A/N   So the picture above is going to be the cover for the final- ish book of the series. All the details aren't on the cover because I didn't want to give it away. I wonder if you guys can guess who it's about. 🤔

It felt like weeks, months, years had drifted by when in reality it had been but a few days. A few days of unmountable grief. The loss clutched her heart no matter what she did.

Even Zosia by her side could not ease the pain. The beautiful green eyed child was a reminder of everything she would never have. No babies. No little child who would depend on her for everything. Who would kick inside her stomach, the closest person to her heart.

She would not have that. The bitterness had been festering in her mind. She felt it eating away at her, day in and day out. It wasn't fair. The rage clouded her mind, she felt the urge to wreck the place. Pummel the blankets and trash the room but her body was weak.

She had insufferable cramps. Every clenching pain a reminder of what she had lost, as if her inability to have children was some temporarily missing thing and not the real life prevailing wreckage it was.

She was less of a woman now.

She would never be complete. There was no hope, no silver lining at the end of the tumultuous storm that was her life.

Why?

Could the gods not love her just a little bit and ease this pain. Make her nightmares not be true.

Her comms device had been going off for the longest while, she had messages and calls from Khan. He was hounding her down but she wasn't ready to speak to him, she didn't want to speak to anyone. Especially not Simeon. He had asked her a thousand times in the few days she had been awake, to speak to him but she couldn't.

To tell him would be to admit her reality, she didn't want to. She couldn't admit that this was it for them. No children, no mates. Her biggest fear was that she would see the elation in his eyes when she told him. She doubted he would be so cruel but her mind was playing tricks. She couldn't see the good in people not when life kept giving her the worst.

Their conversation about children kept replaying in her mind. There would be no way he wouldn't be happy and she wouldn't be able to survive it.

She didn't want to breathe because every breath of air was another day she would linger in this childless existence.

She didn't want food, she didn't want to speak. She didn't want anything. She just wanted to cry, why couldn't they just let her cry.

The doctors kept coming in, hooking her up to some blood bag in hopes that this would do the trick but there was no magic that could fix this because it wasn't a trick. This was her reality and she didn't want it.

Her comms device bleeped in her lap and she finally snapped, growling down the line she answered "Who is this" words felt foreign to her lips. Her voice croaky as she finally spoke after what felt like a lifetime

"Uhh, umm- Jana it's umm, mum." Voice unsure and wavering.

"Neema?" It didn't sound like Neema, this voice was weaker. More frail.

"No- it's uhh Felicity."

"Oh. What did you need." Her voice was harsh, she couldn't help it. She didn't want to.

She was angry and unfortunately Felicity was the first person she was speaking to. She couldn't see this ending well, especially when her residual anger at her mother was mingling with all her new bitterness. Her emotions were potent.

"I, well I've been wondering about you." Silence. Awkward silence.

"Khan said you got in contact with Neema and I guess you forgot about me." She snickered lightly but there was clear hurt in her tone. Hurt that Jana couldn't care about because her pain was so much more stifling.

She had forgotten about Felicity, she hadn't meant to but she did. Felicity had been in her life for quite some time now but even so Jana could never call her mum like she did Neema. It had never felt right. Even though Neema had never intentionally tried to take over the role of her mother, Jana felt more attached to Neema then Felicity.

She couldn't help it. She had been raised by Neema and by the time Felicity was found, Jana had been adamant that she didn't need another mother. Not when Neema was failing so horrendously in her duty to raise her. What good was another mother? Felicity had just fallen into step with Neema anyway. The two had become a force that the younger her couldn't fight against. Felicity had made those tough years so much harder because she had agreed with Neema.

There was awkward silence down the line as Jana made no effort to apologise or converse, her mind elsewhere and so Felicity rambled on.

"I was just with Lara and her eldest is having a difficult pregnancy and it made me think of when I was carr-" her words stopped abruptly at the harsh breathing over the line. Her heart thudding in her chest at the repressed sobs that crackled through the line. Sniffles and muffled wails.

