The Alpha Signed Away His Pregnant Luna novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Pink Ribbon

The healer tests Maeve's morning tea and finds moonroot, which dulls a Luna's bond and starves a young pup. Maeve keeps the thermos and tells no one, and Delaney is waiting outside with a fresh one.

The pack clinic opened at seven, and I knocked on its back door at ten to.

The healer let me in without a word.

She was the only person in Ironwood who knew what was growing inside me.

"Is it the baby?" she asked, already reaching for my wrist.

"The baby's fine. I need you to test something."

I set the thermos on her steel table.

The pink ribbon was still tied around its neck, in a neat bow.

The healer unscrewed the lid and sniffed once.

Her face changed.

She poured a little into a glass dish and touched it with a drop of oil from a brown bottle.

The tea turned the color of old rust.

"Who made this?" she said.

"Delaney Pruitt. A peace offering. Every morning for six weeks."

The healer sat down hard on her stool.

"That's moonroot, Maeve."

I had never heard the word said so quietly.

"A pinch of it dulls a Luna's bond to her mate," she went on. "Steeped every day, it thins the bond until she feels nothing from him at all."

I thought of six weeks of silence on the bond.

I had blamed Gideon for every minute of it.

"And in a woman who's expecting," the healer said, "it starves the pup."

My hand went to my stomach.

"I've drunk it since the week I conceived."

"I know. I'm looking at your chart." Her voice shook. "By every rule, that heartbeat should be gone. Your little one is stubborn."

"A true Alpha's pup," I said.

"Another few weeks and you'd have lost it, and nobody would have asked why."

She turned my hand over and pressed her thumb into my wrist.

"Your pulse is thin. Your gums are pale. I wrote it off as early pregnancy."

"I wrote it off as grief."

"We both missed it," she said. "She didn't."

For a moment I couldn't speak.

Then I got up and carried the thermos to her sink.

I poured the tea out. It ran down the drain, brown and sweet-smelling.

The healer watched me do it.

"I have to tell the Alpha," she said.

"No."

"Maeve, I swore on the Moon Goddess to keep your child secret. I never swore to keep poison secret."

"He signed away his wife last night without reading one line."

I screwed the lid back on and dried the thermos on my sleeve.

"You think he'll read a lab test about the woman he calls his debt? He'll say she meant well. She'll cry. And I'll be the cruel one who accused a dead man's daughter."

The healer opened her mouth and shut it again.

She knew I was right. She had watched Delaney in the pack house for six years.

"Four days," I said. "Then I'm gone, and nobody has to prove anything to anyone."

"And if she tries again before then?"

"I won't drink another drop. She won't know the difference."

The healer took my hands and held them hard.

"Then you eat only what you've cooked yourself," she said. "Starting now."

"Yes."

"And you come to me the minute you feel dizzy."

"Yes."

She let go of my hands and wiped her eyes with her wrist.

"That girl put it in a ribbon," she said. "In a ribbon, Maeve."

I wrapped the empty thermos in my scarf and tucked it into my bag.

I didn't know yet what I would do with it.

I only knew I wasn't going to throw it away.

The healer opened the back door for me and checked the alley first.

"Be careful with her," she said.

"I will."

I stepped out into the cold morning with my hand flat over my coat.

The seven weeks of slow sickness suddenly made sense.

The tiredness. The dizzy spells on the stairs. The way I'd stopped feeling Gideon at all.

None of it had been in my head.

None of it had been Gideon's coldness, either, or not only his.

Someone had been feeding it to me with a smile.

I walked around the side of the clinic to the front steps.

Delaney Pruitt was sitting on the top step with her knees together, in a pale blue dress.

She had honey-blonde hair, wide blue eyes and a thermos in her lap.

A fresh one, tied with a fresh pink ribbon.

She jumped up the moment she saw me and put on her best smile.

"Luna! There you are. I was just passing."

The clinic was on the far side of the territory from the pack house.

Nobody was ever just passing.

"Gideon said you'd gone out early," she said. "I hated to think of you walking around on an empty stomach."

She held out the new thermos with both hands.

"Take it. It's still hot."

I didn't reach for it.

Her smile stayed perfectly in place.

"Where's the one from this morning?" Delaney asked. "It wasn't on the counter."

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