Sold as the Alpha King’s Breeder

placing the stones on her chest, holding her hand over them. Ros alie said the ceremony that bound

Maeve and I as husband and wife, but I found myself focusing on the ring in my hand.

Ethan had pulled me aside in Winter Forest before we left and brought me into his office. He pulled a

small box from the safe beneath his desk, explaining that the ring was a gift from his brother to Rosalie,

and Rosalie wanted Maeve to have it eventual

1. ly.

I had no ring to give her. I had nothing to my name besides the clothes on my back, and even those were

borrowed.

This is not how I imagined this moment in our lives together.

And now I held the ring in my hand, turning it over in my palm as Rosalie’s strained words filled the air

around us. Rosalie nod ded at me, and I took Maeve’s hand. Maeve was still, her eyes fix ated on the

sky.

I slipped the ring on her finger and laid her hand over the moonstones.

There was a soft rumbling beneath us, an earthquake it seemed. Goddess, could we catch a f*cking

break?

“What is that?” Ethan said, looking around.

I felt adrenaline prickle across my skin as I looked up from Maeve’s face.

“Is the-the airplane about to blow up? What’s that sound?” | said as my ears began to ring.

I turned to Ethan, who was looking at Rosalie, who was on her knees next to Maeve, her eyes downcast

as she looked at Maeve’s hand.

The stone in the ring was glowing.

“Oh, Goddess. It’s a moon,”

I was thrown backward by a force I didn’t have the words to explain. It felt like I was moving in slow

motion, a blinding light passing over me, and through me, as I flew through the air. I hit the ground,

knocking my head against the ground, which sent a sharp pain shooting down my spine.

Why was I here again? I thought, my mind unable to process anything besides the pain radiating through

my body. I heard voic es around me, someone shouting orders and the sound of wolves huffing and

panting as they ran by.

Suddenly, Ethan was standing over me, looking down at me in concern.

“Do you realize what just happened?” he shouted, reaching down to pull pieces of grass from my hair.

“What-where’s Maeve?”

***

The hospital in Mirage was nothing like I’d ever seen. The bright fluorescent lights were blinding, and the

air was sterile, smelling sharply of cleaning solution.

It was a far cry from the cozy clinic in Winter Forest with its wood-paneled walls and yellow paint, and

even further from the stone-walled infirmary at the castle where Maeve and I had both prepared for the

pregnancy that was now risking her life.

People dressed in scrubs and crisp white coats hovered around the room where I was standing, shell-

shocked, their voic es a faint murmur in my still ringing ears.

Amniotic fluid embolism, low blood pressure, potential heart failure, cesarean section.

The words felt heavy and unfamiliar as I tried to wrap my head around what was currently happening,

and what had hap pened when I slipped that unassuming ring on Maeve’s finger only an hour ago.

A nurse was actively trying to explain it all to us, but I could barely understand her. Ethan was standing

next to me, clutching Rosalie’s hand so tightly her fingers were turning white.

We were helpless, watching Maeve suffer right before our eyes.

“We’ll do what we can, but she’s far gone. It’s a miracle her heart is still beating. We can likely save at

least two of the triplets, but the thirds heart defect is severe-”

“Enough!” | shouted, squaring my shoulders as though about to enter into a fight. I drew in my breath,

letting the cool, bleach thick air fill my lungs. “No.”

“No, what?” the nurse stammered, taken aback by my out burst.

The handful of nurses and doctors in the room turned to me, which gave me a glimpse of Maeve laying

limp on the hospital bed they were surrounding.

She was pale, her hair falling loose over her shoulders. Ros alie let out a choked sob behind me as she

looked past me at the person we all loved… and weren’t ready to lose.

“Just, no. No! There has to be something-any-anything you can do for her,” I stuttered, damn near ready

to drop on my knees and beg.

The ring had been the missing link to the moonstones. We had inadvertently brought them together in

that Goddess forsaken field, and we had no idea what was supposed to happen next. Hadn’t Una said

something about immortality? Hadn’t the stones been the key to saving Rosalie and getting her healing

powers back? If so, why was Maeve still in such an awful way? It didn’t make sense.

“Queen Rosalie.” | turned to her, unable to hide the pain be hind my eyes. She nodded, clutching Ethan’s

arm for support. “You need to help her. We need your blood,”

“I lost my powers, Troy. I c-can’t!” She was desperate, her eyes spilling over with hot, angry tears.

Ethan opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off, not caring about the consequences or the fact that I

had been walking on eggshells with him since the day I met him.

“You have to do it. You have to. We brought the f*cking moonstones together. That has to mean

something. You’re going to try!” | commanded. I didn’t recognize my own voice at that mo ment.

“Alpha King, we need to deliver these infants now, before we lose them all,” said a man, a doctor,

dressed in a starched white jacket.

Ethan continued to look at me, however, his eyes searching my face. To my surprise, he pushed Rosalie

toward me, nodding

slowly as he accepted my demand.

The next thirty minutes were a blur. Rosalie, Ethan, and I were dressed in blue outfits that felt as though

they were made of paper. Maeve was completely sedated, which made me furious and caused my heart

to shatter into pieces. Ethan had to promise he’d stay out of the way, no matter what, in order for them to

let

him into the room.

She had been talking non-stop about what it would be like to see her babies being born, how it would

feel, how she would feel. She wasn’t scared. She was looking forward to it, wanting nothing more than to

bear witness to the process. And now she would miss every second.

I had no choice but to swallow my anger as the surgery be gan. One by one, the boys were born, the

doctors handing them off to nurses in rapid succession. Rosalie woke up, it seemed, her voice carrying

through the operating room as she pushed past the nurses handling the tiniest infants I had ever seen in

my life.

The smallest one, the one we had only known about for two days, was born last.

He wasn’t breathing.

I didn’t take my eyes off Maeve. I cradled her face between my hands and cried as I heard Rosalie

raising all kinds of hell on the opposite end of the room. A clang rang out, the sound of equipment hitting

the floor and small instruments scattering across the white tile. Please, I thought. Rosalie, please. Save

him.

I was counting the minutes, with the numbers clicking through my mind the only thing keeping me upright

at that point. There was a commotion behind the curtain, doctors scrambling as the beeping of the heart

monitor next to us began to slow, and then stop.

Rosalie nearly tackled me to the ground in her efforts to get to Maeve. I watched in slow motion as she

held her bloodied hand to Maeve‘s mouth, Rosalie’s lips moving in a rapid, desper

ate prayer.

I watched the heart monitor’s screen.

Please.

Come on, please!

Maeve’s hand was limp, her arm laying over the side of the operating table. The ring was still on her

finger, and I noticed it begin to glow, faintly at first, then so bright it rivaled the fluores cent lights over our

heads.

Rosalie took a step backward, her entire body trembling. I caught her before she fell, holding her upright

as the doctors con tinued their attempts to save Maeve’s life.

A baby cried, and I let the tears fall. Please, Goddess. Don’t take their mother.

A pair of nurses were talking to me, trying to coax me into let ting Rosalie go. Rosalie had passed out

and was limp in my arms, but I hadn’t even noticed. I was watching the screen, holding my breath,

watching, waiting to see if Maeve’s heart was going to beat again.