_Ivy’s POV_
The scrub cap was still in my hand when my phone buzzed. A voice memo from Ophelia.
"Mommy, do I have a daddy? Lily at school says everyone has one. Do I?"
I stood alone in the scrub room, staring at the screen until it dimmed on its own.
Seven years married to Theodore Woodrow, and I still hadn't found the words to tell him he had a daughter.
It wasn't that I'd meant to keep it from him forever. It was that keeping it had always felt safer than the alternative.
Our marriage wasn't from love. He'd said it plainly, before the ink on our marriage contract had even dried: he didn't want children with me. Not with a wolf as broken as mine.
Born without wolf scent, the whole of Starfalls Pack believed the same thing—that I was a weak Omega who'd stumbled into the title of Luna by accident, unworthy of birthing an Alpha's heir.
When I found out I was pregnant anyway, my doctor gave me only one piece of useful information: my body wouldn't survive a termination. Not without losing the chance at children forever.
So I'd had the baby in secret, and left her in Beryl's care, and told myself it was temporary. Five years and seven months of temporary.
Ophelia would turn six in a few months. Old enough to ask questions I didn't have good answers for.
I understood the ache behind that voice memo better than she ever could.
I just hadn't figured out how to say "your father is the Alpha of Starfalls Pack, and he doesn't know you exist" without breaking something that couldn't be put back together.
My pager cut through the thought: Incoming trauma, ER bay three. I pocketed my phone and went back to work.
I didn't expect to walk into the exam room and find my husband there.
Theodore was standing by the gurney in his dark coat, one hand on the rail, watching the patient like she would disappear if he didn’t.
He stood tall, his dark hair styled neatly as usual. His face was calm, with his pale silver-grey eyes that I had spent 7 years trying not to think too much about. They reminded me of Ophelia’s.
Those same eyes passed over me like I was part of the wall. That was when I saw who was on the gurney.
Alexandra Cyrus.
The woman he'd loved before me. The woman he'd never quite stopped loving, if the rumors were to be believed.
She was lying with one hand on her stomach. The chart I was holding said she was eight weeks gone. She had mild cramping but no bleeding.
"Be gentle with the exam," Theodore said, the way he might instruct a subordinate. "She's sensitive to pain."
Something in my chest went very still, the way it does right before a wound starts bleeding. Seven years married, and he had never once asked what I was sensitive to.
I held back my anger and pulled on my gloves, snapping them louder than I needed to. "I've been licensed for six years, Alpha. I know where a uterus is."
Alexandra let out a soft, breathy laugh from the exam table, as if she found my answer charming. "I think she's teasing you, Theo."
Theodore didn't react. He just stepped back, arms crossed, leaning against the wall, watching me with those pale gray eyes like I was a lab tech who'd become a minor inconvenience.
I turned to Alexandra and began the exam. She watched me adjust the ultrasound, wearing that small, satisfied smile the whole time.
"You know," she said, tilting her head, "Theo insisted on driving me here himself. I told him I could just take a car, but he wouldn't hear of it."
"I promised I'd take care of you and the baby," Theodore said. The unguarded concern in his voice cut into me again.
Alexandra pressed a hand to her mouth, giggling. "He's been like this ever since we found out. Anyone would think he was the one carrying."
Theodore shifted, about to say something, but his phone rang.
He gave Alexandra a small nod. "I'll take this outside. Call the nurse if you need anything."
He didn't look at me once.
The moment he was out of earshot, the fragility in Alexandra's face dropped away.
"This must be strange for you," she said.
I raised an eyebrow. She didn't back down.
"Watching someone else give your husband something you never could. That can't feel good."
My heart stopped short. What was she saying—that the baby was his?
"Of course it's his," she added, as if she'd read my mind. "Everyone in the pack knows your marriage is just an arrangement. He's always loved me. In all the time I've been back, he's never really left."
"I also heard your contract is about to expire. I imagine you'll wish us well."
