ELARIAN The entire room fell silent as Aeros stared at me, his expression one of stunned disbelief. Jonathan looked just as shocked, and that’s when I noticed Xavier standing by the door. There was a look on his face that I couldn’t quite read.“What did you just say?” Aeros asked, taking a step closer, but I instinctively took a step back.“Don’t… don’t take another step, Aeros,” I stammered. Tears pooled at the bottom of my eyes, and I swallowed hard, fighting to keep them from spilling.“Why… why didn’t you say something, Elarian? You should have told me. You should have come back home to me. You should never have run from those rogues who were supposed to bring you to me. And you never should have left in the first place.” His tone was firm, and the way his eyes locked onto mine made me want to believe everything he said.But I couldn’t forget. I couldn’t forget how he kicked me out after the mind-blowing sex, how he made me crave him only to treat me like nothing but a pet. He w
ELARIAN Aeros excused himself to have a word with the elder, leaving Jonathan and me standing outside. After a few moments, I made my way toward Xavier’s room. Inside, Gabby was already tending to him, while Vienna nursed small bruises on her arms.As soon as I stepped in, they all paused and looked up at me.“I’m so sorry that things took such a drastic turn. I hope he’s not too hurt?” I asked, trying to sound as sympathetic as possible. Guilt weighed heavily on me—I felt responsible for everything that had happened.After all, Aeros was here because of me.Vienna and Gabby remained silent, and Xavier lay unconscious on the bed. I waited, hoping they might say something to reassure me they didn’t blame me for all this. But when no one spoke, I turned to excuse myself.Just as I reached the door, Vienna called after me.“It’s not your fault, Elarian. He’s the monster, not you,” she said.It felt good to know she didn’t blame me for everything, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that th
ELARIAN “You said you wanted to tell me something,” I said to Jonathan, who sat silently beside me. He remained quiet, not uttering a single word, and I could still feel Aeros' gaze on me.Realizing I was right, that Jonathan didn’t have anything to say, I got up and headed towards my room. Before I could make it inside, Aeros called my name and rushed to join me in front of the door.“Please, Elarian, you can’t keep shutting me out like this. I made a mistake, yes. I was stupid for thinking I could live without you and that you were just a pet to me. I’ve realized how wrong I was. Let’s just make this work, at least for the sake of our child,” he pleaded, stepping forward to touch my hand, but I stepped away from his reach.“Child?” I raised an eyebrow. “What child are you talking about? The one you didn’t even know existed until a few hours ago?”“The only reason I didn’t know about the baby is because you didn’t tell me, Elarian. I had no idea before you disappeared and—”“Disappe
AEROS “At least try and talk to her. It can not be that bad, Aeros. What you did was wrong, so you must make the first move and sort this out for your child and for the woman you almost went insane for.”Jonathan’s words kept ringing inside my head as I made my way towards Elarian’s room. I knew she probably wouldn’t respond because she was clearly very angry at me, but I didn’t have a choice.I desperately wanted to sort things out, to let her know that I sincerely wished to make our relationship better and stronger—for us and for our child—but she was shutting me out.Back at Xavier’s pack, after the healer rushed Xavier out, I was certain something transpired between them. I knew she didn’t just change her mind about coming with me. Something must have forced her to change her mind, but I wanted to believe she made that decision on her own.Even though she came with me willingly, Elarian continued to shut me out and made it so difficult to hold a proper conversation without arguin
Author’s POV.Blair stood outside the pack house in the darkness, a grin spreading across her face as she recognized the signal the maid had given. Elarian should have already drunk the water, and the pain should have kicked in by now. This was her cue to end everything.When Blair had left Aeros, casting a powerful spell to keep her true face hidden, she never expected him to take a liking to someone else so suddenly. She had kept her eyes on him all these years, watching him wallow in self-pity and pain, which was exactly what she wanted him to feel.After all, Aeros had imprisoned the man she truly loved. When she heard that he had brought another woman home, she was enraged. She did everything she could to stir guilt inside him, manipulating small things to push him into driving Elarian away.And he had done exactly that, after a few carefully planned nudges in the right direction."The bastard thought he could sweep me under the carpet that easily?" she scoffed into the darkness.
