Morrigan: I Am Your Fate

When I was 18 I had to carry a child I did not want. It was not an easy pregnancy; I was sick nearly constantly and my stomach swelled to the point I could barely move towards the end. I don’t know if the child was a girl or a boy - my Alpha’s mate made sure I did not ever see. Her own children had been a disappointment to her mate, and to the rest of our pack, when it turned out they were weak. She told me countless times that I should be honored that he used me to provide him with another - usually as she was stood watching us to make sure he did not make any aspect of the process enjoyable for me. I think I hated her more than I hated him, and I am sure that she was lying when she told the pack my child was stillborn. When I first realized I was in labor I tried to hide it from her; I was convinced that she would kill me when the job was finally done. She had been watching me like a hawk for days, and I fought through every agonizing contraction to try to save myself.  If I could just make it through to nightfall I could go somewhere private and find a way to get through this without anyone knowing. I had planned for weeks to hide myself away when the time came until I could present her mate with his child. That way she would not be able to tell the pack I died in childbirth and brush my murder off as an unfortunate result of a difficult birth. I pressed my hands to my swollen belly and confirmed what I already knew - the contractions were coming sooner now. The skin and muscles hardened and I stared into the fire I was sat beside as the violent pain wrenched through me. We had been calling this campsite home for the past week. We usually moved after a few days, but when my Alpha’s mate tried to pressure him to move on this time he dismissed her requests. I knew that everybody would be watching me for any sign I might be close to labor after that. I felt freezing cold and clammy even though I was close to the fire, and as the latest contraction finally came to an end I knew that I had started to sweat with the effort of disguising my discomfort. I could not keep this a secret for much longer. My hands were still on my stomach when it tightened again a few seconds later. I hoped that nobody was looking at me because the fear that I felt would be easy to see in my eyes. The contractions had first started yesterday - brief twinges of pain that I brushed off as discomfort until the first time I noticed my stomach harden beneath my hand. They had been coming closer together since we ate our lunch, but never this close. I had time to recover between them before. I took a final gasping breath as the pain took hold of me and this time it resulted in a sickening feeling of warmth and wetness between my legs. Fuck. I looked down in horror as I felt unforgiving hands wrench me up from where I was sat and heard a voice growl my name. “Morrigan.” My Alpha’s mate. Her name was Gaella and her harsh features and raven black hair did nothing to comfort me when she spun me round to face her and confirm what she already knew - my waters had broken. It was more than that, though. My pale linen dress was stained at the crotch with an alarming amount of crimson blood, soaking into the fabric and leaving an indelible sign for everyone that something was not right. Gaella pulled me harshly away from the fireside and shoved me into the large hide-covered tent that she shared with her mate. “Luc,” she sounded just as angry at him as she was at me. He was in the tent with another woman because she had been glued to my side nearly constantly for days and he needed something to entertain him while he waited for me to present him with his future heir. I cried out in pain and grabbed one of the supports keeping the tent up to steady myself as another contraction wracked through me. There was no point trying to hide anything now; they all knew what was happening to me. There was more warmth between my legs and the stench of blood intensified. “I told you this one’s hips were too narrow to cope with bearing an Alpha’s child. You just had to go for the pretty little thing rather than making a sensible choice.” The disdain in Luc's eyes as he looked back at his mate made it clear why he had chosen me. Gaella was a tall woman. Her hair was raven black, and she was extremely pale with dark brown eyes that looked black in most light. I am small and was called a runt throughout most of my childhood because of it. My hair is pure white, my skin is tanned, and my eyes are the color of Baltic amber. My Alpha chose me because he did not have to think of Gaella while he was having his way with me. He shooed away the woman he had been in bed with. I was almost incoherent at the time, but I think that it was another of the pack members I could have described as the total opposite of Gaella physically. He had only chosen to mate her because she was the daughter of an Alpha he wanted to form an alliance with, and she was as skilled as he was magically. He had never liked her, and I believe he would have rejected her and taken me as his unwilling mate if I gave him a son. Luc got up, and Gaella shoved me in the back as I panted and screamed through another contraction. I fell to my hands and knees on the pile of furs they slept on and tried to twist away from her grasp as she grabbed the hem of my dress to tear it away. “Modesty is the least of your worries; you’re going to die you silly little bitch.” I heard a loud clap and I scrambled onto my back in time to see Gaella staring at Luc in shock. He had slapped her hard for that comment. He shoved her towards me and she was wide-eyed and trembling in what she would try and claim was anger. “If you let her die out of pettiness, I will tear out your throat without a second thought. Do something about this, you have been through it enough times yourself to know what is going on with her.” Gaella knelt down and shoved my legs open forcefully as Luc watched over her. She thrust her fingers into me with no warning to check how far I had progressed and smiled in a way that made my stomach churn as she withdrew them. “Oh, Morrigan,” she c****d her head and pouted in a mocking display of fake sympathy, “you better hope you didn’t lose too much blood. You’ve got a long way to go and it is always worse when the water breaks this early on.” Another contraction. This time I felt the overwhelming instinctive urge to bear down, but Gaella smacked me hard across the cheek now that Luc had gone and she threatened to cut the child out of me herself if I pushed again before it was time. She made every last contraction a living nightmare because she added humiliation to the pain and fear I felt. I knew that she considered watching me suffer her reward for being a dutiful mate to Luc and allowing him his pick of the women in our pack when she agreed he should get another woman pregnant. I didn’t ask for him. I never even expressed an interest in him. He was 24 and I was 18 and Gaella was probably right - my body just wasn’t built for what it was going through because of her mate. I felt the need to push again, and I started to cry because Gaella grabbed my throat and growled that she could choke the life out of me before my child took a single breath and no one would give a damn. The baby was coming. I couldn’t stop it, and I didn’t need her sticking her fingers into me to tell me that I had to push now. The hatred in her eyes turned to horror as she realized it was too late to stop this. Killing me now would make no difference. I screamed, and she struck me again, and it filled me with the adrenaline I needed to push even though I was exhausted and weak from the blood loss. The baby was out of me, and it was alive. She cut the cord and left me to deal with the afterbirth. I thought she was cleaning the child up to present it to Luc, but when she came back to me she wasn’t holding anything. She smiled again. “Congratulations. You are free from the burden of raising an Alpha.” “It’s a girl?” I was close to death, lying in a pool of my own blood, and I was so naive that I really thought that was what she meant. She laughed, and then left me alone to pass out and, she had assumed, die. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. When I came round the tent was largely empty, and I heard none of the sounds of my pack outside or the smells that were so familiar to me. I was still weak from blood loss, and now that the blood had dried it was irritating my skin. I was also still in pain from the labor, and I was starving and desperate for a drink. I tried to sit up but my head was spinning and I leaned over and threw up beside the pile of furs I had been left to die on before laying back down. I had almost accepted my fate was to die there, but as I hovered on the precipice between life and death I saw something. It was a man. He looked powerful, and his eyes were a shade I had never seen before. They were golden yellow and they were filled with love. His skin was a little darker than mine, and he had full lips and pale brown hair that was scruffy in a way that made him look roguish and full of life. He smiled at me, and his eyes creased at the corners because it was such a genuine smile. He reached down to help me up, and I reached out to accept his hand but found that there was nothing there, and my vision had evaporated. The mind does strange things to try and keep you going when you are that close to death; I felt less hopeless after that and I was no longer willing to accept that this was my fate. Gaella had lied to Luc and to the rest of my pack. She told them I had died along with my child. The infant she had killed in cold-blood was buried with dignity as the child of an Alpha, but I was left to decay in a tent and I wanted my revenge.