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The ultrasound gel was cold against Zaia's bare stomach, but the warmth spreading through her chest had nothing to do with the machine and everything to do with what the technician was tracing on the screen.
"There," the woman said softly, adjusting the wand. "And there."
Two flickering shapes. Two distinct rhythms pulsing in synchronized counterpoint beneath the gray static of the monitor. Zaia's breath caught. Her wolf stirred inside her—a low, protective hum that vibrated through her bones.
"Twins," the technician confirmed, smiling. "Congratulations, Mrs. Blackwood. You're approximately eight weeks along."
Mrs. Blackwood. The title still felt borrowed, like a coat she'd slipped on at a gala and never quite learned to wear properly. Three years as Luna of the Blackwood Pack, three years of standing beside Sebastian Blackwood at charity auctions and board meetings and moonlit ceremonies—and still, when people said her name, they said it after his, as if she were an accessory to his empire rather than a woman with her own heartbeat.
She pressed her palm to her abdomen. Two heartbeats. Hers and theirs and the echo of a bond she'd believed was unbreakable.
"Can I have a printout?" she asked.
The technician handed her the image—two tiny galaxies nestled together like secrets. Zaia folded it carefully and slid it into her purse beside the velvet box she'd picked up from the jeweler that morning. Inside the box, a pair of cufflinks engraved with the Blackwood crest waited for Sebastian's birthday tomorrow. She'd commissioned them months ago, back when she'd still believed in anniversaries and apologies whispered against her neck in the dark.
She drove home through rain that hadn't yet committed to falling, the city skyline glittering beyond her windshield like scattered diamonds. Blackwood Tower rose at the center of it all—forty-seven stories of glass and steel that housed not only the pack's corporate headquarters but the penthouse she shared with the Alpha who owned half the eastern seaboard's shipping lanes.
The elevator ride to the top floor was silent. Her reflection in the brass doors looked composed—dark hair swept up, charcoal dress, the Luna pin gleaming at her collarbone. Silver wolf entwined with onyx. Sebastian had fastened it there himself on their mating night, his fingers trembling only slightly, his voice rough with promise.
*You are mine. I am yours. Until the moon falls.*
She'd believed him.
Before the penthouse, she'd stopped at the pack healer's clinic on the east side—a discreet appointment she'd scheduled under a code name because Luna pregnancies attracted gossip like blood attracted sharks. The healer, a gray-haired woman named Dr. Okafor, had confirmed what the human ultrasound suggested: two pups, strong heartbeats, a pregnancy that would demand everything Zaia had.
"You'll need rest," Dr. Okafor had warned. "Twin pregnancies among our kind are harder on the body. And stress—" she'd looked at Zaia sharply "—stress can do damage you can't undo."
Zaia had smiled and promised to take care of herself. She'd meant it. She'd planned a quiet dinner with Sebastian tomorrow, cufflinks and ultrasound photo and the words she'd rehearsed in the car: *We're going to be parents. Both of us. Are you ready?*
She'd been naive enough to think love could survive boardroom politics.
The penthouse was dark except for the living room, where light bled beneath the door like a wound. Zaia's hand hesitated on the handle. Sebastian's scent hit her first—dark cedar and winter smoke, the smell of home. Beneath it, something floral and wrong.
Champagne. Laughter, muffled.
She pushed the door open.
Sebastian stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, his jacket discarded, his sleeves rolled to his elbows. The city sprawled behind him like a kingdom at his feet. In front of him stood Celeste Vane—his ex, the woman the tabloids still called *the one who got away*—her hand resting on his chest, her red dress a slash of color against the minimalist white furniture.
"Sebastian?" Zaia's voice came out steadier than she felt.
He didn't flinch. Didn't step back. Celeste's fingers curled slightly against his shirt, and Zaia's wolf snarled so loud inside her skull that she tasted copper.
"Zaia." Sebastian's eyes were flat. Ice over deep water. "We need to talk."
Celeste smiled. It wasn't kind. "I told you she should hear it from you, darling."
Darling. The word landed like a slap.
Zaia's purse slipped from her shoulder. The ultrasound photo fluttered to the marble floor. Sebastian's gaze dropped to it—two blurred ovals, meaningless to anyone who didn't know—and then lifted again, utterly uninterested.
"I want a divorce," he said.
The room tilted. Zaia gripped the doorframe, her knuckles white. Through the mate bond—a golden thread she'd felt since the night he'd claimed her beneath a full moon—something splintered. Not broken. Not yet. But cracking, hairline fractures spreading outward.
"You can't be serious." Her voice was barely a whisper. "Sebastian, I'm pregnant—"
"I know." He cut her off with the efficiency of a man closing a hostile acquisition. "That's why Celeste is here. We need to discuss the terms before this becomes a scandal."
Celeste's smile widened. "The children won't be a problem. Sebastian is very generous with settlements."
*Children.* Plural. Zaia hadn't told him yet. Hadn't had the chance. But Celeste knew—or she was guessing, fishing, and the hook had already found flesh.
Zaia looked at her husband. At the man who'd held her through fever and boardroom betrayals and the long, lonely nights when being Luna meant smiling while pack elders questioned her bloodline. She searched his face for any flicker of the man who'd whispered *until the moon falls*.
She found only a CEO preparing to write off a failed investment.
"When?" she asked.
"Tomorrow." Sebastian picked up his whiskey from the side table. He didn't offer her one. "The pack council expects an announcement. Celeste and I will be formally introduced at the solstice gala. It's already arranged."
Zaia bent slowly and retrieved the ultrasound photo. She smoothed the creases with trembling fingers and tucked it back into her purse, next to the cufflinks she'd never give him now.
"Then I won't keep you," she said.
She turned toward the bedroom hallway. Behind her, Celeste laughed—light, delighted, the sound of a woman who'd won a war Zaia hadn't known she was fighting.
"Zaia," Sebastian called after her. His voice was harder now. "Don't make this difficult. You signed a prenuptial agreement. You'll be taken care of."
She paused at the threshold of their bedroom—their bedroom, for one more night—and looked back over her shoulder.
"I wasn't asking for your money, Sebastian. I was asking if you still loved me."
The silence that followed was its own answer.
Zaia closed the door. She sat on the edge of the bed they'd shared, her hand over her stomach, and felt two tiny heartbeats drumming against her palm like a countdown.
Outside, thunder rolled across the city.
And somewhere deep inside the mate bond, something that had once felt like sunlight began to burn.
In the guest room, Zaia sat on the edge of a bed that smelled like hotel bleach and stared at the ultrasound until her eyes blurred. She counted the heartbeats in her memory—one-two, one-two—like a metronome keeping time with her ruin. Her wolf paced behind her ribs, furious and wounded, demanding she go back out there and fight.
*He is ours,* her wolf snarled. *Claim him. Make him remember.*
But Zaia had learned something in three years as Luna: some battles couldn't be won by force. Sebastian had made his choice in front of Celeste, in front of the champagne, in front of the city spread out like property he owned. Fighting would only give him the narrative he wanted—emotional instability, a scorned mate, a woman who couldn't accept defeat with grace.
She would not give him that.
She changed into sleep clothes that weren't hers—clothes Marcus's staff had apparently placed in the guest room before she'd even agreed to leave—and lay down with her hand on her stomach.
"I'm sorry," she whispered to the twins. "You deserved better than this for your first day of knowing."
Thunder cracked over the tower. The bond flared white-hot, and for one searing instant she felt Sebastian's guilt—not enough to stop him, not enough to send him knocking on her door, but there, buried under ice.
It didn't save her.
It only proved he was still connected to her while choosing to destroy her anyway.
And that, somehow, was worse.