Pain exploded through my abdomen in waves, each contraction more violent than the last. Blood pooled beneath me on the cold marble floor, and I could feel our baby—our precious child—slipping away with each passing second.

With shaking fingers, I managed to unlock my phone and hit Nathaniel's contact. The phone rang once before the line went dead.

He'd hung up on me.

I stared at the screen in disbelief, my vision blurring as another wave of agony tore through me. He hadn't even listened. Hadn't heard the terror in my voice, the desperate way I'd gasped his name. He'd simply assumed I was calling to complain about his departure and cut me off without a second thought.

My hands trembled as I tried to call again, but this time the phone went straight to voicemail. The automated greeting felt like a slap across my face—cheerful and professional while I lay dying on our foyer floor.

"Nathaniel," I gasped into the phone, my voice breaking. "Please... something's wrong with the baby. There's so much blood, and I can't... I can't..." Another contraction seized me, so violent that I dropped the phone, my words cutting off in a strangled cry.

The device clattered across the marble, just out of reach. I crawled toward it, leaving a trail of blood behind me, my silk dress now soaked crimson. Every movement sent fresh agony through my core, but I had to try again. Had to make him understand.

With my last reserves of strength, I managed to redial his number. This time, he answered on the second ring.

"Ashley, what the hell—"

"Nathaniel, please," I sobbed into the phone. "I fell down the stairs. The baby—"

"Oh, for crying out loud," he interrupted, his voice sharp with irritation. "Really? You're going to fake being sick now? While I'm dealing with a genuine life-or-death emergency?"

The words hit me like physical blows. Fake being sick. As if the blood spreading beneath me, the life draining from our child, was some elaborate performance.

"I'm not faking anything," I whispered, my voice barely audible. "Please, just come home. Something's really wrong—"

"You know what's wrong?" His voice rose, taking on that cold, authoritative tone he used when he wanted to end an argument. "You're jealous. You can't stand that I'm helping someone else instead of catering to your every whim on our anniversary. Well, guess what, Ashley? The world doesn't revolve around you."

I tried to speak, to make him understand, but he was on a roll now, his words flowing like venom.

"Sienna's dog is actually dying. There are innocent lives at stake here—a few puppies are lives too, you know. Can't you stop being so selfish for once? Can't you think about someone other than yourself?"

"Nathaniel—" I gasped, but the line went dead.

He'd hung up on me again. And this time, when I tried to call back, the phone went straight to voicemail. He'd turned it off completely.

I lay there on the cold floor, staring at my phone's dark screen, feeling something inside me break that had nothing to do with my physical injuries. The man I'd loved for three years, the father of the child I was losing, had just called me selfish while I bled out on our foyer floor.

Puppies. He'd chosen puppies over his own child.

My vision was starting to fade around the edges, but I forced myself to focus. If Nathaniel wouldn't help me, I had to find someone who would. With trembling fingers, I scrolled through my contacts until I found Daisy's name.

She answered on the first ring.

"Ashley? What's up, babe? How was the anniversary dinner?"

The sound of her warm, familiar voice broke something loose inside me. A sob tore from my throat, raw and desperate.

"Daisy," I managed to whisper. "I need help. I fell down the stairs, and there's blood everywhere, and the baby—"

"Oh my God, Ashley! Where are you? Are you at home?"

"Yes," I gasped. "In the foyer. I can't move, and Nathaniel—" My voice broke. "He won't come home. He thinks I'm faking it."

"That bastard," Daisy snarled, and I could hear her moving, keys jingling, a door slamming. "I'm on my way. Hold on, honey. Just hold on."

"Daisy, I think—" Another wave of pain crashed over me, and I could feel more blood flowing. "I think I'm losing the baby."

"No," she said fiercely. "Don't you dare give up. I'm in my car now. I'll be there in ten minutes, okay? Keep talking to me."

But I could barely keep my eyes open. The pain was becoming distant now, replaced by a strange floating sensation. The chandelier above me seemed to blur and shift, its crystal teardrops catching the light like stars.

"Ashley? Ashley, talk to me!"

