Chapter 119: No right to fail

When I finally pulled myself out of the initial haze of grief after my supposed death, discovering I was pregnant had felt like a physical blow. A shock I never saw coming. The doctors called it a miraculous anomaly: an unawakened breeder carrying a child was unheard of in our world’s biology.

My brother and uncle had to pay an astronomical sum to the medical staff just to buy their silence.

Every specialist who looked at my charts screamed about a scientific breakthrough, desperate to transfer me to a high-security research center to run tests. An unawakened, alpha breeder carrying a viable fetus—it was a medical impossibility. I had to sign reams of legal waivers relinquishing all claims against the facility just to stay hidden.

Then came the second blow at four months, when complications began.

The poison that had nearly claimed my life had seeped through the placental barrier, contaminating my baby.

The doctors urged me to terminate, insisting the child would never survive the term. They argued that I was the valuable specimen—that my unique hormonal balance could unlock breakthroughs for the breeders everywhere.

They spoke of me as if I were a laboratory animal, already partitioning off pieces of my body for study.

Matthias’s life was a miracle prayed into existence—a victory I had dragged from the jaws of fate with my fingernails and teeth, begging every single night just to feel him move, to hear a heartbeat, to hear him draw his first breath.

Yet the poison remained.

His organs couldn’t function properly. His liver, kidneys, and spleen were constantly under attack from traces of the toxin still circulating in his bloodstream, slowly and relentlessly eroding his body from within.

Because he had been born on the threshold between statuses, just like me, he lacked the potent werewolf hormones required to naturally flush the venom. No matter how many times the doctors filtered his system or performed blood transfusions, it was always a temporary fix. Within weeks, the toxicity surged back.

Synthetic blood failed because it lacked living Alpha pheromones. My family’s blood lacked the dominant strength to neutralize it. Even high-grade werewolf donor transfusions only bought us a month or two before his body rejected the match and the decline started all over again.

It was an exhausting, brutal routine. A blood detox wasn’t just a simple IV drip—it meant sitting for agonizing hours hooked to heavy machinery while his tiny body was drained, filtered, and pumped back full of liquid.

I never wanted this life for him. I didn’t want his childhood defined by sterile white walls and the suffocating stench of antiseptics. But what choice did I have?

I wanted to see him happy—to see him running, jumping, and playing with other children, not lying under endless IV drips. And if saving him meant sneaking into the Rainn estate disguised as a maid to steal Magnus’s blood... I was ready. I was ready to do anything, even walk straight into hell.

I would face the monster who hated me—the man who believed I had betrayed him. I would steal his blood and do whatever it took, but my son was going to live. He would grow up healthy. And he was going to see the whales. Real, massive whales out in the open ocean, just like he dreamed.

"Do you really-really have to leave?" Matthias sniffled against my neck, his warm breath tickling my skin.

He pressed his tiny nose against the scarred puncture mark over my gland, taking a deep breath.

He loved the faint scent lingering there. But every time he did, my heart broke all over again, tormented by the realization that Magnus had branded me with an eternal mate-bond...

But when? And why?

Askold had refused to speak about it, but the doctors insisted in unison that without that bond, I would have died. Magnus had seen me dead, and in truth, that was the only reason I was safe from him now.

He never would have believed I was gone if he hadn’t seen the body himself. But to mark me...? Did he view me so obsessively as his property that he refused to let go even in death? There were no answers.

Matthias threw his leg—wrapped in light blue pajama pants—over my waist, clinging to me as if afraid I might vanish into thin air. "Can’t you just stay?"

"It’s only for a little while," I whispered, gently stroking his back. He cuddled closer, sending a surge of tenderness and suffocating ache through my chest. "Just a couple of weeks, my love. Then I’ll be back, and I won’t ever leave again."

He immediately framed my face with his small, warm hands, staring straight into my eyes with an intense, adult gravity. His gray eyes held so much raw hope that it terrified me to think of failing him.

"Pinky promise?"

A smile broke through my despair. Reaching for his sides, I began tickling him gently, and he let out a loud squeal, squirming and tumbling across the mattress to get away, breathless with laughter.

"Mooom! That’s—that’s an illegal move! Mom!"

I stopped, smoothing back the soft, damp hair clinging to his forehead and stroking his flushed cheek.

"I promise," I whispered, hooking my pinky around his tiny finger—our sacred ritual for the most important vows. "I’ll come back. You won’t even have time to miss me."

Matthias beamed and nodded, his smile radiating absolute, unconditional trust. My heart turned over inside my chest. I pulled him back into my arms, burying my face in his soft hair and holding him tight.

I had no right to fail him.

I had no right to return empty-handed.

Even if it meant coming face-to-face with his father once again.

***

"So... you say you’re twenty-five, and you used to work...?"

The woman sitting across from me was plump, in her early fifties, resting her elbows heavily on a massive desk of dark mahogany. She stared over the rim of her glasses with sharp, searching eyes, as if trying to pick apart a lie in every word I uttered.

The interview had barely started, but it was already painfully obvious that she didn’t like me. Not one bit. Whether it was my age or some arbitrary grievance formed in her mind, her hostility was palpable.