Chapter 146 Give Her A Chance
ADRIANA
Pregnant.
The word had not stopped moving through me since the Grandmaster said it. It kept arriving in new ways, finding new chambers in my mind to settle into and change the shape of. Sometimes it was a whisper, a scream, or just the warmth of possibility, other times the cold dread of consequence.
I was going to be a mother. Elijah was going to be a father again — this time, biologically, in the way he had always been a father to Leo in every way that mattered but had never been in the way that would make Leo a brother. Leo would finally have a sibling, a blood connection that might ease some of the loneliness I'd seen in his eyes when he looked at other children with their families.
My hand went to my stomach instinctively, a gesture I'd seen countless women make but had never truly understood until this moment. There was nothing to feel yet. Still, I pressed my palm flat against the fabric of my shirt, imagining I could feel something, anything, that would confirm this miraculous, terrifying reality.
The timing was catastrophic. I was aware of that. There was almost no worse set of circumstances in which to discover a pregnancy than this particular room, with these particular people, in my current physical condition.
The knowledge of it had done something to my body or perhaps to Yara was stirring at the distant edges of my consciousness because I could feel strength returning to me that hadn't been there yesterday.
I didn't examine it too closely. I just held on to it.
The door creaked open and I flinched, my hand dropping from my stomach. Two of the brothers entered, their faces hooded. They approached me without hesitation and i instinctively tried to shrink.
“Get up.” one of them grabbed my arms, rough and without care, pulling me off the platform I had been placed on. “The Grandmaster wants you.”
His grip was like iron, fingers digging into my flesh. I wanted to fight, to pull away, but my body betrayed me. My knees buckled slightly as I found my feet, and I had to lean into him for a second before I could straighten fully.
They brought me into the central room and I felt a chill at the sight of the brothers. They stood arranged around the space in a configuration. And at the center, on a plate in front of the position where they made me kneel, was a severed head.
My breath caught in my throat, but I forced it down. His hair was matted with blood that had dripped down onto the silver plate beneath him, forming a dark, irregular halo.
I kept my face still.
“What is this?” My voice came out level, but inside, something was screaming. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat.
The Grandmaster stood with his back to me, a knife held high, chanting something in a language that I felt more than heard. A sound that moved against my skin like pressure, making the fine hairs on my arms stand up. The brothers around me had their eyes down. All except one.
Luke.
He was watching me from across the room with a hatred so old and specific it had its own gravity. I could feel it pulling at me, trying to drag me under.
When the Grandmaster finally turned, there was blood at the corners of his mouth and along the front of his robes. His eyes narrowed on me, as if trying to see inside me, to the child growing within.
“The child inside you is an abomination." He announced simply. "It cannot be permitted to exist. Special wolves do not produce other special wolves. That is not the order we operate within. If it does, the order is broken and we will face consequences none of us are prepared for.” He nodded to the men on either side of me. “Raise her.”
“No!” I moved before they could reach me, putting distance between myself and them, turning so the wall was at my back. “Don’t come near me.”
My back hit the cold stone with a thud that jarred my teeth. There was nowhere to run to or hide.
I went with my last option and fought. My strength was still compromised and they had numbers, and within a minute I was on the platform with my wrists secured and my ankles bound and the ceiling above me and the Grandmaster standing over me with the knife, and I was out of immediate options. The metal bit into my skin, the restraints tight enough to cut off circulation. I could feel the panic rising in my throat, hot and suffocating.
“Please.” The word came out before I could weigh it, cracking with desperation. “Please don’t do this. She hasn’t done anything. She doesn’t even exist yet in any form you could call a threat.”
The Grandmaster paused, the tip of the knife hovering just above my stomach. I could see my reflection in the polished steel, my face pale and distorted, my eyes wide with fear.
“This knife carries no poison and no magic,” he said. “It is ordinary steel. If the child is human, it will not survive the wound. If you are unable to die by human weapons, you will recover. We will simply have our answer.”
“And if she’s not human?”
“Then we have a different conversation.”
I looked at the blade. It seemed to glow in the dim light of the room. My stomach churned, and I had to swallow hard against the bile rising in my throat.
This child did not asked to be conceived in the middle of a war and did not deserve to pay for it. I imagined her face, what she might look like, the sound of her laugh, the way her small hand might wrap around my finger. The thought was so painful it was almost a physical blow.
“You want me,” I said, my voice stronger now, infused with a sudden clarity. “You have always wanted me. Not the child — me. I’m the special wolf. I’m what you’ve been hunting.” I held his gaze. “I’ll give you what you want. Don’t touch the baby. Let me carry her to term and then take me.”
The room went very still.
Even Luke had stopped moving, his hatred momentarily replaced by something that looked suspiciously like shock.
“You understand what you’re offering,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. I’m offering my life in exchange for hers. Completely. Freely. You get everything you came for and the child lives.” I kept my voice as steady as I could make it. “That’s the arrangement.”
“And if the child is like you? If she carries the same power?”
“Then she’ll grow up and she’ll face you herself. The way I faced you. Give her that chance.” I looked directly at him. “You didn’t find me before I knew what I was. You didn’t stop me then. Maybe she’ll succeed where I couldn’t. Isn’t that a more interesting ending than killing an unborn child?” I was desperate and grasping at straws. Anything to stop what he was planning.
Even though I just found out, I knew I would protect my child with everything in me.
Something moved across his face that I could not fully read. He seemed to have reached an end of it his mental debate.
“then we'll do a covenant of blood, so I can be sure you'll keep your word,” he said finally. “Your thumb.”
Yara’s voice arrived in a rush, filled with urgency.
“Your blood calls the power surrounding you. When he cuts you, don’t fight it. Let it flow. The sisters are waiting.”
I stretched out my thumb, my hand trembling slightly despite my best efforts to steady it.
The blade came down across it. I felt a sharp pain where it nicked my skin.
I felt the blood well up and the warmth of it spread into the air and then something shifted in the room.
I felt it before I saw anything.
And then everything changed at once.