I had less than two hours before sundown, and I spent almost half of one of them standing outside Darius’s private study instead of packing my things.
I told myself I wasn’t going to beg him again, but here I was again.
I told myself I just wanted five minutes, away from the elders and the crowd and Astra’s smile, five minutes where it could just be the two of us like it used to be before any of this started.
If I could get that, I was sure… I was so sure that the man who used to fall asleep with his head on my chest, tracing the edge of my mark like it was something to be memorized instead of hidden, would still be somewhere underneath the Alpha who had just thrown me on the ground in front of his entire pack.
That was the mistake.
Believing there was still someone underneath to find.
I pushed the door open without knocking.
Darius was standing at the window with his back to me, his shoulders loosened, like the way they got when he was carrying something he didn’t want to carry.
“Five minutes,” I said.
My voice shook, but I kept going.
“That’s all I want. Just talk to me without them standing behind you telling you what to say.”
He didn’t turn around right away, and for one stupid, hopeful second I let myself believe that meant something.
“You shouldn’t be here, Maeve.”
“I know I shouldn’t.” The words came out fast, tumbling over each other before I could stop them.
“I know. But I needed to ask you myself, not in front of the whole pack, not with Astra standing there watching, I needed to hear you say it was really you who wanted this and not just you doing what they told you to do.”
He then turned and the look on his face wasn’t anger.
It was worse than anger.
It was tired, and guilty, and completely unmoved, like he had already grieved whatever this was between us hours before he ever said the words in that hall.
“It doesn’t matter what I want anymore.” His voice was quiet.
“It never really did.”
“That’s not true. You’re the Alpha. You could—”
“I could what?” For the first time, something sharp cut through the tiredness in his voice.
“Tell the elders no? Tell the entire pack their future is less important than what I want? You know how this works, Maeve. You’ve always known how this works.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but the words couldn’t get out of my mouth before a voice cuts in.
“What is she doing in here?”
I turned to find two of the pack guards in the doorway, and behind them is Astra, her arms folded, her expression was filled with disgust and delight.
“I told you she wouldn’t let it go,” Astra said, not to me, to the guards, like I was a problem being reported rather than a person in the room.
“She was warned to stay in the west wing until sundown. Instead she comes crawling in here, alone, trying to corner the Alpha.”
“I wasn’t cornering anyone.” My face burned.
“I just wanted to talk to him.”
“You don’t get to *want* things anymore.” Astra’s voice was calm, almost gentle, which somehow made it land harder than if she’d shouted.
“You were rejected in front of the entire pack two hours ago. Coming in here like this and begging him in private after you already begged him in public.” She scoffed.
“Don’t you understand how that looks? Do you understand what people are going to say about you tomorrow?”
I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t, because the humiliated part of me knew she wasn’t wrong.
I had told myself this was different, that this was closure and not more begging, but standing there with two guards in the doorway and Darius watching me with an expression I couldn’t read, I couldn’t find the difference anymore either.
“Take her back to the west wing,” Astra said.
“And someone needs to look at her before she leaves our land. She looks pale. We wouldn’t want it said we let our former Luna walk out weak and untreated, that wouldn’t reflect well on any of us, would it?”
“That’s not necessary,” I said quickly.
“I’m fine.”
“It’s Darius’s order,” Astra said, and something in the way she said it made my stomach twist, though I couldn’t have told you why.
“Isn’t that right?”
I looked at Darius.
He didn’t correct her.
He didn’t say anything at all, he just looked at me with that same unreadable, guilty expression, and I understood, somewhere underneath the humiliation, that I wasn’t going to get an honest answer out of him tonight, maybe not ever again.
☆☆☆
They took me to a small room near the healer’s quarters instead of back to the west wing, and I was too tired to ask questions I already suspected I wouldn’t like the answers to.
Astra came in behind me, and it was only then, that when i was alone with her and no guards to witness it, that I understood what she actually wanted.
“You’ll give your blood before you leave,” she said, already rolling up her own sleeve like this was a formality and not a request.
“I’ve been feeling weak since the pregnancy started. Darius wants to make sure I’m strong enough to carry his heir safely.”
“Why does it have to be me?”
“Because you’re pack, for a few more hours anyway, and it’s tradition.” She said it so simply, like there was nothing strange about it at all.
“Unless you’d like to refuse a direct order from the Alpha’s mate.”
I wanted to refuse.
Every part of me wanted to tell her I owed her nothing, that I owed this pack nothing anymore, that the bond that used to obligate me to any of them had been torn out of my chest less than two hours ago on the floor of that hall.
But I was so tired, and so hollowed out, and some old, obedient instinct in me — the same instinct that had spent three years trying to be good enough, quiet enough, easy enough to keep — made me hold out my arm anyway.
I don’t remember all of it.
I remember the healer’s hands, quick and clinical, and I remember Astra watching the whole thing with an expression that wasn’t concern, it was hunger, like she was feeding on something more than the blood itself.
By the time it was over, my head was throbbing and my legs didn’t feel entirely mine.
“There,” Astra said, satisfied, rolling her sleeve back down.
“That wasn’t so hard.”
I didn’t answer her.
I didn’t have the strength left to.
☆☆☆
I left Hellfang territory twenty minutes before sundown, unescorted, lightheaded, with a strip of gauze taped over the inside of my arm and no one to see me out except the two guards who watched from the gate to make sure I actually crossed the border.
I didn’t feel dignified.
I didn’t feel strong.
I felt exactly like what Astra had called me without saying it out loud pathetic, desperate, a woman who couldn’t even accept her own ending without trying to argue her way out of it first.
The forest swallowed the last of the light behind me.
My arm throbbed where the needle had been, my legs were unsteady, and somewhere underneath the exhaustion, a small, furious voice kept asking me the same question over and over.
Why did I go to him?
Why couldn’t I just let it be over?
I didn’t have an answer.
I just kept walking, because there was nothing left behind for me to walk back to.