While I hesitated to apologize, Sheila curled herself more firmly against Lucian’s chest and whimpered,
“I have no idea why she would hate me so much. Is it because I’m your ex-fated mate, Lucian? Doesn’t she understand that I’m now just a pitiful, lonely woman after the divorce…?”
Lucian rubbed his hand up and down Sheila’s back in a soothing motion, though his ice cold eyes stayed fixed on me.
I wanted to deny that I hated her, but I couldn’t lie. With her behavior tonight, my dislike of her had pushed into full hatred, and it was only getting worse.
Sheila turned to look at me. With a glimmer of vengeance flashing through her gaze, she said, “Aria wanted the necklace, Lucian. The moment she saw me with it, she lunged at me!”
“That’s not true!” I said at once, shocked by the ease Sheila delivered her deceptions. “You tripped yourself just now, and –”
“That’s enough,” Lucian said firmly, cutting me off. Emotion crept into his eyes at last, but it was nothing that offered comfort to me. No love. No understanding. No kindness at all.
Only disappointment.
“Do not attempt to lie to me, Aria.”
“Oh, Lucian. It was terrible.” Sheila buried her face against Lucian’s shoulder. As he pressed his arms more fully around her, embracing her, she tilted her head to cast a sly, taunting smirk at me.
My stomach flipped so hard I thought I might be sick.
That was my husband she was embracing and treating as her own.
“Everyone in this room knows why you are acting this way,” Lucian told me. “Jealousy. You are my second mate, Aria. I expect you to act with dignity. Not like a petty child.”
He scolded me, even as the cameras flashed and the reporters scribbled down in their notepads, trying to transcribe him word for word. One captured his voice with a tape recorder.
The growing distrust in Lucian’s eyes made my heart shatter into a thousand tiny pieces, too many and too small to rebuild.
Sheila winced then, drawing Lucian’s full attention.
“My ankle,” Shelia said, feigning pain. “I think it twisted when I fell.”
“Careful. You shouldn’t walk on that.” Without further warning, Lucian bent, scooped Shelia into his arms, and held her in a bridal carry against his chest.
“My hero,” Sheila said, smiling now.
Lucian turned and, holding Sheila, began to carry her away from the crowd – and away from me.
“Lucian? Wait, I…?”
He was already gone, beyond the barricade of seats and people. Reporters filled the space he had been.
Between the shouted questions, and the flashing lights, I started to feel overwhelmed. Everything was getting blurry around the edges.
Then, suddenly, a sharp pain tore through my stomach so strongly that I doubled over. I wrapped my arms around my waist, but the pain only amplified.
“Lucian!” I called out in hurt and in fear.
Then I collapsed.
***
For a time, I felt as if I was floating in darkness. I couldn’t see or feel anything, but I knew I wasn’t dead. Instead I was caught somewhere between unconscious and awake, unable to drift fully into one or the other.
Around me, I heard voices.
“Lucian, you know how I feel. I’ve never stopped loving you.” That was Sheila’s voice, but it was broken and watery, like she was sobbing.
“But with you, everything changed for me. If we had never mated, I wouldn’t be suffering like this. You can’t possibly know how devastating it is to be a barren she-wolf.”
Silence was her only reply for a long moment. Then, soft as a whisper and filled with guilt, Lucian replied, “I’ll make it up to you, Sheila. Somehow we will find a way to cure you.”
“The pack healers are useless!” Sheila snapped, her voice suddenly much stronger than before. “If you really want to make it up to me… If you mean it about finding me a cure… Then I need Dr. A! That legandary genius Healer!”
“No one knows how to find Dr. A. They disappeared a few years ago and –”
“You promised,” Shelia said, her voice wobbly again. “Unless you didn’t mean it…”
“I don’t say things I don’t mean,” Lucian replied. “If Dr. A is the only one who can cure you, then I will track them down.”
“There’s the man I love… You know, maybe when I can have children again, I could finally give you a child of our own.”
Lucian said something. I was sure he did. But the words were lost in the haze of my mind as I fell into unconsciousness once more.
*
When I finally blinked my eyes open, I was in my bedroom, in my bed.
Confused, I pushed myself up to my elbows. Hadn’t I fainted at the charity event?
A maid tidied around the room, dusting here and there without any real purpose. What she was doing seemed like busywork, as if her real job was to keep an eye on me, but that couldn’t be. There was no way Lucian would ask her to do such a thing, after how coldly he acted at the gala.
When she spotted me, awake and upright, she immediately abandoned her dust rag and walked to my side. “Oh, Aria! How are you feeling? King Lucian will want to know you are awake.”
I highly doubted that. “How did I get here?”
“King Lucian brought you back,” the maid said. “Shelia came with him.”
“Are they still here?”
“No. They left again about an hour ago.” The maid glanced toward the door. “I should call him at once. He will want to know you are awake.” She rushed out of the room before I could tell her not to bother. Lucian wouldn’t care.
At least, I didn’t think he would.
Beside me, a chair had been pulled up beside the bed. It was empty now, but I wondered – more, I hoped – that Lucian might have sat there earlier.
Perhaps that conversation I had heard hadn’t been the ramblings of my imagination. Could it have been real? Could it have happened right beside me as I slept?
If it was real, it might explain why Lucian had always been so cold toward me and distant in our marriage. How long had he been in love with Sheila?
And their talk of having a child…
I always wanted children, which was why I’d been so heartbroken that after three years of marriage, I still hadn’t conceived.
Although, I remembered now. Right before I fainted, I had a sharp pain in my stomach.
Could it be?
It would explain why an otherwise healthy individual such as myself would suddenly faint.
“You need to test it.” whispered my wolf, Luna, from inside of my mind.
She’s right. After a moment’s consideration, I decided that I would rather know now.
Throwing back my covers, I stepped out from the bed and crossed the room to my chest of drawers. In the bottom drawer, buried in the far back corner, was my old medical kit. Grabbing it, I hauled it into my private bathroom.
During the testing process, I was really nervous.
I’d wanted to be a mother so badly. But at the same time, I was sad and afraid. My husband loved someone else, and might not even want this baby with me.
He’d promised Sheila that he would bring back the long-lost Dr. A to cure Sheila’s infidelity. Then, they would have their own child together.
My baby and I would be cast aside…
“That will not happen,” whispered my wolf, Luna, from inside of my mind. “A child this important would not be abandoned by our Alpha.”
“You’ve seen the way he’s been treating me,” I replied in my thoughts. “You can’t say for certain what he would do.”
Fifteen minutes later, after a quick diagnosis of myself, the truth slapped me in the face.
I was pregnant.
A mix of conflicted emotions surged through me, pulling me from soaring heights to plunging lows. I held my breath.
I’m pregnant, with a child… that my husband may not have been expecting.
He only wants Sheila to have a child for him.They are finding Dr.A, to heal her issue…
At that moment, Luna went quiet too.
Overwhelmed, I traced my hand over the cool leather of my medical kit. Many years ago, when I had been a practicing healer, I had been given this doctor’s bag as a gift. My grateful patron had even embossed my old insignia into the side.
…What should I do?
The leather had worn slightly with age, making the embossing less distinct than before, but it was still there. Looking closely, I could see it.
It’s the initials of my name “Aria”. A single letter—
