He Sacrificed Our Child, Now He Begs for Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Sealed Door
The Royal Guard seals Rowena's delivery room until the King's mistress gives birth, and her son dies. Rowena asks the Queen Mother to keep an old promise and strip her title, and learns the Healer who tried to save her is in the cells.
At midnight the Royal Guard stood across my delivery room door and told my Healer she could not come in.
She had her bag in one hand and her whole surgical team behind her.
Nurses watched from the doorways of the medical wing, and nobody said a word.
The guard captain stood straight and spoke without looking at her.
"By order of King Magnus, Jessamine Fairhurst has gone into labor."
"Until her child is born, no one is to attend Queen Rowena."
I was on my knees beside the bed, holding the rail with both hands.
I was the Luna Queen, the King's wife for three years, and my son was lying the wrong way inside me.
Three months earlier the Chief Seer had stood before the whole Council and made a prophecy.
The child who drew breath first would carry the moon's blessing and stand first in line to the throne.
Jessamine and I were due within days of each other.
Everyone in the castle knew where the King slept, and it was not in my suite.
"Captain, he's breech," the Healer called through the door.
"I can't hurry her labor and I can't hold mine back, and I'm not asking to."
"I'm asking to turn him. Please. Let me turn him."
The captain did not answer.
I heard her argue until the guards walked her down the corridor, and then I heard nothing but my own breathing.
The pain went on all night.
It was so complete that my wolf went quiet and would not come when I called her.
The healing that should have started never did.
At dawn I heard that Jessamine had delivered a boy.
Only then did the King lift his order.
My son had already died inside me.
I lost so much blood that they cut out what was left.
The Healer who finally reached me told me quietly that I would never carry another child.
When I woke in the hospital bed, Magnus was in the chair beside me.
He was in yesterday's suit, and his hands were folded.
He spoke in the patient voice he used on the Council.
"Jessamine has no family and no standing. Nobody in this castle accepts her."
"Without a child of the Crown, the pack would have eaten her alive. She needed that boy to be first."
I looked at the ceiling.
"Aldous Fenn, the Chief Seer, carried him out of the operating room himself and wrote his name in the registry within the hour," Magnus said.
"Aldous is the only man besides me who has ever been allowed into her wing."
"He wanted the boy safe as much as I did."
He leaned forward.
"You're already the Luna Queen, Rowena. That boy would have called you his father's mate all his life."
"Why did you have to need a child of your own?"
He said it softly, as advice.
I understood then that my son and I had been counted as the spare.
I did not cry in front of him.
"Rest," Magnus said.
He kissed my forehead, and I let him, and then he went to see his heir.
That night I got out of bed.
My legs would not hold me, so I took the wall and then the corridor rail and then the stairs.
I left blood on the steps through my gown.
Two guards at the Queen Mother's door looked at me and did not stop me.
Hester Deverell was sitting up in her chair with a book she was not reading.
She was sixty-one and had run the Crown Pack from behind her son's throne for as long as I had known her.
"You shouldn't be out of bed," she said.
"Three years ago my father put every wolf of Northcrest behind your son," I said.
"You promised him one wish for me, when Magnus took the throne. I'm asking for it now."
She closed the book.
"Say it."
"Strip me of the title of Luna Queen. Let me leave this castle."
The room was very quiet.
I had expected her to argue, or to tell me grief made people say foolish things.
Hester looked at me for a long moment and then picked up the pen on her desk.
"I made your father that promise and I'll keep it," she said.
"But not in a back room, where my son can pretend it never happened."
"The Dawn Court sits at noon tomorrow. You'll say it before the full Council, standing."
"I'll stand."
"Then there's one more thing you should know." Her voice stayed level.
"The Healer who tried to reach your door is in the cells."
"My son signed it at dawn, for obstructing the Royal Guard."
I held on to the edge of her desk.
"Then she walks out with me," I said.
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