For His First Love's Leg, the Alpha Stripped Me of My Right to Be a Mother

I raised Noah for three years, treating him as my own.

When Damon and I finally conceived, the whole pack celebrated.

Then the car accident happened.

Vanessa and I were both rushed to the hospital.

She had a ruptured blood vessel in her leg.

I suffered a ruptured uterus and placental bleeding.

The hospital had only one dose of the Moon Regeneration Serum left.

Damon held my hand, promising everything would be okay.

Then he walked out and gave the serum to Vanessa.

I woke up to a flat stomach and a hysterectomy.

Seven-year-old Noah ran into my room, holding a tablet.

He played a video of Vanessa walking in rehab.

"See? We saved her," Noah smiled at me. "Mom, you still have two legs! What would she do if she couldn't walk?"

Damon stood in the doorway, unable to meet my eyes.

"Aria, she needed it more," he whispered.

***

The first thing I noticed was the silence inside my body.

For six months, there had always been something - a flutter beneath my ribs, a hard little kick after breakfast, a restless roll whenever Damon rested his hand over my stomach. Now my palm met a flat bandage and nothing else.

The hospital monitor kept beeping as if that ordinary sound could make the room normal.

The door opened.

Damon Thorne stepped inside looking like he had aged ten years since the crash. His black shirt was wrinkled, dried blood darkened one cuff, and there were purple shadows beneath his eyes. For one dangerous second, relief crossed his face when he saw me awake.

He came to the bed and covered my hand with his.

"You're safe," he said hoarsely. "The surgeons stabilized you."

I stared at our joined hands.

"Where's the baby?"

His fingers tightened.

"Aria -"

"Where is my baby?"

Damon looked toward the window instead of at me. That was answer enough, but I made him say it.

"The impact caused a placental abruption," he said. "You lost too much blood. The baby didn't survive."

Air left my lungs in a slow, painful leak.

I pressed both hands to my stomach. Beneath the thick dressing, the shape was wrong. Too flat. Too empty.

"Why does it feel like this?"

Damon's throat moved.

"There was more damage than the doctors expected."

I turned my head.

"What damage?"

"Aria, you just woke up. We can talk after you've rested."

My fingers found the IV taped to the back of my hand.

"Tell me now, or I pull this out."

He caught my wrist before I could touch the needle. "Don't."

"Then stop protecting me from facts you already survived hearing."

For the first time, he met my eyes.

"They had to perform an emergency hysterectomy."

The word landed harder than the truck had.

I knew exactly what it meant. There was no confusion, no hopeful medical loophole. My child was dead, and the organ that had carried that child was gone with them.

Three weeks earlier, Damon had stood behind me at a prenatal appointment while our baby kicked against the scanner. The technician had laughed and said we had an impatient little fighter. Damon had bent over my shoulder and whispered that he would build a safer world before the child arrived. He had spent the ride home arguing about whether the nursery needed reinforced windows because no heir of his would sleep behind ordinary glass.

That memory did not feel tender now. It felt obscene. The same man who had planned security upgrades for a crib had made a medical choice that left the crib empty.

I turned my face toward the wall before he could mistake the tears gathering in my eyes for a request to be comforted.

I laughed once. The sound frightened even me.

Damon released my wrist. "Please don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Tear yourself apart."

I looked at him in disbelief. "You think I'm the one who did that?"

His jaw flexed. "The surgeons saved your life."

A memory cut through the medication fog: metal folding around the car, Vanessa screaming from the front passenger seat, blood soaking the back of my dress. Damon wrenching open the crushed door.

And walking past me.

"The serum," I whispered.

Damon went still.

The Thorne Pack had guarded one vial of Moon Regeneration Serum for nearly a century. It was reserved for catastrophic injuries to the Alpha line - the kind no ordinary healer could repair. Damon had shown it to me once in the vault, sealed in black glass beneath three silver locks.

"Why didn't they use it?"

"There wasn't time."

"There was enough time to remove an entire organ."

"The bleeding was too fast. Surgery was the reliable option."

"The serum regenerates damaged tissue. That's what it exists for."

Damon stood and paced to the foot of the bed. "I made the call that kept you alive."

"You made the call?"

He stopped.

I remembered the wreck again. Damon arriving before the ambulance. Vanessa crying that she couldn't feel her leg. Damon ripping the passenger door loose and lifting her into his arms while I screamed his name from the back seat.

"Did you even check me before you carried her away?"

"The paramedics were behind me. Vanessa was pinned closest to the opening."

"I was six months pregnant and bleeding."

"I knew help was coming."

"You knew I was your mate."

His face hardened, not with anger but with the defensive look he wore whenever Vanessa's name came between us.

"This isn't fair."

"Neither is waking up without my child."

Footsteps raced down the hall before he could answer. A nurse burst through the door.

"Alpha Thorne, I'm sorry. It's Vanessa."

Damon turned at once. "What happened?"

"She's in the east wing. Her arm lacerations are being cleaned, but she's refusing treatment unless you're there. She threw a tray at one of the nurses."

I waited.

Damon looked at me. Then at the nurse.

"I'll be back," he said.

He left before I answered.

The door swung shut behind him.

For several seconds, I listened to his footsteps fade toward the east wing - toward the woman he had pulled from the wreck before me.

His leather jacket remained draped over the visitor chair. The air from the closing door lifted one sleeve. The jacket slid to the floor.

Something small rolled from the inner pocket and struck the metal leg of my bed.

A black glass vial.

Empty.

The wax seal on its neck bore the silver wolf crest of the Thorne vault.

I bent over the rail despite the pain tearing through my abdomen and picked it up.

There was only one substance in the pack sealed in black glass.

Moon Regeneration Serum.

I held the empty vial between my fingers and understood that Damon had lied to me about more than timing.

The vial still smelled faintly of moonroot and silver, the medicinal scent I remembered from the vault. There was no chance I had mistaken it for ordinary glass.

He had used the serum.

Just not on me.