AEROS "You need to calm down," Jonathan said to me as I paced the length of my study, teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown, unable to think straight. My heart raced uncontrollably, and with each passing second, the pressure became almost unbearable. Fear gripped me, and I couldn’t escape the crushing weight of it.I was terrified of losing her."She asked me to brace myself for the worst, Jonathan. Do you even understand what that means? It means she could die!" I shouted in panic, my voice filled with desperation. Jonathan sighed heavily and rose to his feet, coming to stand by my side."It breaks my heart to see you like this, Aeros. And yes, the thought of losing your pup just when you found out about them is gut-wrenching, but this is beyond us. You need to stay strong for whatever comes next. You’re the Alpha, and you need to—""I don’t need to hear this, Jonathan!" I snapped, cutting him off. "I don’t need you to tell me to stay strong. What I need is a solution. A way
AEROS “Are you really going to do this? Seek help from dark magic? That could make things so much worse, and I hope you know that,” Jonathan asked for the umpteenth time as we headed to the room where Elarian was. The man I had just freed from his prison walked behind us, two guards keeping him in line with a heavy chain around his neck.“I don’t have a choice, Jonathan. I am not about to let my Luna and child die when I can get him to do whatever I want.”“Letting him out of his cell was a bad decision, Aeros,” Jonathan continued to complain. It was obvious he wasn’t at ease with any of this. I wasn’t either, but I had no other option.“He could be playing you. This could be his plan—to escape and do something much worse than before.”“Calm down, Jonathan. Look behind you—the man is in chains. What could he possibly do in such heavy chains with guards around him?” I asked, trying to pacify him. Although it worked temporarily, he was still visibly agitated.I was the first to walk in
Author’s POV.“Beta Jonathan and a few guards were going with him. I had no idea where they were heading, but I just knew they would be leaving together. I overheard them in the room,” the young maid said to Blair as she paced the length of the maid’s room in the servants’ quarters.She had been unable to leave the mansion since the accident had happened because Aeros had tightened the security and refused to let anyone leave or enter the mansion.Trying to leave then would have meant risking being caught by the guards, especially since she was too weak to cast any spell to keep herself hidden. She had to rely on the maid to hide her in her quarters and bide her time.As expected, Aeros had hurried down to her lover, and just as she had planned, he had let him step out of where he had locked him up all those years. There was no better time to strike than that moment.So, she quietly got dressed as a maid and followed the young maid out of the room. No one noticed because everyone was
ELARIAN Blair.That was definitely Blair, though her hair was no longer golden as it had been when I met her in the human world. The wolf who had taken me from the hospital that day had told me she had sold me out to the humans, and I knew it was because of the mark she had seen on my neck.But Blair had been human when I met her in the human world, so why was she here? And how had her hair become a deep shade of black?“Blair? How are you here?” I asked, and Aeros stepped forward.“I told you she suddenly turned up after we lost a prisoner with Jonathan. I have no idea how it happened either, but it just happened,” he explained as my eyes darted from him to Blair.I wasn’t sure he had any clue what he was talking about.“Is this your Blair?” I asked, raising a brow, my face stunned. I could have sworn she was the woman I had met when I first arrived in the human world, so how could she be his Blair?“I thought she was dead too, but when she showed up… the whole thing just became a t
ELARIAN “A lot has happened in your absence, Luna Elarian.” The healer’s words echoed in the back of my mind, and the sadness in her eyes as she said them lingered in my thoughts.“You have to stay in bed. Both you and the baby need as much rest as possible. Plus, Alpha Aeros clearly instructed that we keep you here until he returns,” Elyse’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts and made me aware of my surroundings.“But you just said Jonathan has been… I need to go to him,” I said as I tried to push myself up from the bed. A sharp pain shot through my head, making me scream out loud and collapse back.“Your body is still too weak. It will take time to regain your strength,” Elyse pointed out, stepping forward. “I know you want to be with your husband right now, but for the sake of your baby, Luna Elarian, you need to stay right here,” she added firmly.I sighed heavily and eased back into the bed in defeat. Elyse and the healer excused themselves to check on Aeros after a maid rushed
ELARIAN“Thank the goddess, Elarian. You have no idea how worried I was. You have no idea how scared I was. I thought I had lost you, and when the healer said you were…” His words trailed off as if there was something on the tip of his tongue he couldn’t bring himself to say.“Alpha Aeros, we agreed to let her get enough rest. And please, get something for her to eat. It must have been one hell of an ordeal,” the woman I hadn’t noticed was in the room said. I turned to see a much younger woman standing beside the healer, hovering over me.“Of course,” Aeros mumbled grudgingly as he reluctantly pulled himself away from me and headed outside. For some reason, I was extremely weak, too weak to even speak or move, and the young woman beside me noticed that. She leaned forward and urged me to relax into the bed.“You must be really weak. Please just stay back and wait for him. Within a few hours, you should feel much better,” she said calmly. I stared at her for a few seconds before glanci
