Chapter 96: Frustration Made Me Do It

TESSA’S POV

I still hadn’t been able to get Lucian to fall in line ... not even after that last heated encounter between us.

He’d grown wiser. He stopped accepting anything from me. For the first two weeks since we’d slept together, he’d been the most distant he’d ever been.

Did he hate me that much? Or had he simply given up on love altogether?

"Lucian, I want to talk to you."

I caught him just as he was heading out, practically stalking his steps down the hallway.

"Please, what is it? Talk fast ... I have to be at the council now," he said.

"I don’t like the way you treat me. Honestly, I don’t," I said to him.

Lucian dropped his car keys back into his pocket.

"How exactly am I treating you badly?" he asked.

"You don’t give me any attention, Lucian. I’m your Luna, for crying out loud," I complained.

Lucian laughed ... not the warm kind. The cold, detached kind that cut right through me.

"I didn’t know you needed attention. I thought you only wanted to be Luna."

"You can’t be serious. Of course I want to be your Luna ... not just Luna in title. I want everything that comes with it. But I can’t be any of those things if you won’t even look at me."

He was still smiling. It infuriated me.

"I’m laughing because you’ve known me the longest, and you still don’t understand what it takes to be my Luna." He looked me dead in the eyes and spoke slowly, like every word was deliberate. "What does it actually take, Lucian? Tell me ... I’ll do anything for you. Just tell me, please!"

I had reached my limit. I was exhausted, and I wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore.

"Nothing. Nothing, Tessa." His voice dropped flat. "I don’t want anything. I made that clear from the very beginning. Nobody wanted to listen to me. Now everyone has what they wanted ... so leave me alone, please." He turned and stormed toward the door.

I grabbed his hand.

"You can’t walk out on me, Lucian. We are not done talking."

He stopped. Turned slowly. Stepped back into the room.

"Why the hell would you grab me?" he asked, eyes blazing red.

"You’re my husband, and you will give me some respect too, Alpha," I said. The frustration made me bold ... reckless, even. I held his hand firm and refused to let go.

"Let me go, Tessa. I have to be at the council," he said.

"You’re not going anywhere until you’ve fulfilled your duties to your Luna."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Have you fulfilled your duties to Winterwood ... the way you promised during your speech?"

The words landed like a slap. I remembered instantly. The disbursement documents. The employment approvals I still hadn’t signed. The meeting I kept pushing back.

But I wasn’t letting this go. Not until my Alpha responded to me the way I needed him to.

"You have to do this with me, my love." My voice softened before I even decided to let it. "I need your love. You’re starving me. Please."

He peeled my hand off his arm.

"You have Luna duties. I have Alpha duties. You’ve known that from the beginning," he said and turned for the door again.

"Is it Selene you really want?"

The words left my mouth before I could stop them. Loud. Sharp. Hanging in the air between us.

He paused.

A long, heavy pause.

"At this point, what I want doesn’t matter. Alpha duties come first."

I ran to him and threw my arms around him from behind, gripping him so tightly he couldn’t move an inch.

"Then fulfill your Alpha duties ... to your Luna."

"What the..." He shoved me backward with force, and I flew across the room, slamming the back of my head against the corner of the centre table.

"Ahh!"

The scream ripped out of me before I could swallow it. Pain exploded behind my skull.

Lucian pulled out his phone without looking at me. "Doctor, get to the Luna’s room ... she needs attention now." He ended the call and walked out the door without a second glance.

He didn’t even look back.

He was so cruel. It was insane ... how hard I had fallen for someone like this.

I dragged myself up from the floor and onto the bed, breathing through the throbbing at the back of my head. All my efforts were crumbling. The days were passing and I was no closer to anything I wanted. It was becoming more obvious with every hour.

Lucian was deep in his own darkness. He hated me. And there was no hope left shining from anywhere.

I reached up to touch the spot on my head. Blood. My fingers came away red.

The pain hadn’t fully registered until that moment ... until I was aware enough to feel it. Now it burned.

Kael came into the room first just to make sure I was okay.

"You’ll be fine, the doctor is on his way now" he said to me.

"Thank you Kael" I told him. He had always been caring and showing concern.

I was sure he knew who did it but he couldn’t say anything about it because Lucian was the Alpha.

The doctor burst into the room like he’d run the entire way.

Kael left me so the doctor would attend to me.

"Luna, it’s me ... your doctor," he said breathlessly as I let him in.

"Let me see." I pointed to the back of my head and he moved in to check.

He examined it carefully, then applied something cool to the wound to ease the sting.

"How did this happen?" he asked.

"I fell trying to get to the bathroom," I said without missing a beat.

It was a lie. But it was the only lie that made sense. I wasn’t going to say that the Alpha shoved me across a room because we’d had an argument. That would damage his image and raise questions about his character that nobody had the standing to ask. I covered for him ... because he was my Alpha, no matter what. Who was going to question an Alpha King, anyway?

"It’s just a fall. You’ll be fine. Avoid any strenuous activity so you don’t aggravate the already stressed nerves in that area," he told me.

"Okay, Doctor."

He left a small container of pain pills on the side table and I promised him I’d take them.

"Doctor ... since you’re already here, I might as well get a full check-up. It’s not a coincidence you’re standing in my room."

"Of course, Luna. What is it?"

"I’ve been trying to conceive. I want a full diagnosis on my fertility status," I said.

"That’s no problem. Let me check." He pulled out his equipment ... the stethoscope first, then the portable ultrasound. He checked my heartbeat. Normal. Pulse and pupil dilation. Also normal. I told him I hadn’t vomited or developed any strange cravings, so he moved methodically through everything else.

He ran every test he was supposed to run.

"I can’t quite make sense of what I’m seeing here," he said after a while. He connected his equipment to his phone, studying the readings.

"What do you mean, Doctor?"

"I’ll need to go back to the hospital to confirm what I’m seeing, but so far ... it doesn’t look good." He hesitated. "I have to ask, Luna. Have you ever had a miscarriage?"

My heart stopped.

That kind of information was not something to be spilled out in casual conversation.

"What the hell? How could you ask me something like that? Who would I have had a miscarriage for? Confirm everything at the hospital before you start throwing dangerous conclusions at me," I snapped at him.

"I’m deeply sorry, Luna. I’ll confirm everything first."

"Good."

He assured me the full results and diagnosis would be ready within twenty-four hours.

I would be waiting. Whether I wanted to or not.

"Can I go about my normal daily activities in the meantime?" I asked.

"Yes, of course, Luna."

I stood and began getting ready. He gathered his things and left.

I just hoped what he was seeing was nothing more than a theory. A hypothesis with no substance. I held onto that hope even as dread crawled up my chest.

I had to give Lucian an heir. That was all there was to it. I repeated it to myself like a vow.

And no one ... no one ... could ever find out about the miscarriage I’d carried in secret all those years ago.

That information was too costly. The price of it being exposed was one I couldn’t afford to pay.