I tried to respond, but my voice came out as barely a whisper. "Hurry."

Time became fluid after that. I drifted in and out of consciousness, aware only of the spreading coldness beneath me and the fading flutter of movement in my belly. Our child—the little life I'd felt kicking just hours ago during dinner—was growing still.

The sound of screeching tires and a car door slamming brought me back to awareness. Footsteps running up our front walk, then Daisy's voice shouting my name.

"Ashley! Oh God, Ashley!"

The front door burst open, and suddenly Daisy was kneeling beside me, her face pale with shock. She took in the blood, my twisted position on the floor, the way I was cradling my belly.

"Jesus Christ," she breathed, already pulling out her phone. "I'm calling 911."

"The baby," I whispered, meeting her eyes. "Daisy, I can't feel the baby moving anymore."

Her face crumpled for just a moment before she forced it back into determined lines. "We're going to get you to the hospital. Both of you are going to be fine."

But even as she spoke the words, I could see the truth in her eyes. The growing pool of blood beneath me, the stillness in my womb, the gray pallor of my skin—we both knew it was already too late.

As the sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer with each second, I closed my eyes and felt the last of my hope drain away along with my blood. Somewhere across town, my husband was playing hero for another woman's dog while his own child died on our foyer floor.

The man who'd promised to love and protect me had chosen puppies over our baby.

And in that moment, as consciousness began to slip away, I felt something cold and hard crystallize in my chest where my heart used to be.

The world became a blur of flashing lights and urgent voices as Daisy half-carried, half-dragged me to her car. Every step sent fresh agony through my abdomen, but she kept whispering fierce encouragements in my ear.

"Stay with me, Ashley. We're almost there. Just breathe."

She'd already called ahead to the hospital during those precious seconds while waiting for me to regain consciousness. I could hear her barking orders into her phone as she maneuvered us down the front steps, her PR training evident even in crisis mode.

"This is Daisy Chen, Gamma Austin's mate. I'm bringing in Luna Ashley Sterling—she's seven months pregnant and hemorrhaging after a fall. Have Dr. Croft ready in the emergency room. Now."

The car ride passed in fragments. Streetlights streaking overhead like falling stars. Daisy's hand gripping mine so tightly I thought she might break my fingers. The metallic taste of blood in my mouth. And through it all, one desperate mantra falling from my lips:

"Save my baby. Please, save my baby."

"They will," Daisy said, but her voice cracked on the words. "Dr. Croft is the best healer in three packs. He'll fix this."

But even as she spoke, I could feel the terrible stillness in my womb. The absence where life should be. Our child—the little soul who'd been kicking during dinner just hours ago—had gone silent.

The hospital's emergency entrance blazed with fluorescent light as Daisy screeched to a halt. Medical staff were already waiting with a gurney, their faces grim with professional urgency. Strong hands lifted me from the car, and suddenly I was flying down sterile corridors under harsh lighting that made everything look bleached and unreal.

"Luna Sterling, can you hear me?" Dr. Alistair Croft's voice cut through the chaos. I'd known him for years—he was the pack's most respected healer, a man whose steady hands had delivered dozens of pack children. Now those same hands were pressing against my abdomen, his expression growing more grave by the second.

"The baby," I gasped, trying to sit up on the examination table. "Please, you have to save—"

"Lie still," he commanded, his tone brooking no argument. "I need to assess the damage."

Daisy appeared at my side, her fingers threading through mine. Her usually perfect makeup was streaked with tears, her designer blouse stained with my blood. "I'm here," she whispered. "I'm not going anywhere."

The next hour passed in a nightmare of tests and procedures. Ultrasound wands pressed against my belly while Dr. Croft's face grew increasingly somber. Blood draws that left my arms dotted with puncture marks. Internal examinations that made me cry out in pain despite the local anesthetic.

Through it all, I kept asking the same question: "Is the baby okay? Please, just tell me the baby is okay."

But Dr. Croft's silence was answer enough.

Finally, he pulled off his gloves and sat heavily in the chair beside my bed. His weathered face, usually so reassuring, looked older than I'd ever seen it.

