Ten years into our marriage, I was making the bed when I found a photograph tucked beneath my Alpha’s pillow. In the picture, he was cradling a pup with eyes identical to his own, one hand laced with the fingers of a woman whose face glowed with tenderness. That woman was his first love, the she-wolf Vanessa Sinclair. Photograph in hand, I drove straight to Damien’s company. But when I reached the door of his office, I heard tangled, breathless sighs drifting through the door. Vanessa was straddling Damien’s lap, arms looped around his neck, voice soft and coaxing. “I’m pregnant again. When are you going to throw out that worthless human bitch at home and make me your Luna?” It felt as though I’d been dropped into an icy pit, and the words he’d once said to me echoed in my ears. “I hate children.” That was why, in ten years of marriage, I had been pregnant three times—and each time, I had been forced to abort. I am human. Carrying an Alpha’s child is no easy thing, and every termination drained me to the bone. After the third procedure, the doctor told me my uterine wall had grown dangerously thin. The next surgery, he warned, could bring catastrophic bleeding. I begged Damien. I pleaded with him to let me bear the child and hand it over to my parents to raise. But he answered me with cold detachment. “If you keep it, we divorce.” And now, watching him stroke the woman in his arms with such doting affection, I heard him say: “Since you’re carrying it, then have it.” At last I understood. Damien didn’t hate children. He hated my children. I closed the door without a sound. Then I booked a flight out of the country for that very night. …….. I clutched the photograph and stumbled out of the building like a ghost. The downpour drenched me through and through. I saw Damien’s assistant shielding a small boy in a raincoat as they hurried toward the entrance. “Slow down, sir—careful, don’t slip.” The little boy turned, lifted his face into a beaming smile, and chirped in a sweet child’s voice. “I’m not scared of falling. I can’t wait to see Daddy and Mommy!” I stared at that face—an exact copy of Damien’s—and my breath froze in my throat. My hand drifted instinctively to my stomach. When I discovered the third pregnancy, the baby had already been five months along. The Pack Healer had performed a detailed prenatal scan, and on it I had seen a face whose brow and eyes were almost identical to Damien’s. Carrying the scan home, I had begged Damien on bended knee to let me keep the child. He hadn’t so much as glanced at the picture. He’d simply moved his things to the study. After that, we hadn’t spoken for half a month. I couldn’t bear the silent cruelty of his indifference. I scheduled the abortion. At last he was satisfied. The first words he spoke to me in two weeks were: “Good girl. I don’t like children.” I looked at the boy now. He had to be about five years old. And the fully formed child I had lost—that had been three years ago. So all along, the reason he refused my children was simple. He already had a child with his first love. Tears blurred my vision. I bit my lower lip until it bled, fighting down the urge to wail aloud. A moment later, Damien came out carrying the child. There was nowhere for me to hide. Through the curtain of rain, our eyes met. The boy frowned and shook the umbrella in his small hand. “Daddy, why is that lady standing in the rain?” “Can I give her my umbrella? She looks so sad.” I said nothing. I caught the warning in Damien’s eyes and stayed exactly where I stood. He had the assistant bring me an umbrella, then ushered the boy into the car. Vanessa appeared, schoolbag in hand. She took in the wretched sight of me and laughed in delight. Faintly, I heard Damien’s tender voice. “Liam, people who stand foolishly in a storm usually aren’t right in the head.” “They snap easily. From now on, if you see her, walk around her. She might hurt you.” The car rolled slowly past me, throwing up a spray of muddy water. Through the window, I saw Damien and Vanessa fingers intertwined while the little boy built blocks beside them in excitement. My phone vibrated. A message from Damien. “Go home first. I’ll explain everything.”
