When the nurse handed me my prenatal check-up report, I kept my smile on—habit, perhaps—but it vanished the instant I looked up. In the examination room across the hall, my mate stood with his hand on a belly that wasn’t mine.
Carson was there, pressing a kiss to Alice Pruitt’s abdomen with an expression of tenderness I hadn’t seen for months. Alice’s eyes glittered with something sharp and victorious beneath the pretense of worry. Their scene felt like salt poured into an open wound.
“Carson, you shouldn’t be here with me for the check-up… If Brianna finds out, she’ll be furious. She’s about to give birth too. Aren’t you worried?” Alice said, voice soft, but I caught the triumphant gleam in her words.
Carson glanced at me like I were a minor inconvenience. He kissed Alice again and answered with a cold, measured calm I couldn’t accept. “She doesn’t know, and we aren’t planning to tell her. Maybe it’s the hormones, but her emotions have been unstable lately. I don’t want her causing you trouble.”
My insides tightened. Hormones? Unstable? He had wrapped the excuse around me like a cloak—thin and insulting. Alice tried to press further. “But we can’t keep sneaking around like this. Brianna is about to give birth. If she finds out, I’m afraid she’ll—”
“Afraid of what?” Carson’s voice cut through them. “I have a responsibility to be with you. After all, this pup is mine too. If Brianna wants to cause a fuss, I’ll just sever our mate bond.”
Sever our mate bond. The words landed like ice. Hearing him speak of me that way chilled my blood. For so long I’d hoped—naïve, stubborn hope—that he would come back to me when times were harder. For months he had been distant: late nights, missed calls, excuses. But there had always been plausible reasons. Now the reason stood right there in the hallway, smiling and rubbing a belly that carried his child.