~Maeve~
The rain came down like it held a personal grudge against me.
I stood at the edge of the county road with a broken umbrella trapped beneath one arm and my four-year-old daughter pressed against my chest. Daisy’s forehead burned through my wet sweater, but the rest of her had begun to shiver.
“Stay awake for me, ladybug.” I shifted her higher, trying to shelter her face from the rain. “Can you do that?”
Her eyelids fluttered. “I’m tired, Mommy.”
“I know. You can sleep as soon as we get to the clinic.”
Another set of headlights appeared around the bend. I stepped closer to the road and raised my free hand, no longer caring how I looked. The first two cars had passed without slowing. The third had sprayed muddy water over my shoes.
This one finally stopped.
The woman behind the wheel lowered her window a few inches. Her wary expression changed when she saw Daisy in my arms.
“My daughter has a fever,” I said. “I don’t have a car, and no one from the estate is answering. Please, I just need to get her to Ashridge Medical.”
She unlocked the doors.
Ten minutes later, I sat in the back seat with Daisy across my lap, counting the seconds between her breaths.
I should have realized she was sick that morning. She had barely touched her breakfast, and she hadn’t followed me from room to room the way she usually did. I’d told myself she was tired.
The truth was that I had been too busy scrubbing thirty-one rooms to notice.
My mother-in-law, Vivienne, had taken the household staff and every available car to the coast for the long weekend. She called it an opportunity for me to remember the value of hard work. We both knew it was punishment for the negative pregnancy test she had found in my bathroom trash.
Another month without an heir.
Another month in which the Luna of Ashridge had failed to justify her place.
By the time I had found Daisy curled up on the nursery floor, her fever had reached one hundred and four.
I had called Rowan twelve times.
He hadn’t answered once.
The clinic staff took Daisy from my arms as soon as we arrived. A nurse wrapped a silver emergency blanket around my shoulders, but I could not stop shivering as I followed the stretcher down the hall.
“Has she taken anything for the fever?” the doctor asked.
“Children’s ibuprofen at eleven fifteen. Five milliliters.” The time and dosage came easily, even with my heart hammering. “She weighs thirty-two pounds. She has a history of respiratory infections, but no medication allergies.”
The doctor nodded to the nurse. “Let’s get fluids started and run a chest scan.”
Daisy reached for me when they inserted the IV. I held her other hand and talked about the aquarium we had promised to visit in the spring. I described blue fish, green fish, fat orange fish, and one ridiculous purple fish wearing a hat until the needle was secured and her crying eased.
“Mommy,” she whispered when the nurse finished.
“I’m right here.”
“Don’t go.”
“I won’t.”
Once the fever medication began working, Daisy’s eyes grew heavy. I stayed beside her until her grip loosened around my fingers and her breathing settled into a steadier rhythm.
The doctor drew me aside afterward.
“Her temperature is coming down, but I want to keep her overnight. We’re still waiting on the scan results.”
“Whatever she needs.”
He gave me an uncomfortable look. “Registration is having trouble authorizing the pack account. They’ve contacted the Alpha’s office.”
My heart dropped as I remembered those desperate calls Rowen ignored.
“I'll try to contact her father," I tried not to shake when I said it. "Please don’t delay her treatment.”
“We won’t.” His expression softened. “Take a few minutes. You’re soaked through.”
In the restroom, I dried my face with paper towels and checked my banking app.
The balance in my personal account was $186.42.
I had transferred six hundred dollars to my mother three days ago after she claimed the electricity was about to be disconnected. She had sent me a photograph of the warning notice, although the date had been folded out of sight.
My credit card was nearly at its limit, and I had no access to the main pack accounts without Rowan’s approval. Vivienne called that financial prudence. Rowan called it unnecessary for me to concern myself with money.
Six years ago, I had been studying accounting. Now I had to ask permission to pay for my daughter’s medicine.
I called my mother anyway.
Victoria answered after the fifth ring. “Maeve, I was about to call you.”
For one foolish moment, I thought someone from the pack had told her about Daisy.
“The money you sent isn’t enough,” she continued. “Giselle’s car needs repairs, and the mechanic wants a deposit by Monday.”
My hand tightened around the phone. “Daisy is in the hospital.”
A brief silence followed. “Again?”
“Her fever was over one hundred and four. The clinic can’t authorize the pack account, so I need to borrow some money until I can reach Rowan.”
“Borrow from whom?”
“From you.”
My mother gave a sharp, humorless laugh. “With what you’ve cost this family over the years?”
“I sent you six hundred dollars on Tuesday.”
“And most of that went toward the electric bill. Your sister needs her car for work.”
“Daisy needs medical treatment.”
“You married an Alpha for exactly this reason, Maeve. If you can’t persuade your own husband to pay his child’s hospital bill, that is a problem in your marriage, not an emergency I’m expected to finance.”
I stared at my reflection in the restroom mirror. Wet brown hair clung to my cheeks, and exhaustion had hollowed the skin beneath my eyes.
“I’m asking for a loan, Mom. Not a gift.”
“And I’m telling you I don’t have money to spare. Besides, you still owe me for the phone bill. If Rowan releases your allowance tomorrow, send another three hundred.”
“My daughter is sick, and you’re asking me for money?”
