Chapter 0031
Lucian’s POV
It took a while for me to finally calm Sheila down enough to hang up the phone, but when I finally did, I breathed a big sigh of relief. At the end, she still insisted I come home, but at least she wasn’t threatening suicide anymore. I’d convinced her that I would leave early.
Early, however, did not mean this minute.
Right now, I had to find Aria. After finding her missing from the pool area, I searched through the house. Coming up empty once again, I tried to think about where she would have gone. Then I remembered how she would often compliment my mother on her gardens.
Aria loved it out there.
I cursed myself. Knowing that, the gardens should have been the first place I checked.
Rushing outside, I searched for Aria and found her wandering among the flowers. Her face was tumed upright, her eyes on the stars. The starlight complimented her features, making her skin glow. She looked ethereal like this, almost as if she didn’t belong in this world, among us mere mortals.
Then she turned and looked at me, and I saw a flash of pain in her eyes before a shield came up over them.
Swallowing down my rising guilt–I could only imagine what I’d done to hurt her this time – I walked toward her. She stopped, as if waiting for me to fol
her, though she also looked away, her eyes on the dark flowers now, no
longer on the stars.
I realized with a bit of a start that this was the first time we’d been alone since our anniversary, when I’d publically backed Sheila and embarrassed Aria. I had thought that was the start of my troubles with Aria. Now, wondered if things ran deeper than that.
Regardless, whatever it was that divided us now, we could fix it. We just needed to talk it through. I had a good explanation for any and every problem she could come up with, I was sure of it. I just needed the chance to properly defend myself.
But Aria stayed quiet, as if she just wanted to stand in the dark in silence.
As Sheila was already expecting me, I couldn’t waste time idling. We needed to resolve things now, so I could go home and tend to Sheila as well.
“Aria, about the divorce…”
“Let’s not talk about it,” she said.
“We have to talk about it,” I argued.
“No,” she said. “We really don’t.” With a sigh, she glanced at me and added, “I know you invited me here in an attempt to change my mind, but it won’t work. My mind is made up.”
Looking at her, I almost couldn’t believe the words she was saying to me now. But they were true. They had to be.
Because never in my years of knowing her had Aria ever sounded this cold. It was as if a switch inside of her had been flipped. Even earlier this evening she had spoken to me with some measure of warmth. Now, it was as if she had a blizzard inside of herself, chilling every word that left her mouth.
This coldness told me one thing. Aria’s request for a divorce was genuine, not a joke or a call for attention. She wanted to be apart from me.
Chapter 0031
25 BONUS
“We could have children,” I said, hoping that would offer her comfort. A child would give her the attention that I could not.
“You believe we could have children?” she asked me. She shook her head. “We’ve tried, over the past few years, but it was never possible then. And it isn’t now. Do you know why?”
“No,” I admitted. I had wondered, especially earlier in our relationship when our attempts had been more frequent. But sometimes it could take certain werewolves a long time to conceive. That didn’t make it impossible.
“The deeper the mate bond and the better the relationship between the mated pair, the easier it is for a werewolf couple to conceive,” Aria said. “Our second chance bond was never that strong…”
Chapter 0002