"Ashley," he began, his voice gentle but firm. "I'm so very sorry."

The words hit me like a physical blow, but somehow I felt detached from them, as if he were talking about someone else's tragedy.

"The fall caused a placental abruption," he continued. "There was too much internal bleeding, and by the time you arrived... the baby didn't survive."

Daisy made a sound like a wounded animal, her grip on my hand tightening. But I just stared at the ceiling tiles, counting the small holes in their pocked surface. Forty-seven in the tile directly above my head. Forty-eight if you counted the one that was only half-visible at the edge.

"Additionally," Dr. Croft said, his voice growing even more solemn, "the trauma has caused significant damage to your uterine wall. I'm afraid... future pregnancies will be extremely difficult, if not impossible."

The information settled over me like a heavy blanket, muffling everything else in the room. Daisy was crying now, great heaving sobs that shook her entire body. Nurses moved quietly around us, checking monitors and adjusting IV drips. But I felt strangely calm, as if I were watching this scene from very far away.

My baby was dead. The child I'd felt moving just hours ago, the little life I'd been planning names for, was gone. And it wasn't some cruel twist of fate or unavoidable tragedy.

It was because my husband had hung up on me. Twice.

It was because he'd chosen to play hero for another woman's dog instead of coming home to his pregnant wife.

It was because he'd called me selfish while I bled out on our foyer floor.

The realization didn't come as a flood of tears or screaming rage. Instead, it crystallized in my chest like ice forming on a winter lake—clear, hard, and absolutely unbreakable.

"Dr. Croft," I said, my voice surprisingly steady. Both he and Daisy looked at me in surprise, probably expecting hysterics or collapse. "I need you to do something for me."

"Of course, Luna. Anything."

"Don't tell Nathaniel about the baby." The words came out calm and precise, each one carefully chosen. "Don't tell him the baby is dead, and don't tell him about the uterine damage."

Dr. Croft frowned, his bushy eyebrows drawing together. "Ashley, I understand you're in shock, but your mate has a right to know—"

"My mate," I interrupted, the word tasting bitter on my tongue, "is currently playing veterinarian for his college friend's pregnant dog. He hung up on me when I called for help. Twice. He told me I was being selfish and faking illness while I was losing our child."

The silence that followed was deafening. Dr. Croft's face went through several expressions—confusion, disbelief, and finally, a cold fury that I'd never seen from the gentle healer.

"He what?" Daisy whispered, her tear-streaked face twisting with rage.

"I need time," I continued, ignoring her reaction. "Time to process this privately. When I'm ready to tell him, I will. But until then, as far as anyone knows, I'm here for observation after a fall. Nothing more."

Dr. Croft studied my face for a long moment. Whatever he saw there seemed to convince him, because he nodded slowly.

"Medical confidentiality is sacred," he said finally. "If you don't want him informed, then he won't be. But Ashley... grief can do strange things to a person. Don't let this tragedy turn you into someone you're not."

I smiled then, a small, cold expression that felt foreign on my face. "Don't worry, Doctor. I'm not becoming someone new. I'm just finally becoming who I should have been all along."

As the medical staff finished their work and left us alone, I lay in that narrow hospital bed and felt something fundamental shift inside me. The Ashley who had spent three years making excuses for Nathaniel's neglect, who had convinced herself that his heroic acts for others were more important than his duties to his own family, was gone.

She had died on the foyer floor along with our child.

What remained was something harder, colder, and infinitely more dangerous. Someone who understood that love without respect was just another word for slavery. Someone who had learned that hoping for change was just another way of accepting abuse.

Outside my hospital window, the full moon hung like a silver coin against the dark sky. In our pack's mythology, the moon goddess was said to watch over all werewolves, blessing the worthy and punishing the faithless.

As I stared up at that pale, perfect circle, I felt something like a blessing settle over me. Not the warm, nurturing kind I'd always imagined, but something sharper and more purposeful.

The goddess had taken my child, yes. But in exchange, she had given me clarity.

And I intended to use every drop of it.