"Jana. What's wrong baby?" Her voice was so soft, so sad. She was worried and that maternal worry from the woman who carried her for 9 months was the chink in Jana's armour.

Sobs dripping from her moth as she hiccuped and choked around her words. Trying to explain what was wrong even as she tried to tamp down her cries. 

"I got hurt and-" and it was like a damn had been broken. There was no containing the tidal of emotions that cascaded out of her body. Her stomach spasmed in pain as she coughed and wailed her pain. Eyes clenched tight, heart disintegrating to ash.

Her face sinking into her hands,"There's this scarring" she tried to force the tears away, hands wiping erratically at her tears.

"And the doc-the doc- I can't" she couldn't go any further, she couldn't say those words out loud. She couldn't say it. She couldn't speak it into existence.

No babies. Babies. "Babies" she was dying, her throat closing up as she gasped and wheezed for air. It hurt. A pain so vivid it felt worse than any physical affliction she had ever experienced.

"Shhh, it's okay" murmured Felicity, sniffing down the line as she tried to comfort Jana. This was the first time she had ever comforted her daughter in her life and it was overwhelming. She had dreamed of Jana coming to her for support for years, but not like this. Never in these circumstances.

"It hurts."

Her heart cracked further at her youngest child's pain, her little baby. "I know baby girl."

"I don't want it."

"Why! It's not fair" Jana's hands were smashing into the bed, throwing pillows and ripping the sheets. She collapsed on the bed in exhaustion. Her body curled in the fetal position like she was back in her mothers womb. The place where Felicity had rubbed her stomach and spoken soft promises to the growing life inside her.

"I know it hurts but you'll get through this." Tears trailed down Jana's face as she gripped the comms device to her chest. Clutching it like it was a life line. Her mothers words floating out of the device.

"It's okay to feel depressed, to feel defeated." Felicity was crying too, words choked as she went back to a place that she wished no woman- let alone her daughter- would ever be at.

"I know you want to give up." The urge to give up drowned Jana daily, she didn't want to exist. she couldn't, not when her future had been ripped so cruelly from her hands.

Stammering Felicity kept speaking. Her words coming from a deep dark place, a place where Jana had been dwelling "I know you feel like- like less of a woman."

"Like less of a mate." Jana's eyes clenched tighter as she heard the whispers, the taunts. Felicity spoke to her deepest fears as if they were own.

"I know you're scared." She was so scared, scared of what this meant for her. Scared to believe that this was her reality.

"But just know that I love you. And it's okay to feel these emotions." Heart pulsing, she lay there listening to her mothers voice crooning in her ear.

"You will have bad days. Days where you will see a child and just hate your life and then you'll have days when you'll be okay."

"You'll never be perfect but you'll move on and sometimes it will hurt so bad that you won't even want to move."

Her voice cracked as she fought back the pain that took her back to her younger years. Years where abdominal pains that led to rivers of blood and the loss of life was all she knew. The years where Caillum and Jana had just been a dream. A dream that had become a curse. The gods had taken the joy of having children from her, she hadn't wanted them but she had. Years of miscarriages had damaged her insides further so that by the time Caillum came around she was on the brink of death. He had barely survived.

Then Jana, her little baby. She had been her last. There had been relief when her uterus was taken from within her and that had hurt her the most. The fact that she was happy that she could no longer pro-create. She had been torn.

"The gods don't give us more than we can bear and I know you probably hate them right now." Felicity knew the feeling all to well.

"But they won't foresake you." Jana had always revered the gods, until this moment. The moment when they had taken from her more than they had ever given her.

"Have hope and when all else fails just know you have us."

Jana's breathing began to slow as her mother lulled her to sleep, her soft hopeful words melting into Jana and easing the clinching around her heart.

"We love you Jana, so don't give up on us okay."

"Thank you, mum." And Felicity's heart fluttered because it was the first time she had heard those words escape from her daughters lips. Just for her.

//--//

"How is she" Khan's angry words were the first thing Simeon heard the moment he answered the call. His comms device was bleeping red telling him that Khan wanted to see him but he refused the request.

