Olivia POV

I stare at the doctor in silence, wondering if maybe he has the wrong file in hand, or maybe this is all some joke my mate, Alpha Herold, has put my doctor up to. I came in today for a check-up, a few common cold symptoms, but not this. I read his blank, cold expression, something dangerously serious about the diagnosis.

“Can—Can you say that again?” I plead, assuming that I misheard his original verdict.

“Six months, if you’re lucky,” he says, flipping through his clipboard of papers. “This pregnancy has accelerated your hepatocirrhosis, which will likely only leave you with less than half a year of life expectancy.”

“I’m going to die in six months?” I repeat, trying to find the part that I may have missed.

“If this goes untreated or the pregnancy is attempted to be carried to term, then yes.”

“If I’m lucky?”

He glances back down at his packet, nodding generously. “Yeah, if you’re lucky.”

I haven’t been feeling well for the last few weeks, maybe even months, but I hadn’t had the slightest clue that I was pregnant—or dying. I would be concerned over my health if there wasn’t a child in the equation. I would long for nothing more than to provide my Alpha mate a child but at the expense of what? My life?

What if we both die before I can go into labor?

“We can assume that terminating this child would be the best option to expand your life expectancy, but even then, the results are bleak.” He clicks his tongue, sure of his words.

I feel the tears well in my eyes, falling recklessly down my cheeks. “What if I keep the pregnancy? Then what? What will be the treatment then?”

He stares through me, like I’ve tied a noose around my neck willingly. “Well, your immune system would shut down first, then your body would slowly deteriorate and you would have little chance of recovery, if any chance at all. Whatever health you do maintain will be segregated for the child and you would likely die trying to keep it alive.”

“I want to keep this baby,” I say, shaking my head quickly. “It would be our only child together—I have to keep it. Please. For my mate, I have to.”

The doctor seems skeptical, setting down his clipboard and leaning back against his countertop. “I suggest you speak with your husband about this matter first, before you make any rash decisions. But as it stands with your current health, if we were to terminate the pregnancy, your chances of full recovery would still be dim with your ailing liver. Perhaps, when you talk to your husband, you tell him the options are strictly this: either you live, or you and the baby both die in six months.”

I walk home alone in a grim silence. I should tell Herold the minute I see him about what the doctor told me, about the options and the way I want to go about things, but when I walk into our home, I see him and his favorite gamma sitting on the couch together.

Alicia is curled up beside my mate, her feet kicked up on our couch while my mate holds an arm over her shoulders. For a moment, I think I’m walking into a normal, loving couple’s home, but the reality is it’s my home, the home I was intending to share with my Alpha mate. He is far too preoccupied with Alicia, though. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence.

It’s hard to ignore the fact that I had given half of my perfectly healthy liver to Alicia years ago, and that’s what has me in the failing state that I’m in now. I keep the dismay to myself though, shutting the door into our home behind me as I make a trip to the bathroom, my stomach starting to cramp wildly.

“Olivia, why don’t you come watch a movie with us?” Alicia asks, purposefully snuggling closer to Herold as she does so in her pristine, high-pitched voice she uses when she wants to make a dig at me.

It works, and I wave off her false attempt to be nice to me.

I hear her cough a cry, catching the attention of my mate who does what he does best and soothes the gamma, as though I slammed a door in her face or something. I can’t help but listen to her weep in his arms as she blame herself for my attitude towards her, as though she hasn’t earned it.

“It’s okay, Alicia. I’ll teach her a lesson in manners. No one disrespects you like that and—” Herold has a temper that overboils quick and not even I can seem to calm him down on his bad days.

Something about Alicia, though. She settles him in no time. “No, no,” she coos. “Stay here, with me. Please. She isn’t going to be an issue much longer, right?”

I shut the bathroom door slowly, hearing my mate hum his reply, “Right.”

I am far too busy needing to throw up to make sense of their exchange.

If seeing them together wasn’t enough to make me sick, the news the doctor told me makes me even more ill. I lean over the toilet, clearing my stomach as the fire shoots up my throat and forces me to heave for every breath.

Dizzy, I step back, wiping the sweat off my forehead and then wiping my mouth, noticing a splotch of blood lacing my gums, trailing across the back of my hand. I look away, knowing that what the doctor said is true. I don’t have much time left. I can taste the blood in my throat, in my broken system.

I am broken except for one positive thing I can look forward to.

I hold a hand to my stomach, feeling for the baby I know is in there now. “It’s okay if I throw up. It’s not so bad. Even if I die, at least your father can have you to love. And don’t you worry, he will love—”

There’s a harsh knock on the door, and I clean up the remaining mess of my sickness before pulling the door open. Herold stands in the doorway expectantly, a stack of papers in his hands, outstretched for me to take. His eyes are downcast, and he hardly seems to notice I’m here if it weren’t for the packet he holds out for me to take.

My eyes are still damp and my body is sweaty profusely, cramps in my stomach making me dizzy while I try to settle my nerves as I take the papers, ignoring them at first so I can finally clear this secret from my mind. I have waited our whole marriage for news this good to share with him.

“Herold,” I breathe, smiling for the first time today. “I have to tell you something. I went to the doctor today and he told me I’m—”

He looks discant, as though my words don’t touch him. “I want a divorce, Olivia.”

My world shatters for a moment.

In the next, I glance at the stack of papers I hold, feeling the world crash down around me and my mate, and our unborn pup, all at once.

Dissolution of Marriage Agreement.