ELARIAN “Give me back my baby!” I yelled at the top of my lungs as I crumbled to the floor, tears streaming down my cheeks and leaving me almost out of breath. Blood stains covered my dress, my hair was a tangled mess, my knees were bleeding from all the kneeling, and my feet were sore all over.This was torture. I had been like this for hours, and the pain shot through my body like I had been pricked by a million knives.I had no idea where I was or what was happening, but I was certain it wasn’t reality because one minute, I had a baby, and the next, I was walking around pregnant and bleeding. I was forced to endure a miscarriage, then labor, and finally, the ordeal of watching my child get ripped apart by a blind wolf.Something didn’t feel right. Aeros’ scent hung thicker than ever around me, but he was nowhere near close to me. I tried to wake myself up, hoping that it was all just a nightmare, but no matter how hard I tried, nothing worked.“Please…” I sobbed, “just give me bac
AUTHOR'S POVKaiden swam for what felt like hours on end before he washed up on the banks of a river in an unfamiliar territory. He assumed it was because he had been locked away for so long that he couldn’t recognize anything or anywhere. However, he also knew that Jonathan and Aeros would start sending out search parties if they didn’t find his body, so he needed to find a safe place to hide for a while.Blair. He had seen Blair, and her name kept echoing in his head as he walked away, but he paid no attention to it. He got as far away as he could, and it wasn’t until he saw someone that he finally collapsed from the cold, darkness engulfing him.Meanwhile, Blair was unsure of what to do. Aeros had managed to catch the maid she had used, and even though she was scary enough to keep the maid’s mouth sealed, she knew it was only a matter of time before Aeros found a way to make her confess.She couldn’t risk that, nor could she risk him waking Elarian up.“The new healer just arrived,
AEROS “I…I am sorry, I didn’t mean to…I uhm…” I stammered, unsure of what to say or how to react to the sudden image of Blair crying profusely in front of me.“Everything, every single thing I did was for you, Aeros. But if you choose to be blind to all that because of a woman you barely even know, then…then maybe, just maybe Jonathan was worth it. Maybe he was worth being the man that made me cheat on you. Maybe he was worth the—”“Blair!”“What?! Am I disturbing her? Is that what you’re going to say to me next? What if she doesn’t come back, Aeros? Have you ever thought of that? What if she doesn’t wake up and you’re trapped out here with nowhere else to turn? She is going to leave you eventually, and then you will realize that it has always just been me,” she said, her eyes holding mine.“Blair, you and I, we’re done. Elarian means a whole lot to—”“No, Aeros,” she replied sharply, cutting me off. “You don’t get to decide who matters and who doesn’t. I am the woman you will foreve
AEROS My throat ached with each word that made it past my lips. I didn’t want to believe that he would do something like that, yet at the same time, if he really did it to her, then I couldn’t just let him walk free.He almost killed my child and Elarian.“I don’t know why he did that,” I continued and paused to catch my breath because it was getting even more difficult for me to speak. The words were just too heavy for me to say to her, but I had no choice.“The maid insisted he was the one till the last minute, and no matter how unbelievable it sounds, it looks like it just might be true. Maybe Xavier was right, Elarian. Maybe you were safer with him and not with me. Blair died with me, and if anything were to happen to you, then I would…I would…” The words trailed off as a sharp pain shot through me, leaving me gasping for air.“Aeros.” Blair’s voice called out behind me, and I turned around sharply to find her standing by the door. I had no idea when she had walked in.I still fo
ELARIAN The sound of a baby crying was the first thing that filled my ears as I jumped up from where I lay. The air was thick with a scent that made my nose twitch, and when my eyes finally adjusted to the pitch-black darkness around me, I noticed the baby at the foot of the bed I was lying on.I touched my stomach, and the baby bump that had been there was suddenly gone. My brows furrowed; I had no idea I had given birth, nor did I recall the ordeal of childbirth.How was the baby here then?The baby suddenly stopped crying, and when I tried to move closer, I noticed my legs wouldn’t budge from where they were placed on the bed. I tried to lift them over and over again, but it was as if they were glued to it.Suddenly, the door opened, and a shadow slipped in. I looked on in horror as the shadow slowly morphed into what I assumed was a young woman, and she approached the baby slowly.I willed myself to speak, but my lips wouldn’t move either. This had to be a nightmare because I bar
Author’s POVJonathan wasn’t sure if he understood what Blair was saying. How could it be possible that she had been pregnant during that incident between them?He had expected her to say a lot of things, but never in his lifetime would he have imagined this. And he certainly didn’t expect Aeros to walk in on their conversation.Jonathan had only wanted to clear the air with Blair because he was afraid she might say something to Aeros first. So, he had pretended he was going to check on her and headed to her room. The guard stationed outside stepped aside the moment he saw him. When Blair insisted they go somewhere more private to talk, claiming she was worried someone might overhear them. Jonathan led her to the only place he was sure no one would visit.Little did he know that Aeros was just around the corner.“W-What did you just say?” Aeros stammered, taking a step forward. His eyes locked onto Jonathan’s but flicked occasionally to Blair, who stood beside him, her wide eyes betra