I nearly lost control of my grip on the probe.
"He told you our marriage has an expiration date?" I repeated it under my breath, something sharp twisting somewhere low in my chest.
I pushed the feeling down, set the probe aside, and wiped the gel from my gloves, slow and deliberate.
I looked up at Alexandra, "So, Ms. Cyrus. You got pregnant by my husband, knowing full well he was married. Do you know what that's called?"
Her smile vanished. "If you hadn't gotten in the way, we'd have been married years ago."
"Correction. You left him before he ever met me."
I stood, signed the bottom of the chart, and closed the folder.
"So don't try to paint me as something as low as you."
"Whatever my marriage is, I haven't broken up anyone's family."
"You, on the other hand, have." I glanced at her stomach. "That's the best evidence of it, right there."
"Is this how you treat your patients? I'm filing a complaint!" she shouted after me. I didn't turn around.
I ran into Theodore the second I stepped into the hallway.
"What did you do? Can you not show a little consideration for a pregnant woman?"
He hadn't even asked. He'd already decided I was guilty.
"I'm considerate with every patient I treat. Apparently, Ms. Cyrus expects more than considerate, and that, I don't have."
I pressed the chart into his chest. "If you're unhappy with my care, feel free to assign her a different doctor. I'm off shift."
I moved to walk past him. He caught my arm, anger plain on his face.
"Is this how you speak to your Alpha?"
"Pulling rank now?" I glanced at his hand, then at him. "Then do you remember I'm your wife?"
The hallway went quiet. A few nurses passing by slowed, glancing between us, as if only now realizing I was Alpha Theodore's wife. The Luna of this pack.
I'd never announced who I was at the hospital. Partly because I didn't want special treatment. Partly because Theodore had never wanted our marriage on display.
His jaw tightened. "Don't turn this into something it isn't. You know our marriage is different."
I pulled my arm free. "I haven't forgotten. The moment you paraded your mistress in front of me, I understood exactly how different it is."
"She isn't my mistress!"
"Then what is she?" I looked at him, and he also looked at me with a blaze in his eyes.
I wished he could give me an answer, but he never did. Suddenly, I was too tired to even be angry.
"Forget it. You don't need to answer. Just remember this—if you bring her in front of me again, I can't promise you'll get another chance to see me."
I walked away, and I didn't look back. Looking back at Theodore had never done me any good.
The parking lot was cold when I got there. I just sat in my car without starting it and stared at the steering wheel.
My phone buzzed immediately, and I looked to see an incoming message from Beryl.
“Don’t cry before you look, okay? She was perfectly fine. She told her teacher her mama was her whole world.”
I opened the photo that followed.
Ophelia's school had just wrapped up some kind of family day. Kids in the background clutched their parents' hands, balloons and streamers still scattered from the party. But at the end of the second table, Ophelia sat alone.
She wore a yellow dress I didn't recognize—Beryl's doing, no doubt. Her dark hair was braided. Her hands were folded neatly on the table in front of her. Her eyes were fixed somewhere in the distance, the way a child looks when she's already made peace with sitting in a room full of pairs.
Beryl wasn't enough. My five-year-old needed both her parents.
But her father was busy standing beside another woman, waiting on another child.
I don't know how long I sat there in the dark before my phone lit up again.
It was from Theodore.
I stared at his name for three seconds before I opened it. One line.
Theodore: Alexandra moves into the main house next Wednesday. The doctor says she needs rest. Have your things arranged.
My finger froze above the screen. Next Wednesday.
The date I'd rewritten a dozen times in my head.
The day I'd finally worked up the nerve to give Ophelia her father.
The same day. He was going to bring another woman into my house.
I sat there, fingers gone cold, and read the message four times over. Ophelia in her yellow dress, sitting alone at that table, wouldn't leave me.
I opened my calendar and found the reminder for next Wednesday to tell him the truth.
I pressed delete.
