem."

"I did not know what I was signing." My voice was shaking so hard the words were barely holding together. "You know I did not know. You put those papers in front of me and you told me they were pack formalities and I trusted you."

"The elder is here to make it official," Kael said simply. "It is already done. It has been done for months. Today is just the formality."

The elder opened his folder and began reading from the papers inside in a low official voice and the words washed over me like something from a nightmare.

Custodial rights.

Legal guardian.

Transfer of parental claim.

Each word landed on me like it was all a dream.

Lena stood there holding my baby through all of it with a small satisfied smile sitting on her face.

I begged. I am not ashamed of it. I held onto the edge of that bed and I begged Kael with everything I had left in me, tears pouring freely down my face, my voice breaking apart on every word. I told him I would leave and never come back. I told him I would disappear so completely he would never have to think about me again. I told him I would sign anything, do anything, agree to anything, if he would just let me have my child.

He sat there and he listened to all of it and when I was done he stood up and straightened his jacket.

"You have until tomorrow morning to remove yourself from this pack," he said. "Everything that belongs to you has already been packed. The guards will escort you out at first light."

"Kael please." I reached for his arm as he turned to leave. "He is my son. Please."

He looked down at my hand on his arm and then he looked at me and removed my hand from him carefully and without any feeling at all, the way you move an object that has been left somewhere it does not belong.

He walked to Lena and placed his hand on her back and they walked toward the door together and Lena turned once to look at me over her shoulder, my baby pressed against her chest, and she smiled at me one last time before they walked out.

The elder gathered his papers and followed without a word.

The room was empty.

I sat on the edge of that hospital bed alone and the silence came crashing in around me and I pressed both hands over my mouth to hold in the sound that was trying to come out of me because once I let it out I was not sure it would ever stop.

My baby was gone.

And every door I might have walked through to get him back had just been closed and locked from the inside and I had not even seen it happening until it was already done.

NORA

They came for me at first light just like he said they would.

I had not slept. I had sat on the edge of that hospital bed through the entire night with my hands folded in my lap and my eyes fixed on the wall in front of me and my mind going over and over everything that had happened until the words and the faces and the memory of Lena walking out with my baby blurred together into one long continuous ache that never once let up.

When the door opened and two guards stepped in I did not even flinch. I had been expecting them. I stood up slowly, with one hand pressed against my abdomen, and I followed them out without a word, there was nothing left to say to anyone in this place.

They walked me through the hospital corridors and every nurse, every maid and every pack member we passed along the way looked at me and then looked away. Not one of them held my gaze.

Not one of them said anything. They all just turned their faces and found something else to look at and let me walk past them like I was already gone.

We came out through the main hospital doors and the morning air hit me cold and sharp and I pulled what little I had around me and kept walking.

I could see the pack gates ahead.

And I could see that it was not just the guards waiting there.

The entire pack had gathered.

I stopped walking for just a second when I saw them all standing there, dozens of faces spread out across the grounds near the gate, and then one of the guards pressed a hand against my back and kept me moving forward and I understood then that this had been arranged.

That Kael had made sure there would be an audience for this. That walking me out quietly through a side entrance in the early morning would not have been enough for him. He needed everyone to see it.

I kept my head up. I do not know where I found the strength to do that but I did.

I walked toward those gates with both guards beside me and the faces of my pack watching from every side and I kept my eyes forward and my chin level and I breathed through every step.

Then Lena's voice cut through the morning air like a blade.

"There she is."

She was standing near the front of the crowd with Kael beside her and her voice was loud and clear and designed to carry. Every head that had been turned in my direction turned further.

"She tried to take the baby," Lena announced, her voice ringing out across the grounds.

"After everything that was done for her. After being taken in and given a roof and a place in this pack. She tried to steal the alpha's child."

Murmuring moved through the crowd like a wave.

"That is not true," I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected it to. "That baby came out of my body. You cannot steal what already belongs to you."

"She is lying," Lena said simply, turning to the crowd the way someone turns to an audience they have already won over. "She was found trying to leave the pack with the child in the early hours. The alpha's heir. She had to be stopped."

"I never touched that baby." My voice rose now and I could not stop it. "I was never even allowed to hold him. I woke up and he was already gone and you know that. Every person standing here who was at that hospital last night knows that."

Nobody spoke up.

I looked out at all those faces. People I had lived among for years. People I had seen every day in those halls and at those meals and at those ceremonies. And not one of them opened their mouth.

Kael stepped forward then. He did not raise his voice. He never needed to.

"You are being removed from this pack effective immediately," he said, looking at me with that same flat unbothered calm he had shown me in the hospital room. "Not just for the attempted abduction. For being a threat to the stability of this pack and to the safety of its members."

"You are doing this because you are afraid," I said, and I looked straight at him when I said it. "You are afraid of what I know and what I saw and what I could tell people if I stayed."

Something moved in his eyes. Just for a second.

"Take her out," he said to the guards.

They grabbed my arms and I pulled against them on instinct, I desperately wanted to grab my child , maybe touch the child.

"I gave birth to that child!" My voice broke open completely now and I did not care anymore who heard it or what they thought of it.

"I carried him and I delivered him and you took him from me while I was unconscious and you are standing here calling me a thief in front of people who know exactly what you did!"I yelled, with tears streaming down my eyes.

"All I wanted was to be with my child, why are you being so cruel? I am your mate"

" Ex mate"Lena corrected.

