~Maeve~
The rain came down like it held a personal grudge against me.
I ran with my umbrella crushed under one arm, and my only daughter Daisy pressed against my chest, her burning forehead against my collarbone.
"Please, someone help me—my daughter is dying!" I screamed into the storm, my voice cracking, guilt strangling every word.
I'd found her collapsed on the nursery floor at eleven o'clock. She'd been sick since morning and I hadn't known, because I'd spent the whole day on my knees scrubbing thirty-one rooms.
My mother-in-law, Vivienne, had taken the entire staff and the cars to the coast for the long weekend, leaving me alone to clean the estate by myself — punishment for another negative pregnancy test.
Now I couldn't even find a car to get my own daughter to a hospital. I stood on the main road, begging strangers.
A black SUV slowed. The window came down. I recognized the man behind the wheel — mid-level pack management. Hope flared before I could stop it.
He looked me up and down and smirked. "If it isn't our Luna. Standing in the rain at midnight with the kid?"
The woman in the passenger seat leaned across him. "Heard she can't even get the household staff to listen to her anymore. And she still calls herself Luna? Can't even give him an heir."
My fingers curled into fists. I knew what I was in the Ashridge Pack — a Luna with no wolf behind it, worth nothing to anyone who mattered.
But Daisy was dying in my arms. This wasn't the moment to care.
"My daughter has a fever, please—"
"A fever?" The man laughed. "Go find your husband, then. Rowan's got the whole VIP room at Verve tonight. Whole entourage celebrating." He paused, savoring it. "Guess what."
The woman's smile sharpened. "Bianca's pregnant. It came out this afternoon. The whole pack knows by now." A beat. "Oh — you didn't?"
My feet froze to the wet asphalt. The rain went strangely distant for a second, like the whole world had been muted.
"Bianca, my husband's new mistress, was pregnant?" I muttered.
They didn't answer, just rolled the window up and drove off, splashing filthy water up my legs.
Something in me went hollow.
So that was why Rowan hadn't answered his phone all night — not because he was busy, but because he was celebrating another woman's child while mine was dying.
Daisy whimpered against me, and I prayed she hadn't heard any of it. I gritted my teeth and started walking toward the General Hospital on foot.
Thank Goddess, a taxi finally stopped for us halfway there. I got Daisy inside before I'd even fully processed the relief.
The ER took Daisy the second we walked through the doors. I gave the intake nurse every detail in a voice that somehow held steady even though my hands wouldn't stop shaking, and then I was told to wait outside a set of double doors that swallowed my daughter whole.
Forty minutes later, a doctor came out, peeling off her gloves.
"The fever's down. Ten more minutes and this could have gone very differently." She said it kindly. It landed like a slap. "She'll need to stay for observation. Possibly a few days."
I nodded, thanked her, and didn't let myself cry until she'd walked away.
At the billing desk, I handed over my card and watched the number eat through everything I had left.
"Insufficient funds," the nurse said flatly. "Ma'am, if you can't even cover the deposit, how are you planning to pay for the ICU stay? Maybe call the child's father?"
"I'm — I'm trying to reach him."
"Try faster." She lowered her voice, not unkindly. "Beds like this one don't stay open long."
My phone buzzed. A text from an unfamiliar number. I opened it and found a photo — Rowan on a lounge sofa, Bianca curled against him, her hand resting on her stomach, both of them laughing at something just out of frame.
Underneath: Thanks for handing your husband over tonight. Maybe you'll hand me over the Luna title soon.
My knuckles went white around the phone. The nurse was still waiting.
I took a breath and reached for the thin gold chain at my throat — the one my late grandmother had pressed into my hand the day I married into Ashridge, telling me a girl should always carry something of her own into a new house.
"Will this cover it?"
The nurse glanced at the chain in my palm. Under the fluorescent lights, the plating looked thin, the pendant barely the size of a fingernail. Something crossed her mouth — not quite a smile, something gentler and worse.
"That's not worth much." Her eyes moved from my face to Daisy's chart. "But I'll file a deferred payment request. You have three days. Keep the necklace."
I closed my fist around it instead of putting it back on. It still held the warmth of my own skin. I didn't let go the whole walk back.
My phone rang before I'd gone ten steps.
My mother. Victoria.
I almost didn't answer. I did anyway, because some habits never quite die.
"Where's this month's money, Maeve? You think bills pay themselves?"
"Mom, Daisy's in the hospital. Her fever hit a hundred and four."
Silence. For one stupid, hopeful second, I thought she might ask if her only grandchild was all right.
She didn't.
"Well, whose fault is that? You clearly didn't take care of yourself when you were carrying her. That's why she's sickly." Her voice sharpened. "If you'd given Rowan the healthy Alpha son you promised, this whole family would be set for life by now. Instead, a sick girl just costs money."
Something in me went cold and still.
Six years of this. Every insult, every reminder I was a failure, every comparison to a son who didn't exist and a sister who resented me — I'd swallowed all of it, because fighting had never once made it stop.
Not this time.
"Insult me all you want," I said, voice harder than I knew it could get. "Don't ever talk about my daughter like that again."
"Don't take that tone—"
"You've taken half of everything I've earned for six years, Mom. Half. Now I can't even cover her medicine, and you're calling to ask where your money is."
"After everything I did for you—"
"You did nothing for me." My voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "I paid for it."
Her tone turned ugly fast. "Ungrateful little — you know what you are? A lucky mistake." She was nearly shouting now. "If Giselle had walked into that room six years ago instead of you, Rowan would've married her. You stole your sister's life and you couldn't even do it right."
"If it had been Giselle," I said quietly, "would you have called her while her daughter was almost dying, asking for money?"
Two seconds of silence. Then: "Giselle wouldn't have a sickly daughter. She has a wolf."
I hung up. I thought I was past being hurt by that particular knife. But every time they used my missing wolf against me, something in me still ached.
For the thousandth time, I reached inward, searching for even a whisper of one.
If I had a wolf, would any of this be different?
Then — my chest went warm, right at the center. Before I could make sense of it, a nurse came to inform me Daisy was awake.
I hurried back to her bedside. She was propped against two pillows, watching me with eyes too perceptive for five years old.
"Mommy, you're sad."
"I'm not sad, sweetheart. Just tired."
She took my hand, small fingers still warm with fever, gripping with surprising strength.
"I'll eat all my vegetables now," she said seriously. "And take naps even when I don't want to. I'll get strong. I won't make you worry anymore. I promise."
What broke me was the wrongness of it — my five-year-old apologizing for being sick. Apologizing for existing in a way that inconvenienced everyone around her.
I pulled her carefully into my arms and pressed my face into her hair so she wouldn't see me cry.
"Mommy," she whispered, "does Daddy know I'm sick? Will he come?"
My throat closed around something jagged.
How could I tell her that while she was fighting for her life, her father was toasting another child at a party across town?
She was five. She didn't deserve that truth.
I smoothed her hair back and made my voice as gentle and certain as I could. "Of course he does, baby. Daddy loves you."
It was the easiest lie I'd ever told. It was also the one that cost me the most — but I'd have paid it a thousand times over to keep her from hurting.
Daisy fell asleep in my arms, her breathing finally even, no more of that faint whistle on every inhale.
I listened to it and thought, against my will, about her last question.
Rowan and I hadn't had a real marriage in years. He came home once a month — timed to my fertile window — did his duty in a bedroom that had stopped meaning anything, and left again.
I used to think a son would fix all of it.
I wasn't sure I believed in anything anymore.
Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out and stared at the screen.
Rowan: Are you at General Hospital?