He knew without seeing himself in a mirror that he looked like death but even that was more life than Jana had. She was death and despair. She was a slither of the female he had first met.

Even Zosia hadn't managed to shake her from the deep grips of grief that choked her. She was suffering and she wouldn't share that burden with him. He knew it was something bad but even the doctor had refused to tell him.

What was the point in being an Alpha if pack members refused to listen to you. He couldn't be too mad though because he was being loyal to Jana and at this moment that was what she needed.

"She's not speaking" hands raking through his hair in stress.

"Still?" Simeon's head sunk further into his hands at Khan's shout, he was livid.

"Do I need to come there and get my daughter because I will and I'll fucking Kill you for hurting her." Rage coating every word as he threatened one of his oldest and closest friends.

"I didn't hurt her!" Simeon interjected anger climbing though his body.

He couldn't take blame over this situation as much as he wanted to. As much as the guilt was warring with his mind. He knew he wasn't to blame but she was his mate and Zosia was his daughter. He should have done better by both of them.

"But she was hurt under your care!"

Silence. He couldn't defended his actions or in this case inactions.

"Fuck Simeon. You know how I feel." Throat thick with emotion, Khan sounded as if he was on the brink of having a break down.

"That's my little girl, my baby."

"I know," he sighed in defeat, the situation was worsening as the days progressed. She refused to talk, barely ate. She was hardly conscious enough to even know what day it was. She was loosing herself in her emotions and nothing he said or did was helping.

In fact he felt that his prescence, his care made it worse.

"I care for her. This is killing me just as much as it is you but the doctor said to give her time." 

"That's my daughter and I'm telling you she doesn't need time. She needs to vent!" thundered Khan, a smashing sound on the other end of the phone followed by swear words and obscenities.

Simeon didn't want to give her time either, he wanted to march into that tent she was dwelling in and demand she tell him. Force her to tell him but he couldn't for fear that he would make it worse and so instead he sat by her bed and stroked her hair.

Every day without a fail he sat by her bed and when her tears started up he held her in his embrace because he would rather die then leave her to face this alone. Alpha duties be damned.

"Sort this shit out Simeon, I am giving you 3 fucking days!"

3 days would not be enough and they both knew it. Whatever had Jana in its crisps was not something that could just be made better by 3 days but he would try. For her sake he would try anything.

"You are my friend but I'm telling you, you don't want me as an enemy."

The comms device flickered red as silence filled the line. Khan had exited the chat leaving Simeon more frustrated than he had been.

He was annoyed but more importantly worried, he was genuinely worried about whatever news the doctor had dealt her. It had to be serious and it hurt him that she wouldn't confide in him but he couldn't blame her. They didn't exactly have the perfect mating, they weren't even fully mated for crying out loud. How could he expect her to trust him with her secrets and worries when he hadn't even fully confided in her.

He couldn't but still he felt a pang over the fact that she refused to confide in him.

"Simeon?" came a tentative voice by his tent flap.

"Ju"

"I have some information on Sonja," Simeon's ears automatically perked up as he nodded the other Alpha to enter his domain. His back ramrod straight as he awaited the news.

Not one to beat around the bush, Ju-long jumped right in, "She didn't hurt Zosia."

An expletive flew from Simeon's mouth "I didn't think she had."

He hadn't but he had hoped that she had. He had wanted any reason to rip her to shreds, her attack on Jana wouldn't be substantial evidence to give her maxim punishment. He was pissed. Enraged.

The tent became a wreck as he upturned the small table, ruining all of Jana's efforts to make his tent homely.

"Did she give up any names?" his words hard to make out over the crunching of his boot as he kicked at the small wooden table

"No but she has confirmed what we have thought for a while, we have a leak."

"Just fucking great," he spat, spinning towards a somewhat blasé Ju-Long. His body language only pissed Simeon off more. He was having a mental break down, his daughter abused, his mate starving herself all the while Ju-long seemed relatively fine. Happy even.

"It is great, I have a plan. Two birds one stone."