Chapter 41: Fireball

Selene’s POV

I was alone in that room more often than not. There wasn’t much I could do besides read ... about history, about pregnancy, about everything. Books became my only company, and even they couldn’t fill the silence the way I needed them to.

This was more than house arrest. It was a cage, and the only crime I’d committed was being pregnant.

Females think too much. That’s just the truth of it. And all that thinking led me to ask myself a question so daft I was almost embarrassed to let it fully form in my mind.

Could Lucian ever marry me?

I shut it down the moment it surfaced. If he could abandon Tessa the way he had, what in the world made me think I’d be any different? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t ever amount to anything more than a breeder to him, and the sooner I accepted that, the better.

The days kept passing and with each one, something inside me sank lower. My self-esteem had gone below the bar ... below the floor, even. I stopped finishing the food that was brought to me. I didn’t even realise how bad it had gotten until Lucian noticed.

"Why are you not finishing your food?" he asked one evening.

I didn’t give him the answer I actually wanted to give him. I just said I didn’t have an appetite.

"Please, you have to eat," Lucian said.

The care in his voice was almost too much to take. It made something inside me crack just enough to let a question slip out.

"What happens to me after I give birth?"

Lucian looked at me like I’d asked something he hadn’t prepared for.

"You’ll take care of the child, of course," he replied.

"I mean my place in this territory."

He stood up, and I could already see him preparing to walk out. "Don’t be faster than your shadow, Selene," he said, and then he was gone.

"He doesn’t love you and he never will," Nara said inside my head.

This bitch still hadn’t left. She kept disturbing what little peace I had ... which wasn’t much to begin with. I couldn’t find it anywhere, so I went to bed. It was still early evening, earlier than I’d ever slept in my life, but I closed my eyes anyway. I guess that was just a new way of crashing out.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, strange sounds pulled me out of sleep. Movements. Quiet but deliberate. I was too afraid to get up and check. Then I saw it ... a shadow cutting quickly across my room. I couldn’t make out who it belonged to, but I was certain it was a female wolf.

"Who’s there? Who is that?"

No one answered.

Then the wind shifted. Hot air pushed straight into my room, and my stomach dropped before I even understood why. My assigned nurse wasn’t there. I was completely alone.

A fireball crashed through the room like a cannonball and detonated against the wall. Fire erupted instantly, racing across the curtains like it had been waiting for this moment. I screamed.

"Help! Help!"

I scrambled out of the bed, heart slamming in my chest, trying to find somewhere ... anywhere ... to put my feet. The flames spread faster than I could think. I was still screaming when the door was smashed open by the guards.

I made it almost to the door before I didn’t see the fallen stick on the floor. It caught my foot and I went down hard ... stomach first ... onto the ground. The pain that tore through my abdomen was unlike anything I had ever felt. I screamed again, raw and broken.

The guards finally reached me and pulled me out of the room.

Outside, the whole of the king’s chambers had emptied. Lucian was there. Kael was there. Tessa was there. Wolves sprinted past with fire extinguishers. I could hear Lucian’s voice cutting through the noise asking what had happened, but everything around me was beginning to blur.

The pain in my stomach wasn’t easing. If anything, it was getting worse.

Lucian took me from the guards without a word and carried me. He moved fast, straight to the hospital, holding me the whole way. That was the last thing I remembered before the darkness took over.

When I opened my eyes, I didn’t know where I was for a moment. I turned my head left, then right. Lucian was sitting on my right side, holding my hand.

His face looked wrong. Something about it made my chest tighten before I could even process why.

"What happened?" I asked him.

He didn’t say anything. He looked like one word from his mouth would undo him completely.

The doctor walked in and I turned to him instead. "Doc, what’s wrong? How is my baby?"

The doctor glanced at Lucian first ... like he was waiting for permission, or maybe gathering courage.

"Ms. Selene..." he started. "I’m sorry. We lost the child."

For a second, I went completely deaf. Like someone had pressed a hand over both my ears and all I could hear was a high-pitched ringing. Just sirens. Nothing else.

Then it hit me.

"Doctor, what do you mean we..." My voice broke. "Stop joking with me."

Lucian couldn’t even look at me.

"Alpha! Doctor!" I was shaking. "This is not possible. How could I have possibly..."

I burst into tears. I couldn’t hold it. I didn’t even try.

"You had a heavy fall during the fire," the doctor said carefully. "It caused minor burns that have since been treated. But the impact ruptured the pregnancy and caused a miscarriage."

I cried even harder.

Lucian leaned forward and pulled me into his arms, and I let him. I heard him sob too ... quiet, controlled, like he was fighting it with everything he had, but it was there. I cried on his shoulder until I had nothing left.

Then I pulled back.

"Lucian, someone wanted to kill me. Someone set that fire deliberately. I saw someone pass through my room before it started." I wiped my face, but the tears kept coming. "It wasn’t an accident."

"I know," he said quietly. "The fire wasn’t an accident."

"I’ve never been safe since I got pregnant and I knew it. Even the guards couldn’t stop it this time."

The loss of the pregnancy felt like the end of everything. Whatever little validation I’d had, whatever small thing had been giving me a reason to keep standing ... it was gone. I had nothing left to hold onto.

They discharged me later, and I walked out of that hospital carrying a grief I didn’t know how to name. But underneath the grief, something else was burning.

Whoever did this was going to pay.

Outside, the press was already waiting. Cameras. Microphones. Questions flying from every direction.

"How did this happen, Ms. Selene?"

"Do you think you’re being targeted from a rival on the inside?"

I pulled my shawl up over my hair and face, dropped my head, and kept walking beside Lucian without saying a single word. We got into the car and he drove back to his chambers in silence.

He was furious. I could feel it radiating off him.

The moment we arrived, he called all the guards out.

"How did this happen and none of you prevented it?"

They started talking ... stumbling over themselves, throwing out explanations that meant absolutely nothing to me.

Lucian stood up from his chair and slapped two of them across the face, hard.

"You were supposed to be stationed at Selene’s door. You fell asleep. Someone set fire to that room and nearly killed her, and it did kill my unborn child." His voice had dropped low, which was somehow worse than the shouting. "You’re useless. I banish you. Now."

He kicked them as they scrambled out of the chambers.

I went back to my room and cried until my eyes were swollen. Tessa and Kael came in together not long after.

"We’re so sorry," they said.

Sorry wasn’t going to fix this. Sorry wasn’t going to bring back what I lost. But I could see that their concern was genuine, and I appreciated that ... more than I could say out loud in that moment.

Then Lucian came in, and I knew I had to say it.

"I think I know who set that fire."

He looked at me. "Who do you think it was?"

"I need you to hear me out without getting sentimental about it," I said. "Can you do that?"

He held my gaze. "Tell me."

I steadied myself.

"Tessa," I said. "She did it."

Lucian’s eyes went wide. I could tell that was the last name he’d expected to come out of my mouth.