The Barren Luna

4 - Ginny

I didn't have to wait long. Perhaps 20 minutes after Henry left our shared home, I started feeling slight cramping in my lower abdomen. I guessed they were warming up. The thought made me want to retch. Soon, however, the intensity of the pain really made me want to retch. The best way to describe it was the all-consuming cramping that accompanies food poisoning. I broke out in a cold sweat, and my ability to think clearly went out the window. I was pain. I was burning up, I was melting, I was suffering, and in a very sick way, I welcomed it. I wanted to burn for my barrenness, I wanted to etch my mate's betrayal into my skin in order to never forget it as long as I lived, in order not to forgive it no matter what may happen afterwards.

As the pain gradually subsided, I glanced at the clock. Thirty-five minutes. Not your best work, Henry, I thought, amazed at myself for still having the energy to be snarky. I involuntarily remembered some of my first heats with him, the unbearable craving for my mate, the desire to be completely enmeshed with each other, all thoughts completely gone except for him. The male whose ambrette smell was so deeply imprinted on my body and my insides that no one could tell where he ended and I began. Now I imagined that same scent mixing with the cloying vanilla of his whore, and, not for the first time since this ordeal began, I wondered how he could be doing this to us.

Lost in thought, I almost missed the first stirrings of new pain, but then it hit me like a ton of bricks, more intensely than the first wave, and at least it made me stop thinking. My wolf was howling inconsolably, the poor animal devastated by the deepest betrayal known to our kind, that of a mate. The mate bond took precedence over even the maternal bond, since shifters were known to almost always survive the death of their pups, but over half of them could not go on after the loss of a mate. And those who managed to were never the same again.

***

I woke up in the hospital to Henry angrily pacing and yelling something at the nurse standing next to my bed. When they both noticed I was awake, Henry ran over to me and grabbed my hand:

"Ginny, are you okay?"

Even with my addled brain, I knew enough to shoot him an incredulous look and yank my hand out of his.

"What happened?" I asked the nurse instead. She looked at me with pity.

"What is the last thing you remember, Luna?"

"I was trying to get to the bathroom. The pain-" I trailed off.

"Do you know what date it is today?"

I focused on the day Henry left. It was May 20. I think I made it to the next day without passing out.

"May 21?"

"It's May 23," she informed me sadly and I couldn't bear to look at her anymore.

"When can she go home?" The Alpha asked.

"The doctor will be with you shortly to go over everything."

He sat down next to me and tried holding my hand again. This time I let it rest there like a dead fish, while staring at the ceiling.

"I'm sorry, baby. I – you wouldn't believe how sorry I am you got hurt. Why didn't you take the drugs, Ginny? What were you thinking?"

I didn't respond. What was the point? He was still saying that I got hurt, not that he hurt me.

"Never mind then, the important thing is that this is behind us. It's done. We don't have to worry about it any more."

We were worrying? From where I stood, I was the only one worrying while he was off at his fuck-fest. As for it being over, I wasn't so sure about that either. A deeply buried insecure part of me was hoping that she wouldn't get pregnant on the first try, even though it meant enduring the pain of the last four days two more times, as per the agreement set forth by the Council. It would confirm what that small kernel inside me surmised, that maybe the puplessness we were struggling with wasn't my fault. It had been weaponized against me so many times that, despite my better judgment, I occasionally found myself viewing it as a shortcoming instead of a simple fact of life.