Chapter 3

Blood slid down from my split fingertips and hit the floor of St. Mercy Medical Center.

People gasped and jumped aside. I looked down at my arm. The flesh was peeled back, and in the torn gash I could see a vein pulsing.

"Get her to the ER!" a nurse screamed, shoving a wheelchair at me and forcing me down into it.

Under the harsh surgical light, there was only one sweating intern on duty, his hand shaking around the needle driver.

"Where are the attendings?" the nurse snapped.

"All of them were called up to the top floor by Lord Alaric." The intern swallowed. "His mate had an emergency…"

If I'd heard someone call another woman "the lord's mate" before, I would've flashed the blood-bond ring on my finger and corrected the insult on the spot.

But right now, all I could think was: they were right.

The one Alaric kept closest to his heart was Elena.

I cut the intern off. "It's fine. Stitch it."

He reached for lidocaine. "I'll give you a local anesthetic—"

"No. I was born without pain."

Even after I said it, he still couldn't bring himself to start. The wound was too brutal.

Then the ER door was kicked open.

Alaric strode in with an attending physician. "Let him do it."

"Let her." I pointed at the intern. "I don't need your doctor."

Alaric's face hardened. He was about to speak when Elena called.

His cold voice flipped into panic. "Elena? What happened? Your skin feels like it's on fire? Is it wolfsbane residue reacting?"

I let out a small, mocking breath.

"I'm coming up now." Alaric hung up, then stared at me. "Wait here until I'm back."

I knew better than anyone—he wasn't coming back. For Elena, he could discard me as many times as it took.

"Stitch it," I said, holding out my blood-smeared arm to the intern.

Twenty minutes later, I walked out of the ER.

I was about to press the elevator button when Alaric's voice drifted through the half-open door of a VIP room.

"This is all my fault. I got you pregnant again!"

My feet locked in place. Blood rushed up into my head.

"But Alaric, this is our baby…" Elena's voice came out sweet and teary. "I don't want to get rid of it again."

A short silence. Then Alaric gave in. "Fine. Next week I'll arrange a private flight and send you to the island to carry to term. After the baby's born, I'll bring it back under the name of adopting an orphan. With Aria's personality, she'll treat our child like her own. That way your reputation stays clean, and the child has a rightful place."

I bit down hard on my lower lip and tasted blood.

Elena was still anxious. "What if Aria gets pregnant while I'm on the island?"

"That won't happen." Alaric's voice turned flat. "Don't you remember? Three years ago when she was pregnant, I told her she'd been infected with a rare parasite and had them cut the fetus out. And while they were in there, I branded her with a permanent sterility oath—the Sunfire Seal."

My whole body started shaking. I couldn't feel pain in my flesh, but in that moment I felt something worse—like my insides were being carved out while I was still breathing.

Three years ago, he told me I had a lethal parasite. I got on the operating table without a second thought. That bloody mass he had removed in the middle of the night and disposed of as "contaminated matter" had never been a parasite.

It was my child.

My absolute trust had been the blade he used to murder my flesh and blood. He carved my baby out of me, cut off my future, and now he wanted me to raise his mistress's bastard?

Not a chance.

At least I only had two days left before I was gone.

That night, in the penthouse.

Alaric didn't come home.

My phone kept lighting up with Elena's taunts.

I didn't even look. I was packing.

Before I left, I stood on my toes to take down the only wedding photo of us on the wall.

The frame was unusually heavy. My grip slipped, and the backing popped loose.

From behind my photo, another wedding portrait fell out.

Same pose. Same composition. But the woman in the gown was Elena, smiling shyly—and the way Alaric looked at her was a devotion I'd never seen in his eyes for me.

I flipped it over. On the back, a single line was written:

[Hidden beneath the daylight, but in this moment, you are the only mate engraved on my soul.]

The date was the exact day Alaric and I formed our blood bond.

I laughed in rage and then cried anyway.

No wonder he was three hours late that day. No wonder he smelled like a stranger's perfume.

No wonder Alaric always stared at our wedding photo like he was lost somewhere else.

He wasn't looking at me. He was looking through me—at Elena, tucked away in the dark.

I went to the desk, pulled out the termination papers I'd prepared, cut my fingertip, and pressed my blood seal down hard.

Then I slid the mate ring off my finger and set it on top of the document.

Finally, I took Elena's wedding photo, put it back into the heavy frame, and hung it dead center in the study.

"I hung the right woman up for you."

"May we never meet again."

Four days later.

Alaric came home.

On the island, Elena had turned hysterical, nearly driving him insane. And somehow, against his will, his mind kept circling back to Aria—always quiet, always obedient.

Then he saw it: the wedding photo that should've stayed buried in the dark was hanging openly on the wall.

Alaric's pupils contracted violently.

"How… how is this photo hanging here?!"