Pregnant by My Enemy Mate

I smelled her perfume before I even opened the door.

It was that jasmine-and-vanilla thing Serena always wore, the kind that clung to fabric and skin and stayed long after she was gone. I'd always liked it before. Standing in the hallway outside Lucian's bedroom, my hand still on the doorknob, I thought: that's the detail I'll remember. Not what I saw. The smell.

They didn't hear me come in. The door had swung open on its own — Lucian never fixed the latch, and I'd stopped asking him to — and for a moment I just stood there in the light from the hallway, looking at the two of them, and the only thing I felt was a strange, hollow quiet. Like the second after a glass hits the floor, before the sound catches up.

Lucian saw me first. His face did something complicated. Serena turned her head, and her expression settled almost immediately into something soft and regretful, like she'd been rehearsing it.

I looked at them both for exactly as long as it took to understand what I was seeing. Then I turned around and walked back out.

I didn't slam the door. I didn't say a word. I just walked down the hallway and out of the pack house and into the cool night air, and I kept walking until the sound of the bonfire reached me through the trees.

The whole pack was there. That was the thing about Silverfang bonfires — everyone came. Families, warriors, pups running between legs. I'd grown up at these fires. I knew every face in the circle.

I was still standing at the edge of the tree line when Lucian appeared. He'd dressed. He'd actually stopped to put on a clean shirt. I watched him move through the crowd toward the fire's center, and I thought: he's going to do it here. In front of all of them.

I was right.

His voice carried the way an Alpha's voice always does — not loud, exactly, but with a weight that made people go still. "I, Lucian Knight, Beta of the Silverfang Pack, reject you, Avery Mills, as my mate."

The words hit me like a fist to the sternum. That's the only way I can describe it — a physical impact, a tearing sensation deep in my chest, like something that had been woven into me for seven years was being ripped out by the root. My knees wanted to buckle. I didn't let them.

I was aware of faces turning toward me. I was aware of Serena stepping up beside Lucian, her expression arranged into something that looked almost like sorrow. I was aware of the fire crackling and a child somewhere starting to cry, startled by the sudden silence.

I shifted.

It wasn't a decision. My wolf just took over, the way she does when the human part of me runs out of options, and then I was running — four paws on cold ground, the forest swallowing me whole, the bonfire light disappearing behind the trees. I ran until I couldn't hear anything anymore. Until the only sounds were my own breathing and the wind and the distant call of something that wasn't human.

I ran for a long time.

---

By dawn I was exhausted and hollow and very, very cold.

I shifted back at the edge of the creek where Kaylani and I used to catch frogs when we were twelve. Sat on a rock in the gray morning light and waited for the shaking to stop. The phantom ache in my chest was already settling in — that specific, bone-deep throb that comes after a bond breaks, the kind the healers say fades eventually. I'd heard about it my whole life. I'd never understood it until now.

I gave myself until sunrise. That was the deal I made with myself, sitting on that rock. Until the sun was fully up. Then I was going to stand, and walk back, and handle what came next.

The sun came up. I stood.

---

Packing took less time than I expected.

Most of what was in that room had been mine before Lucian. My books, my clothes, the small framed photo of my mother on the nightstand. I moved through the space methodically, filling bags, not letting myself look at anything too long. Buster followed me from room to room, his nails clicking on the hardwood, his tail low but steady.

Lucian appeared in the doorway while I was loading Buster's food bowls into a tote bag.

"You can leave the dog," he said.

I looked up at him. He was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, and his expression had that particular quality it got when he was trying to seem reasonable — slightly pained, slightly patient, like he was the one being inconvenienced.

Seven years. I had given this man seven years.

I picked up Buster's leash off the hook by the door, clipped it to his collar, and walked past Lucian without a word.

Buster didn't look back. Neither did I.

---

Kaylani showed up at the guest quarters at half past three the next afternoon.

She was still moving carefully — her left side had never fully healed right after the accident last year, and she favored it when she thought no one was watching. She came in without knocking, took one look at me sitting on the edge of the bed still in yesterday's clothes, and set a paper cup of coffee on the nightstand.

"Get dressed," she said.

"Kay —"

"The Nighthollow Pack's Come of Age Ceremony is tonight. Nadia Flores is hosting. There will be food and people you don't know and zero percent chance of running into Lucian's scent on a doorknob." She pulled a dress out of my open bag and held it up. "This one."

I looked at the dress. I looked at her. "I'm not exactly in a celebrating mood."

"I know." She set the dress on the bed beside me. "That's not why we're going."

She was right, and we both knew it. Staying here meant breathing recycled air in a room that still smelled faintly of a pack that had watched me fall apart last night. Staying here meant Lucian was winning something.

I picked up the dress.

"Fine," I said. "But I'm taking Buster to Marcus's first."

Kaylani almost smiled. "Already texted him. He's expecting you."

I pulled the dress over my head and tried not to think about the ache still sitting in the center of my chest like a bruise that hadn't decided how bad it was going to get yet. One night. One ceremony. Strangers and food and a pack that had nothing to do with Lucian Knight.

I could do that.

I had no idea what was waiting for me there.