I Was Only His Backup Mate, His Second Choice Luna Chapter 05

I Was Only His Backup Mate, His Second Choice Luna Chapter 05

I stared at him.

“Magnus, I told you it wasn’t me. Why can’t you believe me one time? I’m carrying your child. How can you do this?”

He took Aelia’s hand and turned toward the stairs.

“Because you’re carrying my heir, you should be setting an example. You did something wrong. You take the consequence.”

I shook my head hard and went for the door. “No. You don’t get to do this to me.”

Two Thorn guards were on me before I reached it. One on each arm. They walked me out and put me down on my knees on the stone steps.

One of them spoke low, almost kindly. “Ma’am. Please don’t struggle. You’re pregnant. We don’t want to hurt the pup by accident.”

I stopped moving entirely after that.

The dinner guests started filtering out. Every single one of them looked at me on the way past, then leaned in to whoever was beside them.

I lost track of the hours. The wind dried the tears on my face and I didn’t have new ones.

The cheek Sunna hit swelled until it pulled at my eye. My lips split from the cold and the thirst. I have never been so thoroughly stripped of dignity in my life.

My belly began tightening in waves. I looked up at the nearest guard.

“Please tell Magnus something’s wrong. I need a hospital.”

He glanced at the size of me, then finally pulled out his phone and dialed.

Magnus’s voice came through the speaker, flat and unhurried.

“Actions have consequences. Stop using the pup to soften me up.”

The line went dead.

The guard put his phone away. “Just kneel.”

So I knelt.

By deep night it was only me and the two guards. Early winter wind came off the ridge like a blade, and I was in a thin nightgown, shaking so hard my teeth clicked. Inside me my wolf curled around the pup and screamed down the mate bond, again and again, into total silence.

My knees felt like they’d been driven through with wire.

Black spots swarmed my vision. I couldn’t hold myself up anymore and went forward onto the stone.

I woke up in Silverpine Medical Center.

Magnus sat beside the bed with his palm flat on my stomach.

My hands flew to cover the pup before I was fully conscious, and he said, “The baby’s fine.”

Only then, with that breath let out, did I notice what my knees and my face felt like.

He reached over and touched the swollen side of my face, very gently.

“When I said I’d marry Aelia, I was trying to get a reaction out of you. We grew up together. The Blaze family has stood with the Thorns since before either of us was born. She’s a sister to me. That’s all she’s ever been.”

His thumb moved along my cheekbone.

“She’s spoiled. Sometimes her jokes go too far. Why does every single thing she does have to be an attack on you?”

Something in me went quiet and stayed quiet.

Even now. Even after the steps and the cold and the three days in a cell. Jokes.

I didn’t have the energy to argue about the vocabulary.

I pushed his hand away, pulled back the blanket, and got out of bed. My voice had gone to gravel.

“Twenty-two days left in the cycle. Then it’s over.”

His face changed fast.

“You’re still holding the bond over my head? Look at where you come from and what you have. I am the best thing that will ever happen to you. And you’re pregnant. Who’s going to take you in after me?”

I limped toward the door.

“That isn’t the Alpha’s concern.”

His voice rose behind me, shaking with it.

“Estella, this is the last chance you get. Walk out that door today and I will make Aelia the Luna. After that you can get on your knees and it won’t matter.”

I kept walking, out of the room and down the corridor, and I never turned around.