I Died Delivering the Alpha King's Heir, But Fate Wasn't Finished With Me

"Has Draven arrived?"

Aurelia asked it the way she'd asked it eleven times already, very quiet, even, like saying it calmly enough might drag him through the door by will alone.

Nima, the healer's apprentice, did not look at her eyes. "He's on his way, my Luna."

"You said that an hour ago."

"He is on his way," Nima said again, and this time her hands shake so much around the bowl she carried, water spilled over the edge and onto the stone floor.

Aurelia watched the water spread into a dark stain and thought, distantly, that it was the calmest thing in the room.

Another contraction hit her spine and she bit down on the inside of her cheek to stop herself from screaming. Screaming felt like handing something away for free, and she'd already given this family enough for free.

"Where is he," she said. Not a question this time.

Old Rensa, the midwife, didn't look up from the linens she was folding into a shape that kept coming undone in her hands. "He's—"

"Don't," Aurelia said. "Don't say it again unless it's true."

Rensa's hands went still.

Outside the palace walls, the kingdom was screaming with joy.

She could hear them even through the thick stone walls, thousands of wolves were howling their approval for a baby that was not even born yet, celebrating an heir like the future was already decided. Someone had lit the bonfires early. The smoke curled in under the door, it was sweet and wrong, like the whole world was celebrating a party she had not been invited to.

"They're not waiting for the baby," Aurelia said, quietly to herself. "They're waiting for a fairy tale. An Alpha King. A newborn baby to take his place. A happy ending." She let out a breath that sounded like a sad laugh, and it hurt more than the contraction had.

"Nobody writes the part where the mother's alone."

"My Luna, don't speak like that," Nima said, too fast, too young to know how to argue with a woman twice her rank. "You're not alone. We're here."

"You're a healer's apprentice with four months of training," Aurelia said, not unkindly. "How many healers are in this palace tonight?"

Nima jumped back as if she had been hit. "My Luna, I don't think—"

"How many."

"Six," Nima whispered. "Including me."

"And how many are in this room?"

Nima did not answer. She did not need to. Aurelia already understood what the silence meant. The other five healers were somewhere else in this palace, tending to someone who wasn't her, while she labored with a girl barely out of her apprenticeship and a midwife who'd stopped meeting her eyes an hour ago.

"Bring me Draven," Aurelia said. "Not a message. Him."

No one moved.

"I am your Luna." Her voice cracked exactly down the center of the word Luna, and she hated the sound of it splitting. "Bring me my husband."

"My Luna, please," Nima said, setting the bowl down with hands that still hadn't stopped shaking. "You need to save your strength. Shouting won't bring him faster."

"Then what will?" Aurelia snapped, and immediately regretted the sharpness in it, not because Nima didn't deserve better, but because regret cost energy she didn't have to spare. "I'm sorry. That wasn't for you."

"I know," Nima said quietly.

Rensa stayed busy with the bowl, refusing to look up. "Rest, my Luna. Fighting the pain only makes it worse."

"You've known me since I was a girl, Rensa," Aurelia said. "You braided my hair before my first official meeting. Do not start lying to me now, especially tonight."

Rensa's stopped moving her hands again, the way they kept doing every time Aurelia got too close to something true. "I would never lie to you."

"Then tell me why the man who begged my father for this marriage can't be bothered to sit with me while I labor for his heir."

Rensa said nothing. The silence answered louder than words would have.

"That's what I thought," Aurelia said, and closed her eyes against the next wave of pain, because there was nothing left in the room worth looking at.

Rensa finally spoke, low, like she was confessing to a crime. "My Luna, the Alpha King was called away."

"Called away." Aurelia felt the words land somewhere under her ribs, sharper than the next contraction, which was saying something. "Called away from his wife's labor. By what. A border dispute? A council vote?"

Rensa said nothing.

"Say it," Aurelia said. "Whatever you're not saying, say it now, because I promise you I will survive hearing it and I will not survive wondering."

"I don't know the details," Rensa said, which was, Aurelia understood immediately, its own kind of lie, the lie of a woman who knew exactly enough and had decided how much of it she was willing to hand over. "Only that he left an hour before your labor began. Kallum will explain when he comes."

"When he comes," Aurelia repeated. "Not Draven. Kallum."

Rensa's silence answered for her.

Something in Aurelia's chest folded quietly in on itself, the way paper folds, not loud, not dramatic, just a clean crease where something used to be flat. She pressed her palm against her stomach and made herself breathe through the next wave of pain instead of the shape of what she was starting to understand.

Two hours crawled by like they had claws.

Aurelia watched the candle by the window burn down to a stub. She watched Nima glance at the door every few minutes, counting something, footsteps, maybe, or excuses. She watched Rensa refuse, again and again, to meet her eyes, and somewhere in that refusal Aurelia found the shape of the thing she'd been afraid of since the wedding: that she had married a man who would let her drown quietly rather than tell her, out loud, that he'd already chosen someone else's shore.

