Chapter 17: No Baby

The hall went up.

Wolves were on their feet, and chairs went over.

A pup started crying at the back.

Duncan dropped to his knees beside her.

"Bethie. Bethie, look at me."

Clive was already halfway across the floor.

"Look what you've done!" he roared at the elders. "Making a pregnant girl kneel on stone! If she loses that pup, it's on every one of you!"

I didn't move from my chair.

I breathed in, slowly.

Perfume. Peaches and roses, enough to choke on.

And under it, nothing at all.

No blood and no pup, just a frightened girl.

The eldest elder banged her cane on the top table, three times, until the hall went quiet enough to hear her.

"Doctor."

The pack doctor was already coming down the middle aisle with her bag. She'd delivered half the pups in that hall.

Bethany shrank back against Duncan.

"Not her. I want my own doctor. From home."

"You're home," said the eldest elder. "This is your pack, you keep telling us. Our doctor or none."

Duncan picked Bethany up and carried her into the side room, the little one where the pups hang their coats.

The doctor followed and shut the door.

Three hundred wolves sat and waited.

Nobody talked. Clive stood by the window with his arms crossed, his ring finger tapping on his sleeve.

Paul came and crouched by my chair.

"You all right?"

"I'm fine."

"You're very calm."

"I've seen the bank statement."

It took twenty minutes.

Then the door opened, and the doctor came out alone, with Duncan behind her.

Duncan's face was grey.

The doctor walked up to the elders' table and spoke clearly, so the back rows could hear.

"There's no pup," she said.

"There's no pup lost, either. She isn't bleeding. Her blood says she's never been pregnant."

The silence was so deep I heard the clock over the fireplace.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Eclipsed Life of Luna Mischa from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.