My Mate Let Them Kill Our Pup

I found it on a Tuesday.

Not because I was looking for proof of anything in particular. I was looking for a reason. Something small and human I could hold in my hands and say: *this* is why he stopped touching me. *This* is why he moved my things to the west wing without a word, without a fight, without even the dignity of an explanation.

The west wing smelled like old wood and disuse. The mattress dipped on one side. I'd been sleeping in the shape of someone's absence for three months.

I needed a reason.

Ethan's study was locked, but I'd found the spare key two years ago, tucked behind the loose brick near the fireplace—the same place he kept everything he thought I'd never look for. I told myself I was only going to look. I told myself I'd put everything back.

The painting hung on the north wall. A winter landscape, all gray and silver, the kind of thing that gets chosen because it offends no one. I'd always hated it. Too careful. Too composed.

I lifted it off the hook.

The leather folder behind it was dark brown, worn soft at the corners, the kind of thing that gets handled often. I stood there for a moment with the painting balanced against my knee and the folder in my other hand, and I thought: *whatever is in here, you cannot unknow it.*

I opened it anyway.

The medical reports were on top. Ironveil Pack Medical—the seal in the upper corner, the date three months back. I skimmed the first page fast, the way you do when you're hoping to find something boring. Test results. Blood panels. The kind of thing that means nothing.

Then I hit the diagnosis.

*Bloodrot.*

I knew the word. Everyone in Ironveil knew the word the way you know the names of things that happen to other people. Wolfsblood corruption. The body turning against itself from the inside out, the blood going thick and wrong, the organs following one by one. Rare. Untreatable by conventional means. The survival statistics weren't statistics so much as they were a formality.

Ethan's name was at the top of the page.

The projected survival timeline had been crossed out and rewritten three times. The first estimate: six months. The second: ninety days. The third—the most recent, the ink still slightly darker than the rest—was not a timeline at all.

It was a condition.

*Without access to activated Silverblood from a gestating maternal source: multi-organ failure within 72 hours of the next full moon.*

I read that sentence four times.

The full moon was in forty-one days.

Someone had circled the date in red.

I don't know how long I stood there. Long enough that my arms started to ache from holding the painting. Long enough that the light through the study window shifted from gray to gold and back again. I set the painting down against the wall. I sat on the edge of Ethan's desk—the one I was never supposed to sit on, the one where he kept his correspondence in neat, alphabetical order—and I read the report again from the beginning.

He was dying.

He had been dying for months.

And he had said nothing.

I turned to the next page. And the next. Test results, specialist notes, a second opinion from a pack physician in the east territory who had written his conclusion in careful, apologetic language that still managed to say: *there is nothing we can do.*

And then I reached the bottom of the folder.

The last sheet of paper was not a medical document.

It was handwritten. The script was small and precise and I knew it before I'd read a single word, because I had spent three years watching those hands move—across dinner tables, across Ethan's shoulders, across my belongings when she thought I wasn't watching.

Victoria's handwriting.

I read it slowly. I made myself go slowly, because I knew if I rushed I would miss something, and I could not afford to miss anything.

She had titled it *Treatment Protocol.*

Step one: confirm target pregnancy.

Step two: fabricate assault allegations to establish legal grounds for compulsion.

Step three: public truth-compulsion ceremony—maximum stress, maximum activation of Silverblood properties.

Step four: *Maternal collapse during compulsion results in natural miscarriage. Fetal blood collectable in full. No medical intervention required. No explanation necessary.*

The paper didn't shake. My hands did.

I set it down on the desk very carefully, the way you set down something that might detonate if you're not precise about it. I smoothed the corner that had bent when I grabbed it. I looked at it for a long moment.

Then I put it back.

Exactly where I'd found it. Exactly as I'd found it.

I rehung the painting. I straightened it twice—once because it was crooked, once because my hands needed something to do.

I locked the study behind me.

In the hallway, I stood with my back against the wall and I breathed. In. Out. The kind of breathing that isn't about calm, just about continuing to function.

*If he knew and stayed silent, he stops being my mate the second I find out. If he didn't know, I still owe him one warning. One.*

That was all I gave myself. One clean thought, no tears, no spiral. I had learned a long time ago—standing barefoot on iron spikes, waiting for a door to open—that falling apart was a luxury you paid for later with interest. I couldn't afford it then. I couldn't afford it now.

I walked back to the west wing.

I sat on the edge of the sagging mattress in the room that smelled like disuse and old wood, and I pressed both hands flat against my stomach. Still flat. Still quiet. Three months along and barely showing, just a slight fullness that I'd been hiding under loose dresses and careful posture.

I'd never spoken to the baby out loud before.

It felt strange. It felt necessary.

"Baby," I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected. "If your father comes to me tonight and tells me the truth, we live. If he doesn't—"

I paused.

Outside, the wind moved through the old eaves of the packhouse, a low, mournful sound.

"—we make him remember us forever."

I sat there for a long time after that, hands still pressed to my stomach, listening to the sounds of the house settle around me. Footsteps in the corridor. Distant voices. The creak of the main staircase.

Ethan's footsteps had a particular weight to them. I knew them the way you know the rhythm of something you've been listening for.

They passed my door without slowing.

I heard him continue down the hall. Heard the soft click of the master bedroom door closing.

I took my hands off my stomach.

He didn't come.