"My Luna," Nima said suddenly, glancing toward the window like she could see through stone if she tried hard enough. "Do you hear that?"

Aurelia listened. Beneath the distant cheering, closer now, was the sound of boots, many of them, moving fast, somewhere in the east corridor. Toward the Eastern Tower, if she still remembered this palace's bones correctly.

"Something's happening," Aurelia said.

"It's probably nothing," Rensa said quickly. Too quickly. "Guards change shifts at this hour."

"That many boots don't change a shift, Rensa. They answer an alarm."

Nobody argued with that, because nobody could.

"Tell me about Lady Mireth," Aurelia said, into the candlelight.

Nima's basin rattled against the table. "My Luna—"

"You heard me."

"I don't know anything about—"

"You're a terrible liar," Aurelia said, and it wasn't cruel, just tired, the way you tell a child their shoes are untied. "It's alright. I already know the shape of it. I just want to see if anyone in this room has the courage to say her name to my face."

Nobody did.

The doors opened two hours later, and for one stupid, loyal second, Aurelia smiled, some foolish, undying part of her still expecting him, still believing he'd walk through that door with his sleeves rolled up and his jaw tight with worry, the way he used to look at her before the crown got heavier than either of them had planned for.

It wasn't Draven.

It was Kallum, his Beta, crossing the room fast and dropping to one knee beside the bed like the posture itself might apologize on someone else's behalf.

"My Luna."

"Where is he."

Kallum's swallowed hard once before any sound came out. "The Alpha King ordered every royal healer to the Eastern Tower."

Something inside Aurelia went very still, it felt colder than the pain, and colder than the sweat drying on her skin. "Why."

Kallum couldn't say it to her face. She would give him that much later, in the small, useless mercy of memory, he said it to the floor instead.

"Lady Mireth was attacked."

Nima made a small, strangled sound. Rensa's folding hands finally stopped moving entirely.

"Attacked," Aurelia said, very quietly. "By whom."

"We don't know yet."

"And he took every healer in this palace to save her, before he came to see whether his wife or his child survived the night."

Kallum didn't answer that. He didn't need to.

Aurelia understood, in the space of a single breath, everything she needed to understand.

Not that Draven loved someone else, she'd suspected that for months, the way you suspect weather, a pressure in the air, a color to the sky, nothing you could point to until the storm actually broke over your head. What she understood now was simpler, and worse: when it came down to a choice between his wife bleeding in a birthing bed and his mistress bleeding somewhere else, he hadn't needed a second to decide. He hadn't even needed to be told the details first. He had simply gone.

"I see," Aurelia said.

She did not cry. She would think about that later, too, how there hadn't been room in her body for tears, because the blood was already taking up all of it, and grief, it turned out, was the first thing your body stopped affording once it started dying in earnest.

"My Luna, you're losing too much blood," Nima said, voice climbing toward panic. "Rensa—"

"I know," Rensa said, and for the first time that night she sounded frightened instead of evasive, which told Aurelia everything about how bad it had actually gotten.

"Tell him I understand," Aurelia said to Kallum, though she wasn't sure anymore if she meant it, or if the words were simply the last shape her pride had left to hide behind.

"My Luna, don't speak like that, you're going to—"

"Tell him," Aurelia said again, softer, "that I understand exactly what he chose. And exactly what it cost."

"Rensa, she's not stopping," Nima said, and the fear in her voice had stopped being professional and become something rawer, something closer to grief. "Rensa, I don't know what to do, you have to—"

"Get more linens," Rensa snapped, and for the first time all night she sounded like she was fighting for something instead of hiding from it. "Kallum, out, now, you're in the way."

Kallum didn't move. His hand was still around Aurelia's, and his face had gone the particular gray of a soldier watching a battle he already knew the ending to. "My Luna, stay with us."

"Tell him I forgive him," Aurelia heard herself say, though she wasn't sure it was true, wasn't sure it would still be true if she lived long enough to take it back. "No. Don't. Tell him I said nothing at all. Let him wonder."

Her head started spinning. The candlelight blurred into long gold threads that did not look like real shapes anymore. Rensa was shouting something at Nima. Kallum's hand was squeezing her hands, too tight, the way you hold onto something you already know you're about to lose.

Somewhere very far away, past the stone and the smoke and the bonfires, the kingdom was still cheering.

Before she passed out completely, Aurelia heard one last thing. It was not Kallum, Rensa, or Nima crying. It was a voice that did not belong to anyone in the room. The voice was deep and very old, coming from somewhere far underground. It sounded almost gentle when it said the one thing that no living person had said to her all night.

It said her name.