(Meg's POV)
The test is still warm when it tells me what my body already knows.
Two lines. Clear. Unforgiving.
I didn't sit. I didn't move. I just stand in the doorway, staring at the thin white stick like it's a weapon I don't know how to hold. The hum of the overhead light fills the silence, too loud, too sharp, drilling straight into the back of my skull.
Of all the things I've survived, pack trials, council interrogations, the night my mate's scent mixed with another woman's—this should not be the thing that breaks me. But it does.
My knees threaten to buckle. My wolf goes silent.
That silence terrifies me more than the test.
The air smells faintly of disinfectant and the cheap lavender soap I always mean to replace. Everything looks ordinary, the cracked tile, the mirror with a streak across it, the towel hanging crooked on the rack. Nothing here matches the enormity of what's just happened.
"No," I say quietly, as if the word itself might undo it.
The magic answers anyway.
It rises inside me like a storm surfacing from underwater—hot, restless, alive. My pulse jumps. The mirror fogs without steam. Light flickers, and for one dizzy moment, my reflection shifts. The eyes looking back at me are threaded with silver.
Rare blood.
The reminder burns. Rare blood wolves don't make mistakes. We don't have accidents. When we conceive, it's because something ancient has decided to intervene.
My fingers tighten around the edge of the sink until pain brings me back into my body. "This can't be happening."
But it is. Every cell in me already knows it's true.
One night. That's all it took.
The memory hits before I can stop it—music and lights, strangers laughing, the numb comfort of whiskey, the soft steadiness in Martin's voice when he said just tonight. I hadn't expected gentleness. I hadn't expected anything. And now here I am, holding proof of everything I thought I'd escaped.
I press my palm flat against my stomach. Nothing stirs, but the air hums faintly under my skin, as if something inside is listening.
Fear cuts through the haze. Not for me. For the life I now carry.
Alpha law is merciless. Children born from rare lines are never left unclaimed. The council turns them into leverage—symbols of legacy, pawns for power. I've seen it before. Wolves disappear. Packs fracture.
"I won't let them have you," I whisper.
My wolf stirs then, quiet but fierce, a low growl beneath my ribs. She agrees.
The next wave of nausea bends me over the sink. My stomach knots, and for a heartbeat, I think I'll collapse. Then the tremor passes. I stay where I am, breathing slow, holding the counter like it might keep me upright.
And that's when it happens.
The bond hits like a lightning strike.
It slams through me so fast I nearly drop the test. Heat floods my veins, sharp and commanding, not pain exactly, but recognition.
Not the weak imitation I once mistook for love. This is something older, heavier. A thread of power pulling taut, connecting me to a source I shouldn't be able to feel.
An Alpha.
Alive. Awake. And close enough for the bond to hum between us like a heartbeat.
I stumble back, one hand gripping the wall. My reflection swims in and out of focus.
"No," I whisper again. "You don't get to exist."
The bond tightens once in answer—silent, certain.
My pulse stutters. The realization settles like a stone: Martin wasn't just a stranger. He wasn't just a man who knew how to touch without taking.
He was one of us.
The pull feels ancient, the kind that lives under the skin, passed down through bloodlines that should have died out centuries ago. My wolf bares her teeth, not in fear this time, but in warning.
"He has no claim," I say, and I mean it.
Still, the bond hums. It doesn't care about words. It only knows truth.
Panic is useless, so I move. I always move. I pull open drawers, grab what matters—cash, documents, the pendant my father gave me the night I first shifted. The rest can burn.
My phone vibrates on the counter. I ignore it.
Then pain slices across my abdomen, sharp enough to steal my breath. I double over, clutching my middle. For a terrifying moment, everything inside me feels too fragile to touch.
And then warmth floods in—steady, protective.
Not my own.
It feels like a hand pressed gently against my heart, a whisper across my senses. I don't know if it's the child or the bond, but it anchors me before I fall apart.
Tears spill without warning. Not weakness—release.
"This changes everything," I murmur, voice shaking. "But I've got you."
Thunder rumbles outside, low and rolling.
The moon is hidden behind clouds, but I can feel her attention anyway. Heavy. Watching.
I shove the test deep into the trash and zip my bag closed. Each small sound—the rasp of the zipper, the creak of the floorboards—feels final.
My phone lights again. Unknown number.
My hands hesitate before picking it up.
The message is short.
Something changed last night. I can feel you. Please, don't disappear.
For a long time, I just stare at the words. My heart stumbles once, twice, before it finds rhythm again.
It's him.
It has to be.
The room suddenly feels too small, the air too thin. The bond hums under my skin like static, sensing my awareness.
"No," I whisper. "You don't get to find me."
I turn the phone off. The screen goes black.
Outside, rain starts to fall, soft at first, then hard enough to drown out the world.
I slip on my jacket and step into the downpour. Cold water hits my face, running down my neck, erasing the last traces of who I was yesterday.
Each breath burns like something new being forged.
The streets are slick, the city lights distorted into gold streaks on wet pavement. Somewhere behind me, I can still feel the bond pulsing faintly, testing the air for me.
But I won't be caught.
Not again.
I walk until my shoes are soaked through and the sound of thunder follows like an echo of my heartbeat.
By the time I reach the station, dawn is only a rumor behind the clouds. My reflection in the glass doors looks hollow, strange, like a woman I've seen before but never truly known.
I press a hand to my abdomen, feeling nothing and everything at once. "We start over," I whisper. "You and me."
The bond flares one last time, distant but unmistakable—an Alpha waking somewhere, reaching through the dark.
I ignore it and keep walking.
Behind me, the rain washes the last of my scent from the street.
Ahead of me lies exile, danger, and the beginning of something the world is not ready to understand.
And beneath my ribs, a heartbeat that isn't mine answers back, steady and sure.
The child shifts inside me, barely a whisper, barely a promise—yet the air itself responds.
The lights above the station flicker. The air grows cold.
The storm outside deepens, like the world itself is bracing.
And I know, with bone-deep certainty, that the hunt has already begun.