Chapter 13
Serena
The irony almost made me laugh.
He stood there looking like I’d gutted him, his lips barely parted around the echo of his own question.
You don’t want to have my baby?
As if he’d ever wanted one with me.
I remembered a night years into our marriage. We’d been at a pack gala, and Kieran had drunk more than usual. We barely made it through the front door before his mouth was on mine, urgent and clumsy and nothing like his usual controlled precision.
That night, there was no foil wrapper torn open. No pause. No interruption.
I woke up the next morning with his scent all over my skin and hope blooming so wide in my chest that I couldn’t breathe around it. I lay there imagining a nursery and a name. A tiny hand wrapped arou
finger
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Then Kieran sat up, reached into his nightstand drawer, and held out a small white pill between his thumb and forefinger.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t explain. He just held it out.
And when I hesitated, he didn’t move. He sat on the edge of the bed and waited, watching me until I placed the pill on my tongue and swallowed.
Only then did he stand, pull on his shirt, and walk out of
the room.
That was the man standing before me now, acting wounded because I told him I’d never carry his child.
I exhaled and straightened my spine. “When you’re ready to sign, let me know.”
I turned toward the door.
His hand closed around my elbow before I made it two
steps.
He pulled me backward, not rough but firm, guiding me onto the edge of the bed.
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“It’s raining,” he said. “Where exactly are you planning to go?”
“Into the rain.” I tried to stand. He blocked me with his
body, one hand braced on the mattress beside my hip. “Anywhere. I don’t care if I have to sleep on a park bench, Kieran. I cannot look at you for another second.”
My voice cracked on the last word and I hated myself for
The betrayal wasn’t just anger anymore – it had teeth, it was chewing through me from the inside, and if I stayed in this room much longer I was terrified of what would be left.
He studied my face. Then he laughed.
“Can you even afford to divorce me?”
I blinked. “What?”
He moved to the bedroom door. I shot to my feet.
“What are you doing? I want to leave. I want a divorce, Kieran — open the door.”
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“Sit down.” His voice was infuriatingly even. “We need to talk.”
“I have nothing left to say to you.”
“We’re still married.” He turned the lock. The click was deafening. “Which means you owe me a conversation.”
That did it.
I shoved him. Both hands flat against his chest, hard enough that he rocked backward half a step.
“So you remember we’re married?” The words ripped out of me. “You remember that when it’s convenient? When I’m trying to walk away, you remember your vows? Where was that memory when you were holding her? When you were spending nights in her house? When you answered her call and left me on the floor?”
I shoved him again. He caught my wrists, and I thrashed, twisting toward the door handle.
He was faster. His arm looped around my waist and he lifted me clean off the ground, depositing me back on the
bed.
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“Calm down.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small brass key, and held it up between us. “I’m going to shower. When I come back, we talk.” He used the key and locked the bedroom door, taking the key with him.
He walked into the bathroom without waiting for a
response.
I sat on the bed, breathing hard, my fists balled against my thighs.
Trapped.
I stared at the closed bathroom door and realized with an exhaustion that went beyond my body – this had always been our dynamic.
I screamed, but he waited.
I raged but he stood still.
I called it an argument, but arguments required two participants. Ours were monologues. I ranted and cried and begged, and Kieran absorbed it all with a maddening composure, then redirected the conversation wherever he wanted it to go.
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He never raised his voice because he never needed to. His
control was the weapon. My emotion was the weakness he counted on.
Can you even afford to divorce me?
He meant money and politics. He meant the hundred invisible chains tying my family’s survival to his generosity.
I twisted the ring off my finger.
The bathroom door opened.
Kieran walked out dressed in pajama pants, his chest bare, toweling his hair with one hand. He tossed the towel onto a chair and began adjusting the pillows on his side of the bed.
Then he walked to me and extended his hand, palm up.
I kept mine in my lap.
He reached for my fingers anyway, and his thumb found the bare spot where the ring should have been. His gaze shifted to the nightstand.
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He picked up the ring, took my left hand, and forced it back onto my finger.
I yanked it off.
He grabbed my wrist.
“Marriage is not a game.” His grip was iron. “You chose this. You stood in front of our families and you chose me. Whether we stay together or split apart is not something you get to decide.”
“I’m done.” I met his eyes. “I know my family owes you. I’ll find a way to repay every cent. But this marriage is over.”
“Repay with what?”
Our eyes locked and the truth of my situation settled over
My pack was gone and our territory absorbed. Our finances nonexistent. The clothes on my back, the food in my stomach, the roof over my parents’ heads, all of it was
his.
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We didn’t just owe him gratitude. We owed him everything.
Even ourselves.
Kieran sat on the table in front of me, close enough that our knees almost touched.
“Your family became mine the day I married you,” he said. “After the attack, I absorbed your people. I was generous enough to let them keep the Blackthorn name. Every medical bill, every housing expense, every mouth I’ve fed for five years, that debt exists whether you acknowledge it or not.”
He paused, staring at me waiting for the realization to dawn on me.
“I’ve been negotiating to restore Blackthorn as a vassal pack under Crimson. Your father’s legacy, rebuilt. But a vassal pack answers to me. Permanently.”
He leaned forward.
“And all of this I’ve done, doesn’t even have you included.”
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My lungs refused to expand. He’d laid it out so neatly, so calmly.
I dug my nails into my palms until the pain cut through the fog.
“You married me for strategy,” I said, and my voice
came out steadier than I expected. “I gave you territory, alliances, and a reputation as the merciful Alpha who saved a dying pack. That wasn’t charity, Kieran. That was a transaction, and you benefited as much as I did.”
His jaw shifted but he didn’t interrupt.
“There was no prenuptial agreement,” I continued. “Legally, I’m entitled to half of our marital assets. But I’m not asking for that. I’m not asking for the house, the accounts, the investments — none of it. I’m walking away with nothing.” I held his gaze. “You’ve had an affair. Everyone knows. I could drag your name through every pack council, but instead I’m offering you a clean exit.”
I leaned forward until I could see my own reflection in his
eyes.
“What else do you want from me?”
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