Chapter 4

Dante’s POV

I was at a pack meeting when I got the call that Amaya had been stabbed—by not just anyone, but one of my own men.

“What?” I barked into the phone, startling the Alphas around me. My heart pounded violently in my chest, and for the first time in years, true fear gripped me.

I left immediately, shifting into my wolf and racing toward the hospital. By the time I arrived, I was breathing heavily, and my hands were shaking.

The doctor was waiting for me.

“The wound was deep,” he started. “She lost a lot of blood. It will take at least a month for her to fully recover.”

I frowned. “A month?” That didn’t make sense. With her wolf, she should be healed in a week at most.

“There’s… something else.” The doctor hesitated.

“Spit it out,” I growled.

“Your wife was weeks pregnant, Alpha… but she lost the child due to the trauma.”

Everything stopped.

A ringing in my ear drowned out all other sound, and my eyes turned red. The doctor’s mouth was still moving, but I couldn’t hear him.

Pregnant? Amaya was pregnant?

My body moved before I could think, and I grabbed the doctor by the collar, slamming him against the wall.

“You’re lying,” I snarled, my claws digging into his chest while my wolf howled in agony, wanting to break free. “She wasn’t pregnant! She would have told me!”

“It’s still in the early stages… she must not have—”

“She did this on purpose, didn’t she?” I cut him off. “She didn’t tell me because she planned to leave! She was going to run off with that bastard Ryder, wasn’t she?”

I couldn’t think straight. This was Amaya’s fault. She had been distant, she wanted to go to the beach alone. She had let her guard down…

I shoved the doctor away and turned, my fists clenched so tightly that my nails dug into my skin.

When she woke up, I confronted her about the news, but she just stared at me, emotionless like she usually did. Even now, she felt no remorse. She didn’t shed a single tear, and that annoyed the hell out of me. I gritted my teeth and stormed out of the room.

The guard who had stabbed her was still on the run, so after she was discharged, I had her quarantined in her room.

She wasn’t allowed to step out for anything, but just in case, I stationed two guards outside and monitored the maids going in and out of her room.

All her meals and drinks had to go through me before they reached her. I wasn’t taking any chances.

If she wanted to act emotionless, fine. But I wasn’t going to let her make another mistake—wasn’t going to let her run away or get herself killed because of her reckless decisions.

For days, she barely spoke. She ate without complaint, bathed, and slept as if nothing had happened. Her indifference made me angry.

Did she not care that she had lost our child?

As for the guard who had stabbed her, I personally hunted him down.

Kneeling before me, covered in dirt and blood, he trembled as he dared to meet my gaze. His lips quivered as he spoke.

“I was doing you a favor, Alpha,” he choked out. “The Blackwood… they all deserve to die. She’s a—”

I snapped his neck before he could finish. Though I felt I should have tortured him, should have made him suffer, I couldn’t waste another second on a traitor who thought he had the right to decide my fate.

Wiping the blood off my hands, I turned to my men. “Burn his body. Let it be a warning to anyone else who dares to defy me.”

They bowed their heads in obedience, dragging the corpse away.

That night, I headed straight to her room unannounced to deliver the news. She was sitting by the window, staring at the moon, and didn’t turn around when I entered.

“He’s dead,” I said.

She didn’t respond.

I clenched my fists, stepping closer. “I hunted him down myself. Snapped his neck like the traitor he was.”

Still nothing.

My jaw tightened. “Is that all you’re going to do? Just sit there and stare at the damn moon like nothing happened?”

Finally, she turned her head slightly. I flinched when I saw the emptiness in her eyes—she looked like a living corpse.

“What do you want me to say, Alpha?”

“You lost our child,” I growled, taking another step forward. “And you sit here as if you feel nothing.”

Her lips pressed into a thin line. “What do you want me to do? Cry? Scream? You already decided this was my fault.”

I scoffed. “Isn’t it?”

She lowered her head. “Of course. Everything is always my fault.”

My blood boiled, and I grabbed her by the arm, yanking her to her feet. “Don’t play games with me.”

“Then let go.”

I gritted my teeth, staring down at her, but then my eyes widened when my gaze reached her fingers—I saw her ring was missing.

“Your ring… You took it off.”

She looked at her hand, and when she saw it wasn’t there, she muttered, “Oh.”

Oh. Just fucking oh. Even though I hated her, I never took off my ring. It was the only reminder of what we once shared.

“That’s it?” I snarled. “You take off our bond like it meant nothing, and all you can say is ‘oh’? If you hated me this much, you should have just left.”

Her lips curved into a small, bitter smile. “Didn’t I try?”

“You—”

“But you wouldn’t let me, so why are you surprised? You chained me to you. Did you really think a ring would change that?”

“That’s enough,” I said, shutting my eyes and shoving her back onto the bed. I took a step back, running a hand through my hair. “Put the ring back on.”

“No.”

“That wasn’t a request.”

“I can’t, because I didn’t take it off. It must have fallen off somewhere at the beach,” she said, turning back to face the window.

“I will go search for it,” I said, stepping back and running my hand through my hair.

She didn’t answer.

“Go to bed.” I clenched my jaw, and without another word, I left, slamming the door behind me.