NINE MONTHS LATER…..

BAILEY POV

My eyes flutter open, my surroundings blurry and indistinct at first. As consciousness gradually returns, I become aware of a dull throbbing in my head.

What happened? Where am I?

Blinking groggily, I attempt to push myself into a seated position, grimacing at the soreness that seems to permeate every muscle and bone. That's when my gaze lands on my midsection—and my breath catches in my throat.

My belly, once rounded and full of the life I created with Dylan nine months ago, now looks. . . deflated.

Panic shoots through my veins as I reach down with a trembling hand to feel the swell that should still be there. To feel my baby girl kick beneath my fingers.

But it’s diminished as if several months have passed in mere moments.

No. No, it can’t be.

Frantic now, I kick aside the thin medical blanket, ignoring the concerned voices calling my name from the hallway. My eyes rake over my body, my blood turning to ice at the evidence before me.

I was heavily pregnant. I remember gathering my things and waiting for Natasha, my new found friend to come take me to the hospital.

My baby.

The memories come rushing back in rapid flashes. Figures grabbed me as I raced through the woods. Strange faces, rough hands. A piercing pain in my abdomen. . .

“No. . . ” I whisper brokenly, cupping my hands over the now mostly flat plane of my belly. This can’t be real, it just can’t. . .

But deep down, I know the horrible truth. They’ve taken my child from me, stolen her before she even had a chance.

Hot tears spill down my cheeks as I let out a guttural wail of anguish.

“My baby!” I scream hoarsely, as if giving voice to the nightmare will somehow wake me from it. “Someone, please! My baby!”

A warm hand comes to rest on my shoulder then, and I flinch violently away to see my father standing over me, his expression devastated.

“Bailey. . . ” he chokes out, his voice thick. “I-I’m so sorry, sweetheart. You were attacked. Its a good thing I found you on time child……. I’ve searched all over for you for so many years”

I looked up…..Dad.

How…. How did he find me?

He swallows hard, the anguish in his eyes cutting me to my core.

“By the time they got you back here, you were already going into labor. We did everything we could but. . . but the trauma was too severe. Your daughter. . . she didn’t make it.”

The world seems to fracture around me as my worst fears coalesce into a horrific reality. My precious baby girl, the innocent life I carried with the mate I loved more than anything, killed by violence before she ever drew breath.

I clutch at my hollow womb, doubling over as if the agony is physical, tearing me apart from the inside out. My father tries to put his arms around me, but I shove him away, consumed by a rage and heartbreak so all-encompassing it steals every rational thought.

“No!” I rail against the injustice, against the cruelty of this world that would deprive a child of life in such a way. “She was innocent! My baby—my baby!”

She was the only reason I stood strong from their betrayal months ago.

How come I lost her??

I am only vaguely aware of the medical staff rushing to sedate me as a screaming blackness consumes my vision. But I welcome the void, for in its emptiness lies the only merciful escape from this tortuous new reality—a reality where I have lost everything.

The sedatives can only dull the anguish for so long before the harsh reality comes crashing back. I awake to find myself cradled against my father’s chest, his strong arms wrapped tightly around my shuddering form.

“It’s okay, little one,” he murmurs soothingly, his voice thick with shared grief. “I’m going to find the monsters who did this and make them pay in blood. I swear it on my life.”

His words of vengeance should offer some solace, some sense of justice being served. But at this moment, I cannot bring myself to care about recompense or retribution. There is only one thought, one singular need burning through the haze of my heartbreak.

“Dylan. . . ” I rasp out, my throat raw from my anguished screams. “I need. . . Dylan. . . ”

My father stiffens slightly at the mention of my mate’s name, his embrace unconsciously tightening. It’s been months and I feel he’s still mad at me.

I sense dad disapproval, the anger at the knowledge that I am looking for his comfort, completely going against all the rules.

But I can’t bring myself to rebuke him, too consumed by the soul-searing awareness of what I must do.

“Please,” I beg, grasping at the front of his shirt with desperate fingers. “He has to know. . . about our baby. I have to be the one to tell him.”

The grief seems to crush the very air from my lungs as I give voice to those words. Our baby—the tiny life we created together through a love so pure and complete.

The little girl we dreamed of holding, of raising away from our pack's antiquated prejudices, was gone before she even took her first breath of this world’s cruel air.

The blood drains from my face as my father’s next words penetrate the anguished fog clouding my mind. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, his expression etched with regret and sorrow.

“There. . . there’s something else you need to know, Bailey,” he says, his voice tinged with pain. “About Dylan.”

A leaden sense of dread coils in the pit of my stomach at the grave tone underlying his words. I brace myself, terrified of what new devastation awaits but knowing I must hear it.

“When you left the pack . . ” He pauses, seeming to struggle against some interior turmoil before pressing on. “Dylan couldn’t move on.”

My heart stutters at the mention of my mate’s name, the same fragile tendril of hope refusing to die even in the face of gruesome reality.

But my father’s next statement is a vicious lash that cleaves that tendril in two.

“He got married to your sister”

The words detonate like a bomb in the center of my shattered soul, unleashing a whole new blade of anguish to rend me apart from the inside out. I can hardly process the implications, the horrific injustice of his reaction.

“No,” I whisper, shaking my head in stunned disbelief as the tears begin anew. “He wouldn’t. . . you must be mistaken. Dylan loved me. He was only mad cuz he thought I actually cheated on me. . . ”

“He’s gone, Bailey,” my father confirms needlessly. “He’s your sisters husband now . And they are both running the park together. . ” He shakes his head grimly. “You just have to move on. That bastard don’t love you ”

Even as the words leave my father’s lips, something deep within me rebels against their truth. I know Dylan, know him in a way that transcends the boundaries of the physical realm.

“No,” I rasp out, my voice trembling but carrying an undercurrent of conviction. “That’s not—Dylan would never. . . ”

I trail off as my father levels me with a look that would cow a lesser wolf. But I am his daughter, ingrained with the same iron will and unyielding spirit as the one who leads our pack. So I match his stare, refusing to be cowed even in my debilitated state.

“Bailey. . . ” he states warningly, but I cut him off with a shake of my head.

“I refused to believe you, Daddy. You don’t know. . . ” My eyes drift downward to my empty womb, the raw ache of loss nearly stealing my breath once more.

A choked sob escapes me as the visions accost me

“That’s not my mate, Daddy. He won’t marry her”

My father’s face is grim as he holds out a hand to me. “I didn’t want to show you this, Bailey , but you leave me no choice.”

He brought out a picture and handed it to me.

With trembling hands, I lift the picture, revealing Dylan and Reginal together.

They were so happy with each other. Dylan was even giving her kisses on her cheek.

This was what Reginal wanted all alone.

My father was right.

How could Dylan.

But I know the answer, deep down, is because he was never really mine to begin with. Just a fleeting dream, a hope as beautiful as it was fragile, now shattered into pieces too mangled to ever be made whole again.

I don’t even realize I’m sobbing until my father’s arms tighten around me once more, but I barely register the embrace. I have drifted somewhere unreachable, a desolate place where the damned wander eternally.

I am well and truly alone, forced to endure the devastation of a loss so profound, so visceral, there are no words to encapsulate it.

Just a vast, abysmal ache devouring me from the inside out.

Even dad was not to be trusted. He abandoned me as well. They all abandoned me.

He shouldn’t behave as if he cared now. I just want to be left alone and revenge all they did to me.