He Rejected Me the Night I Birthed His Twins novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Night My Water Broke
While Cedric kisses Priscilla in the ballroom, Morven gives birth alone, then hears him reject her before the elders. She says Accepted and walks out, and something inside her howls.
My water broke on the bathroom tiles while three hundred wolves sang happy birthday to my husband.
It was six weeks too early.
I held the edge of the sink and reached for Cedric through the mind-link.
Nothing came back. The link was shut.
I reached again, and again, nine times in all.
Each time it was the same closed door.
Then the mate bond told me why.
Through it I felt a mouth on his, warm and willing, and it was not mine.
I slid down the cabinet and sat in the wet.
Cedric Grimshaw had not touched me in four months.
His childhood friend had come home with wolfsbane sickness, and he said she needed his presence every night to keep her wolf alive.
So every night, he gave it to her.
I dialed his phone with fingers that would not hold still.
It rang five times.
Priscilla Chillingworth picked up.
"Morven, oh no, are you all right?" she said, in the soft voice she used on everyone.
"I'm in labor," I said. "The babies are coming."
"Hold on, sweetheart. I'll find him right now and send him up. Breathe, and don't move."
She hung up.
I waited for the door to open, and nobody came.
A contraction folded me in half.
I crawled into the hall on my hands and knees.
Music shook the floorboards. The Harvest Moon Ball was on, and I was the Luna who had been told to stay upstairs.
His mother had said it kindly in September. A wolfless Luna beside the Alpha on his thirtieth birthday would give the pack the wrong idea.
I dragged myself to the top of the staircase and looked down.
Cedric stood in the middle of the ballroom floor with his hand at the small of Priscilla's back.
She wore a silver gown.
He bent his head and put his lips against her hair.
Everyone watching smiled at her, and not one of them looked up.
I was his wife.
The next contraction threw me against the banister.
"Cedric!" I screamed.
The band was louder than I was.
Nobody turned around.
Except his mother, Rhoda Grimshaw.
She saw me from the foot of the stairs, and she came up them fast.
I thought she was coming to help.
She took my arm in a grip that left her fingers printed in my skin.
"Are you out of your mind?" she hissed. "Priscilla nearly collapsed tonight, and you crawl out here to ruin it?"
"The babies," I said. "Rhoda, they're coming now."
"A wolfless girl trapped my son with a pregnancy, and I have watched you use it for three years."
She shoved my arm away from her.
"Go back to your room and stay there. You are not going to shame this pack on his birthday."
She walked back down and did not look behind her.
Somebody caught me under the shoulders before I hit the floor.
It was the housekeeper, who had carried my meals up every day since the doctor ordered me to bed.
"Not the bedroom, honey," she said. "That's the first place they'll look. Come to the linen room."
She half carried me down the back hall.
The doctor was in the ballroom with everyone else.
My son came first, small and red and furious.
My daughter came nineteen minutes after, and she cried before she was all the way out.
The housekeeper wrapped them in clean pillowcases and a bath towel because there was nothing else, and laid them on my chest.
They were tiny.
They were both breathing.
I was shaking so hard the shelves rattled.
The linen room door opened.
Cedric came in with Priscilla on his arm.
Behind him were three Black Fir elders in their dark ceremony coats, and behind them was Rhoda.
He looked at the babies.
It lasted one second.
"They're early," he said. "Is that all?"
"They're yours," I said. "Look at them, Cedric."
"I will. Later." He turned toward the elders and did not look back at me. "Priscilla's wolf is slipping. She needs a Luna's bond to hold on, and it can't be a Luna with no wolf."
Priscilla leaned on his arm and made a small, brave sound.
I looked at the thermos on the shelf by the door.
She had brought it to my room that morning, as she did every Sunday, with a ribbon tied around the lid.
A tea for the babies, she'd said. I had drunk all of it.
Cedric pulled in a breath.
"Before these witnesses, I reject you, Morven Moncrief, as my mate and as Luna of Black Fir."
For a moment I could not hear anything at all.
Only this spring he had told me he had not been tired a single day since our wedding.
I had thought that meant he was happy.
The elders stood with their hands folded and said nothing.
The words are binding until the other one answers.
I held my daughter against my neck with one arm and my son with the other.
I looked at the man I had loved for four years, and I felt nothing coming through the bond but cold.
"Accepted," I said.
So I let him go.
The bond tore open inside me, and the pain was so bad I nearly dropped them both.
Cedric flinched too. He put a hand against the wall.
Nobody but me saw it.
Then something deep in my chest, something that had never made a sound in twenty-five years, lifted its head and howled once.
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