He Sacrificed Our Child, Now He Begs for Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Not Fate

The King's old lovers gloat at her bed, Magnus throws them out and calls the death fate, and Jessamine wheels in to offer her life in front of him. Rowena tells him to put her down and learns the Healer will stay in the cells until she gives up.

The first people to reach my hospital room the next morning were the three women who had once shared the King's private wing.

They had each lived there for a season, and none of them had ever been recognized by any pack.

All three had been sent away in turn, and now they stood together at the foot of my bed.

They did not bother to hide how pleased they were.

"Some women think being Luna means they own the King's evenings," the tall one said.

"She kept him in her suite the whole pregnancy. Look how that turned out."

The one beside her tilted her head.

"The crown can only do so much for a woman nobody respected to begin with."

"Jessamine trained horses in Ashgrove. Now she's the mother of the heir."

"It's hard to say who is really on top, isn't it?"

I lay still and let them talk.

Magnus had ordered the Royal Guard to say nothing about his order, and the whole castle knew anyway.

They knew he had left the medical wing to stand outside Jessamine's operating room while my son died one floor below.

They knew the boy was already in the registry as first heir, for now.

They knew what I had lost, and what that made my title.

All their old envy had finally found somewhere to go.

When the tall one said I'd "kept the King all to myself," I almost laughed.

For nine months the royal schedule had written Magnus into my suite until morning, and the schedule was a lie.

His car stopped at my door every night, and he came up and changed out of his formal suit.

Then he took the private elevator, the one hidden from public view, across to Jessamine's wing.

He never once stayed for dinner.

He told me he did it to shield her, because a favorite is a target.

He had asked me to be the shield.

I had said yes.

"Who allowed you in here?"

The voice came from the doorway, and it was cold.

The three of them turned, and the pressure of the Alpha King rolled through the room.

All three went white and stepped back toward the wall.

"Queen Rowena has just lost her child," Magnus said.

"Every one of you will leave the medical wing. Your access to the castle is suspended until I say otherwise."

They scrambled past him without a word.

He looked at my face, his jaw tight.

"Don't take what they said to heart, Rowena."

"The child didn't live because it was not meant to. It wasn't his fate."

I looked at him.

"It wasn't fate," I said, and my voice was flat. "You sealed my door."

He stepped aside before I finished.

The Chief Seer was in the corridor with his hands folded, and he had wheeled Jessamine to the threshold himself.

Magnus took the handles and pushed her in.

"Jessamine was worried about you," he said. "She had a surgery yesterday, and she still insisted on coming."

Jessamine's eyes were red, and her hands shook on the arms of the chair.

She did not look at the bed.

She looked at the floor between us, and then she was moving.

Before Magnus could speak she had pushed out of the chair and slid down onto the tiles beside my bed.

"Queen Rowena, please, it isn't his fault."

"It's because I have no family and no pack behind me. That's the only reason he wanted my son to come first. To keep us safe."

She was crying openly now.

"If someone has to pay for it, let it be me. But my baby is only a day old. He can't lose his mother."

She shut her eyes and bowed her head and waited for me to pass sentence.

Magnus bent at once and lifted her off the floor.

He held her against his chest and he did not look at me.

"Put her down," I said.

He stopped.

"You got her off my floor faster than you ever reached my door."

For a moment nobody in the room moved.

Then he set Jessamine in the chair and straightened the blanket on her knees.

He did it gently, and he did it first.

"You're upset, and you have every right to be," he said.

"Rest. Take what time you need. The Dawn Court is cancelled, and I'll tell my mother myself."

"The Healer will stay in the cells until you stop this."

He said it so quietly that Jessamine, three feet away, could not have heard it.

I understood then that he could threaten me and call it kindness.

He pushed the chair out into the corridor, and the Seer fell in beside them.

I lay back on the pillow and did not move.

Then I counted how many hours were left until noon.

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