I scrolled through our messages. For half a year now, every message in the thread had been sent by me. “Dami, I made your favorite beef stew tonight. Coming home for dinner?” No reply. “Dami, I slipped on the stairs and sprained my ankle. Could you pick up some medicine on the way back?” Still no reply. With trembling fingers, I selected every message between us. And deleted them all with a single tap. At the same moment, a red dot bloomed beside a new contact—Vanessa. I hadn’t accepted her request, but as though pulled by some unseen hand, I tapped into her Instagram. Picture after picture of a blissful family of three. The day I lost my first child, Vanessa had posted a selfie, flashing a peace sign. In the corner, a trash can overflowed with empty cigarette packs. “We’re getting ready ~ my Alpha quit smoking. He promises to be the best daddy.” The day of my second miscarriage, there was a photo of Vanessa lying weakly in Damien’s arms, holding a wrinkled newborn pup. “Welcome to the world, my little one. My Alpha cried harder than I did during labor.” I traced the red rims of Damien’s eyes in the photo, and suddenly I remembered the trip we’d taken years ago to negotiate with another wolf family. There had been a sudden car crash. Without hesitation, I’d thrown my body over Damien’s. He had been untouched. A length of rebar had pierced clean through my chest. Damien had clutched my hand, his eyes anxious—yet still, somehow, distant. Even at the edge of death, he had called me by my full name. “Scarlett Rosewood, stay awake.” I had told myself he was simply cold by nature, unable to love, and I would warm him through. But the truth was, I had never set foot inside his heart. I couldn’t tell anymore whether what ran down my face was rain or tears. I only wanted to flag a cab and disappear. But I was soaked to the bone. Taxi after taxi refused to take me. So I walked. Tears slid down my cheeks. I slipped the wedding band off my ring finger and tossed it into a hedge. By the time I reached the house, there were just three hours until my flight. I shook my dizzy head, braced myself against the wall, and punched in the door code. The electronic lock buzzed, then released a piercing alert. “Incorrect password.” The next moment, the door swung open from inside. Vanessa looked me up and down with a provocative smirk, then offered an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I happened to mention that I couldn’t remember the password, and Dami just went ahead and changed it to my birthday.” I stood frozen in the doorway, staring as the household staff packed up and threw out the furniture and decor I had chosen with my own hands.
Damien took one look at my drenched, bedraggled state and frowned in displeasure. “I just had the living room cleaned. And now you’ve gone and dirtied it again.” My heart turned to ice. The tears I had only just managed to stop spilled over again. A gust of cold rain slipped in through the open door, and Vanessa sneezed. A flash of tender concern crossed Damien’s face. He immediately stripped off his coat and draped it over her shoulders. “Why haven’t you closed the door? What if Nessa catches a chill?” Numbly, I shut the door. Each step sent needle-sharp pain through the soles of my feet, blood seeping out with every footfall. Damien didn’t spare me a single glance. He instructed the staff to start a pot of beef broth. He guided Vanessa carefully into a chair, as if she were made of porcelain. She laughed coquettishly and pushed his hand away. “I’m not that fragile.” Then, as if only just noticing the blood on the floor, she gasped and covered her mouth. “Dami, Scarlett’s feet are torn up. Hurry, have someone bring the first aid kit.” At last the man’s gaze fell on my mangled feet. His brow furrowed. Just as I was bracing myself to refuse his help, certain he was about to call for the medicine box— He swept Vanessa into his arms with an expression of disgust and snapped at the staff. “Bring the alcohol! Disinfect everything.” The maid hurried over and poured alcohol all across the floor I had walked. It splashed into the wounds on my feet, burning like a thousand ants gnawing at the bone. The look Damien gave me was the look one gave a pathogen—as if he wanted nothing more than to throw me out at once. After a moment of thought, that was exactly what he did. “Housekeeper. Pack a few of Scarlett’s things and send her to a hotel.” Vanessa nestled smugly into Damien’s chest, fingers brushing her faintly swollen belly. “Sorry, Scarlett. He’s just worried you might carry germs that could harm the baby.” “You’ll have to put up with moving out for now.” I lifted my eyes. The home I had once known was now unrecognizable. Our wedding photo, once hung proudly on the wall, lay shattered in the trash. The custom fridge magnets I’d made from our pictures were strewn across the floor. Even the flowers I had planted on the balcony had been uprooted by someone’s hand. To make Vanessa feel comfortable, Damien had personally erased every trace of me—he’d even switched out the scent diffuser to mask my smell. I stared at the childish couple’s mugs on the dining table. It felt as though an invisible hand was crushing my heart, squeezing the breath out of me. After I’d induced labor at five months, I had hired a specialist to fashion my child’s ashes into a small silver crescent-moon amulet. I had wanted to keep it with me always, as though my baby had never left. I had hung it on my bedpost that night, and for the first time in a long while, I’d slept well. But when I opened my eyes, the amulet was gone. I had torn the room apart looking for it, finding nothing. Damien had emerged from the study and said, with casual indifference: “It was just a childish little trinket. I tossed it. It was an eyesore.” He had found my child’s ashes childish, an eyesore, and thrown them away without a word. And now—now he was using childish matching mugs with Vanessa, childish couple’s stickers… I curled my lips in a bitter smile and met Damien’s frigid gaze. “No need to trouble the housekeeper. I’ll pack my things myself.” “I’ll disappear soon enough. You won’t have to see me again.” I hurried upstairs, wanting only to grab my documents and the keepsakes my mother had left me and flee this loveless house. But as I rounded the corner, the sound of glass shattering rang from the bedroom.
Watch👉 https://cps-front.novelix.live/app-api/ext/new/20260623MJOH6A0J8z 🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “Novelix” app 🔍 search for “ni659572”, and watch the full series ✨! #Novelix
Leave a Reply