When dawn came I was soaked through, shaking, ruined. I walked into the Pack Infirmary on legs that barely held me.
"Healer. I need the procedure."
"Miss Ashvale, are you certain?"
Her careful tone cut through me like a blade. If I had not been driven to the very edge of despair, what mother would willingly let go of her own pup? Since the news of "Sylvia Nightfang's" death, the entire Nightfang bloodline had been swallowed by grief. No one had been watching me closely enough to notice my body's changes, and I had told no one about the life growing inside me.
He didn't know. While he walked the halls of the Keep wearing Sylvia Vale's scent-name, standing guard over Hazel Ashford's happiness, his pup had already taken root beneath my heart.
But if he was determined to chase the one he truly loved, then this child did not need to know his name either.
"I'm certain. Please proceed."