129: Won’t be fooled

Alora’s POV

I don’t know why my mind chose to torment me with this memory. Out of all the pain, the betrayal, the nights I spent crying in silence, why did my subconscious drag me back to that one fleeting moment of softness?

That brief, beautiful illusion where Rune almost, almost, made me believe he cared.

It was right after I came back to him. Pregnant. He never mentioned the pregnancy, not once, as if the fact that I carried his child didn’t matter. And maybe that’s what cut the deepest, his silence.

But there were these little things he did, these small, tender gestures that made me feel... something. Something that felt dangerously close to hope. That we might be more than just two people fucking.

In the dream, it was a quiet night. I was lying on the bed in the room he’d assigned to me. The sheets were cool against my skin, and I was trying to distract myself from everything, his brooding silence, the weight of the child growing inside me, the uncertainty of it all. But