Her eyes burned with rage, as she signaled the guards to drag me off.

The guards dragged me forward and my feet scraped against the ground and the faces of the pack blurred past me on both sides and through it all not one person moved. Not one person took a single step in my direction.

The gates opened.

They pushed me through and the cold outside hit me all at once and I stumbled and caught myself and turned back around just as the gates began to close.

Kael was watching from where he stood. Lena had her hand through his arm and she was smiling the way someone smiles when they have gotten exactly what they wanted and taken their time enjoying every second of it.

Slowly,I watched them close the gates.

The sound of them shutting was the loudest thing I had ever heard in my life.

I stood there on the outside of everything I had ever known with nothing in my hands and nowhere to go and the cold wrapping itself around me like it already knew I was alone.

I turned away from those gates because looking at them was not going to open them back up.

NORA

I turned to walked out of the pack as I said,

"My baby, I'll come back to get you!"

That was the only thought I had when those gates closed behind me and the sound of them shutting echoed through the cold morning air and faded into nothing. I did not have a plan. Neither did I have a direction.

I did not have anything except the clothes on my back and a body that had given birth less than two days ago and had no business being out in this kind of cold.

The snow started coming down not long after I left the border. Slow at first, light flakes that melted the moment they touched my skin, and then heavier, thicker.

My feet were already numb inside my thin shoes and the cold was climbing up my legs and settling into my joints and making every step harder than the one before it.

My abdomen was still throbbing. That deep interior ache that came from being cut open and stitched back together was still very much present and the walking was not helping it.

Every time my foot hit the ground a jolt of pain moved through my lower body and I breathed through it and kept going because stopping meant sitting down in the snow and sitting down in the snow meant not getting back up.

I thought about my baby with every step.

I don't even know his name. I don't know if Kael had named him already or if Lena had or if they had done it together over his small head while I was lying unconscious in that hospital room.

I don't know what he looked like beyond the brief and blurry impression I had gotten in the chaos of the delivery room. I don't know if he was sleeping well or eating well or if anyone was holding him the way a baby needs to be held.

That not knowing was its own kind of pain that had nothing to do with the cold or the wound in my abdomen or the exhaustion pulling at every part of me.

I wiped the snow from my face and kept walking.

The trees grew denser the further I moved from the pack border. The path I had been following gradually disappeared under the snow and I was moving through open forest now, bare branches above me and thick white ground below and silence everywhere except for the sound of my own breathing and my own footsteps and the occasional crack of a branch somewhere in the dark of the trees.

I don't know whose territory I was moving into.

That thought occurred to me somewhere in the back of my mind but I pushed it aside because the alternative was turning back and turning back was not something I was capable of.

There was nothing behind me anymore. Whatever was ahead of me, no matter how uncertain or how dangerous, was the only direction that existed now.

One moment I was moving through the trees alone and the next something slammed into me from the left with enough force to knock me sideways into the snow. I hit the ground hard on my side and the impact tore through my abdomen like fire and I cried out before I could stop myself.

I rolled and pushed myself up and they were already circling me.

Three of them. Large wolves, grey and brown, their eyes fixed on me with the focused intensity of animals defending something they considered theirs.

Border wolves.

I understood immediately what had happened. I had crossed into their alpha's territory without permission and they had been sent to handle exactly this kind of intrusion.

"I am not a threat," I said, which was almost laughable given the state I was in. "I am just passing through. I have nowhere to go."

They did not respond to words. Neither,did they slow their circling.

The first one came at me and I dropped to one side and felt its teeth graze my arm as it passed.

The second came right behind it and I threw myself backward.I landed in the snow again and the pain in my abdomen exploded so violently that my vision went white at the edges.

I got back up.

I do not know how. My body had nothing left to give and the rational part of my mind was fully aware of that fact.

The thought of dying and not seeing my child pushed me back onto my feet and kept me there.

The same thing that had kept me walking through the snow for hours. The same thing that had made me hold my head up while walking through that crowd at the pack gates.

The same thoughts,that refused to go down quietly even when going down quietly would have been so much easier.

The third wolf circled wide and came from behind and I turned just in time and caught it with enough force to make it stumble and it fell back snarling.

They regrouped and came at me together this time.

I went down.

This time,I could not get back up.

My arms gave out when I tried and my abdomen was screaming and the snow beneath me was warm in the places where the wound had opened back up and I lay there with my cheek pressed against the cold ground and my breathing coming in short ragged pulls and I looked up at the three of them standing over me and I thought about my baby one more time.

I thought about holding him. Just once. Just long enough to let him know that I had wanted him. That none of what happened was because I had not wanted him.

My eyes were closing on their own.

The wolves went still.

Then they stepped back.

All three of them at once, and silence fell over the forest that was completely different from the silence that had been there before. It was Heavier. I could feel it,even through the fog of pain and exhaustion that was pulling me under.

Then a scent reached me before anything else did.It was Warm and deep and layered with something that cut straight through the cold and the pain and the fear and reached into the most hidden part of me and pulled.

I forced my eyes open one last time.

He was standing at the edge of the trees looking down at me with dark eyes that caught what little light existed in that grey morning and held it.

And then the word came. Rising up from somewhere so deep inside me I had not known it was there until this moment.

"Mate."

His lips parted.

"Mate."

And then the darkness took me completely.