The Moon's Legacy

The Night I Died

Willow POV

My world was measured in pain.

Some days it burned hot enough to leave me shaking on the floor. Other days it crawled beneath my skin—a warning hum that meant I could still move, still obey, still survive. I had learned to function inside it. Learned to breathe through it. Learned that endurance was the only thing keeping me alive.

Right now, survival meant focus. One minute. Then the next. The fire in my veins was nothing compared to what would happen if I failed him. In seven years of being mated to Keith, I had discovered there was no limit to his imagination when it came to suffering.

The gladiator lay on the cot in the room laughingly called the medical bay. There was nothing remotely medical about the place. The cot was crusted with old blood. The walls wore it like a second coat of paint. While there were bandages and access to hot water, there was very little else related to medicine in this space—except me.

I focused on the arm that was hanging by its tendons and a piece of skin, maneuvering the dangling limb into place so that the cut muscles, broken bones, and torn flesh lined up as if they hadn't been severed by a sharpened blade. Drawing from my center, I called on the healing power the Goddess gifted me with and began mending the injury. Slowly, the bone began to calcify over the break, and the muscles began to knit themselves together. Sweat beaded on my temples, slipping down my cheeks and the sides of my neck. My hands shook as I continued to push power to the fallen fighter.

A shadow fell over us before he spoke.

Keith’s boots stopped inches from my knees. The scent of iron and expensive cologne wrapped around me, blood and arrogance. He didn’t crouch. Didn’t kneel. He simply stood over me like I was another broken thing in his arena. “Gervais is one of my best fighters, Willow.” His fingers closed around the back of my neck, not tight enough to bruise—yet—but firm enough to remind me who owned it. “You will not fail.”

My teeth ground together as I focused more energy through my palms, despite the way my blood felt like lava. I knew the price of failure. Keith had not spared me that lesson over the years.

The baby in my belly kicked as if trying to remind me he was still there. I was five months pregnant, but that didn't stop my mate from calling on me to heal the gladiators in his underground fighting ring. He'd negotiated with my father years ago, recognizing that having a healer by his side would mean that he could rake in millions from his fights. The moment he forced his mark on my neck, he tossed me into this underground clinic and put me to work.

'The pup won't last if this keeps on,' my wolf, Ivy, whispered in my mind.

'I don't have a choice. You know what will happen if we stop.'

She whimpered, pressing against the edges of my mind, torn between our pup's life and the consequences of any failure today.

I reached deeper, trying to cocoon our pup in safety while still healing Gervais, but the energy faltered. I swayed—just for a moment—exhaustion and burnout in my bones. Keith sighed like I’d inconvenienced him. “Need I remind you what happens if you stop?”

His thumb pressed against the pulse in my throat, counting the beats. Calm. Patient. Calculating. “You hold the lives of the pack’s orphans in your hands.” His mouth curved—not a smile. Something colder. “If you falter, I’ll make sure their deaths take days. I’ll let you hear every scream.” His grip tightened just enough to steal my breath before he released me. “Now focus.”

I nodded, acknowledging the tyrant that was my mate, as I pulled my focus back to the injured gladiator. I kept up the energy flow for another few minutes before I finally broke and whispered, "Please, Alpha Keith. The pup will die."

He didn’t even look at my stomach when I begged. “Then it was never worthy of my bloodline.” His hand slid down, palm flattening possessively over the curve of my belly. Not gentle. Not loving. Assessing. “If this one dies, I’ll put another in you.” His voice lowered, intimate in the worst way. “You exist to produce something strong enough to carry my name.” Then he stepped back like the conversation was settled.

'Ivy, I'm sorry.' My heart was breaking. The pup's kicks had already slowed, the light that was his life fading away as I continued to pour energy out of my hands. 'I can't let him kill all of those pups.'

'I know, Willow. We're in an impossible situation. If we save our pup, he'll likely just kill it when he beats us for failure after following through on his threat.'

Gervais moaned, shifting as his arm knitted back together, then suddenly started thrashing. Foam erupted from his mouth as he seized, his entire body shaking, ripping the mending wound right back open. Blood flowed, pouring out of him faster than I could stop as I tried to focus on getting the seizure to stop. I grabbed his head with my palms, forcing the healing energy into his brain, trying to get him to still.

The dim light in my stomach flickered. Once. Twice. I held my breath, pouring everything I had into Gervais, as if I could ignore what was happening inside me.

The light went out. Ivy’s scream didn’t sound like a wolf. It sounded like something being torn in half. The fragile thread that bound us to our pup snapped so suddenly I felt it recoil through my soul. The kicks stopped. The warmth disappeared. And then there was nothing.

A heartbeat later, blood slid down my thighs—hot, relentless, unstoppable. My body had begun to let him go while my hands still glowed with healing light. I made a sound I had never heard before. Not a sob. Not a scream. Something older. Something broken. My child was dying inside me. And I did not stop.

"Shut up, you stupid w***e," Keith snapped. "You're giving me a headache."

The training from years of punishment for failing to comply with an order from my mate clamped my jaw shut even as the grief continued to roll through me in waves. I pulled harder at the healing energy, my only thought being to finish this task so that I could try to heal myself. The burning in my veins was almost unbearable, and exhaustion was blurring the edges of my vision. Blood continued to hemorrhage out of me even as I fought to stop the blood flow on the fighter in front of me. I swayed, dizziness hitting me, my vision tunneling as I kept going. Ivy was weak in my mind, her energy dimming just like my pup's.

My hands trembled. The glow flickered. Keith leaned close enough that his breath ghosted over my ear. “Don’t stop.” It was soft. Almost tender. “I’ve never killed my own mate before.” He paused. “I’m curious what it would feel like.” His fingers brushed my cheek in mock affection. “Finish.”

I rallied myself one last time, focusing on the warmth that was meant to be a blessing but had become my curse. I guided it through me and into Gervais. His tremors stilled. Bone fused. Flesh sealed. I pushed past the fading glow of Ivy in my mind. Pulled deeper than I ever had. Reached into the hollowed-out place inside me where nothing should have been left. The fire in my veins turned to ice—sharp, splintering, unbearable. My vision tunneled. And with one final, desperate shove, I gave him everything.

Then I fell.

'I'm sorry, Ivy. Maybe in the next life, you'll have a stronger human.'

Death should have been the end. It wasn't.