“Don’t take that tone with me. I’m only trying to keep this family afloat. Giselle has always contributed when she can.”
Giselle had not contributed to anything in her life, but my mother had spent twenty-seven years rearranging reality around her eldest daughter.
“Giselle doesn’t have a sick child.”
“Giselle would have produced a healthy one. She has a wolf.”
The words landed exactly where she intended them to.
I ended the call without saying goodbye.
For a moment, I stood beneath the harsh fluorescent light with my phone clutched in one hand. I had heard the same judgment in a hundred different forms since I was a teenager.
No wolf. No strength. No value beyond whatever I could provide for someone else.
A nurse entered before I could make sense of it.
“We’re taking Daisy down for her scan. The medicine made her sleepy, but that’s normal.”
“Can I go with her?”
“You can walk as far as imaging. After that, I’ll show you to the family waiting area.”
Daisy barely woke when they moved her. I kissed her temple and assured her I would be waiting when she came back. Only after the doors closed behind the stretcher did I allow myself to breathe.
“Maeve.”
I turned around and saw Rowan standing at the far end of the hall.
Relief hit me so quickly that it hurt. Then I saw the woman leaning against his arm.
Bianca Miller.
My husband’s human mistress.
She wore a pale dress beneath Rowan’s black suit jacket, the hem stained dark near one hip. Her honey-blond hair fell loosely around a face carefully arranged into an expression of fragile distress.
I had known about Bianca for eighteen months. I knew about the apartment Rowan paid for and the weekends disguised as pack business. I had smelled her perfume on his shirts and once found a diamond bracelet charged to an account I wasn’t allowed to access.
I had endured it because confronting him would change nothing. Because Daisy needed a home. Because silence had seemed safer than angering the Alpha who controlled every part of our lives.
But Rowan hadn’t come for Daisy.
I led them into an empty consultation room before Daisy could return and hear us arguing.
Once the door closed, I turned on Rowan.
“I called you twelve times.”
“My phone was off.”
“Daisy collapsed. There were no cars at the estate, so I had to carry her to the main road and beg a stranger to stop.”
His expression tightened. “My mother told me you were managing the house.”
“Your mother took the entire staff because I failed another pregnancy test.”
“We can discuss that later.”
“Then why are you here?”
“The physician said Daisy’s fever is responding to treatment.”
“You spoke to her doctor?”
“Before I came upstairs.”
A pathetic part of me tried to turn that into proof he cared.
Then he said, “Bianca needs a transfusion. The clinic’s supply of her blood type is low, and you’re a match.”
For a moment, I thought I had misunderstood.
“You came here for my blood?”
“She’s already lost too much. The doctor doesn’t want to wait for a shipment from Albany.”
Bianca lowered her eyes. “I told him not to ask you tonight.”
She was pale, but not as pale as Daisy had been.
“No.” I rejected without hesitation.
Rowan stared at me.
“I need to be awake when Daisy comes back,” I said. “Find another donor.”
“Maeve.”
Once, that warning would have been enough. I had spent six years anticipating his displeasure and correcting myself before he needed to ask.
Tonight, I saw Daisy lying alone on the nursery floor while I scrubbed rooms no one had used in months.
“No.”
Rowan’s eyes flashed red.
Pain ignited beneath the skin of my right wrist.
I gasped and grabbed the edge of the table as the Marriage Mark came alive. It had always looked harmless—an elegant silver curve placed there during our wedding ceremony because Rowan could not form a true mate bond with a wolfless Omega.
He had never used it to command me before.
Some pathetic part of me had mistaken that for mercy.
“Donate the blood, Maeve,” he ordered.
The command sank through the mark and wrapped itself around my bones.
My mind recoiled, but my body turned toward the door.
Bianca stepped aside as I approached. Her expression remained soft and apologetic, carefully prepared for anyone who might be watching.
Only her eyes were smiling.
She had won again.
*
The transfusion room lights were painfully white. I watched my blood move through the tube and into the collection bag while a nurse told me to squeeze a rubber ball every few seconds.
For one strange moment, the mark on my wrist felt lighter, as though something invisible had peeled away its topmost layer.
Then the sensation vanished.
Probably blood loss. Probably exhaustion.
When I came out, I had to keep one hand against the wall to steady myself. Daisy was still in imaging, and I wanted to be back before she woke.
Bianca waited alone near the corner.
I tried to walk past her.
“I have good news,” she murmured. “I’m pregnant.”
I stopped.
“Rowan’s thrilled,” she continued. “Ashridge finally has an heir.”
The hallway seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
Bianca leaned closer, her voice barely louder than the rain against the windows.
“He also said he won’t have to force himself to touch you once a month anymore.”
Then she walked away, leaving me alone beneath the fluorescent lights.
I had endured six years because I believed endurance kept Daisy safe. Tonight, she had burned with fever while I scrubbed Vivienne’s floors, my husband had used our marriage to take control of my body, and my mother had asked me to pay for Giselle’s car.
None of them had protected my daughter.
Worse, neither had my silence.
I didn’t yet know what I could do about that. I had no money, no wolf and nowhere that truly belonged to me.
But as I turned toward the room where my daughter would be waiting, the question inside me finally changed.
Not how much longer I could endure.
How quickly I could get Daisy out.
