The Alpha’s Runaway Mate and Secret Son

Chapter 5

The room is smaller than I remember. Prison-small. The kind of space that makes your own breathing sound like an accusation. I pace the perimeter like an animal, my mind cycling through possibilities and finding none of them viable. The window doesn't open. There's a servant's door that leads to an exterior corridor, but I can hear the guard outside it, the shuffle of heavy boots, the deliberate scrape of metal that tells me there's a weapon.

Darius's kept me locked up before not like this, not with the door sealed from the outside, but there have been times when he's decided I shouldn't leave. Times when his possessiveness has crossed into actual confinement. I'd told myself it was about protection. That he just needed to know where I was, who I was seeing, what I was thinking. That it was love wearing an ugly mask.

Now I understand it was always controlled.

The nausea hits around sunset, coming in waves that bend me double. I make it to the chamber pot in time, my body purging itself of everything I've eaten today. The violence of it surprises meI haven't eaten much, just picked at the food sent up with my breakfast, too anxious about the ceremony to manage anything substantial. But my stomach is determined to empty itself anyway, determined to reject everything, including the life growing inside it.

The pregnancy.

God.

The thought arrives with the force of a physical blow. I sink onto the edge of the narrow cot, one hand pressed to my still-flat stomach. Three weeks. Maybe four. I'd been going to tell him tomorrow, after the ceremony was done, after I'd had time to think about what it meant. After I'd figured out if there was any way this could be good news instead of a disaster.

Darius doesn't want children. He's said this explicitly, multiple times. "Breeding isn't part of the plan," he'd said once, running a hand down my bare shoulder. "I need to be strategic about my bloodline. Can't have some Omega bastard complicating matters."

The words had stungobviously they'd stungbut I'd pushed the hurt away the way I've learned to push away most of my pain. Compartmentalize. Survive. Keep your head down and maybe the world will forget you exist.

Except the world hasn't forgotten. And neither has my body.

By the time Luna Kaida arrives, I've had approximately six hours to contemplate my destruction. I'm sitting cross-legged on the cot, staring at nothing, when I hear footsteps in the hallway. Multiple sets. Guards. Then the sound of the door being unlocked from the outside.

She walks in like she owns the space, because in some fundamental way, she does. Luna Kaida Blackthorn is everything I'm notpowerful, respected, beautiful in the way that comes from never having to question your right to take up space. Her brown eyes, so disturbingly similar to Darius's and yet so utterly different, scan the room and settle on me with the intensity of a predator assessing prey.

"You look terrible," she says, and I realize she means it as an observation, not an insult. Like my appearance is a data point she's filing away for later use.

"You locked me in," I reply, because apparently I've decided today is a good day to be suicidal.

"My son locked you in. I'm here to offer you a choice." She pulls a bundle of bills from somewhere within her gown, letting them drop onto the cot beside me. "Take this money and leave. Tonight. Don't come back. Don't contact anyone. Don't send messages. You disappear, and this becomes a non-issue."

I stare at the money like it's a snake that might bite me. It's more money than I've earned in my entire life. Months of wages. Maybe a year's worth if I'm careful. Enough to start over somewhere. Enough to survive.

"What if I say no?" I ask, though I already know the answer. I can smell it on her the same cold calculation that's on Darius. The understanding that I'm a problem that can be solved through either payment or erasure.

"Then Darius keeps you locked in here until you agree to his terms." She moves toward the window, her posture suggesting she's said all she intends to say on this subject. "My son has made his choice. Tova is politically expedient. You are not. The pregnancy" she pauses, and my heart stops, "complicates matters significantly. Darius doesn't know yet, but he will. And when he does, he'll have to decide if the bastard is worth keeping."

"Get out," I whisper.

"You have twenty minutes," she says, turning back to me, and there's something almost kind in her expression, which is somehow worse than if she'd been cruel. "There's a servant's entrance two corridors east. The guards rotate in four minutes. There's a three-minute window where the corridor will be empty. The forest begins half a mile north. Humans won't follow you there."

She leaves before I can respond, before I can ask if this is a trap, if she's setting me up to be recaptured and punished for attempting escape. But I already know the answer. She's given me an escape route because she wants me gone. Because I'm a threat to Darius's carefully constructed future with Tova. Because even the possibility of a bastard child complicates the narrative she wants to tell about her son.

The money sits on the cot like a promise and a threat wrapped together.

I leave it behind.

This choice surprises me even as I'm making it. I take the money she's offered and what little I own and I move, my body operating on instinct and rage and something deeper that I'm only beginning to understand. I'm not going to let Luna Kaida dictate my escape. I'm not going to owe anything to anyone. If I'm going to leave, I'm going to do it on my own terms, with nothing but what I can carry and the will to survive that's gotten me through four years of poverty and loss.

The hallway is empty when I slip out of the room. My heart is hammering so hard I'm convinced someone will hear it, will sense my escape and come running. But the servants' corridor remains empty, and I move through it like a ghost, like someone who's spent her entire life learning how to be invisible.

The night air hits like a physical presence when I slip out through the servant's entrance. It's warmer than it should be, the kind of heat that clings to your skin and makes thinking difficult. I don't look back at the manor. Don't let myself dwell on what I'm leaving behindDarius's bed, the possibility of status, the security of knowing exactly where my next meal is coming from.

I just started walking.