Chapter 3

While I hesitated to apologize, Sheila curled herself more firmly against Lucian’s chest and whimpered,

“I have no idea why she would hate me so much. Is it because I’m your ex-fated mate, Lucian? Doesn’t she understand that I’m now just a pitiful, lonely woman after the divorce…?”

Lucian rubbed his hand up and down Sheila’s back in a soothing motion, though his ice cold eyes stayed fixed on me.

I wanted to deny that I hated her, but I couldn’t lie. With her behavior tonight, my dislike of her had pushed into full hatred, and it was only getting worse.

Sheila turned to look at me. With a glimmer of vengeance flashing through her gaze, she said, “Aria wanted the necklace, Lucian. The moment she saw me with it, she lunged at me!”

“That’s not true!” I said at once, shocked by the ease Sheila delivered her deceptions. “You tripped yourself just now, and –”

“That’s enough,” Lucian said firmly, cutting me off. Emotion crept into his eyes at last, but it was nothing that offered comfort to me. No love. No understanding. No kindness at all.

Only disappointment.

“Do not attempt to lie to me, Aria.”

“Oh, Lucian. It was terrible.” Sheila buried her face against Lucian’s shoulder. As he pressed his arms more fully around her, embracing her, she tilted her head to cast a sly, taunting smirk at me.

My stomach flipped so hard I thought I might be sick.

That was my husband she was embracing and treating as her own.

“Everyone in this room knows why you are acting this way,” Lucian told me. “Jealousy. You are my second mate, Aria. I expect you to act with dignity. Not like a petty child.”

He scolded me, even as the cameras flashed and the reporters scribbled down in their notepads, trying to transcribe him word for word. One captured his voice with a tape recorder.

The growing distrust in Lucian’s eyes made my heart shatter into a thousand tiny pieces, too many and too small to rebuild.

Sheila winced then, drawing Lucian’s full attention.

“My ankle,” Shelia said, feigning pain. “I think it twisted when I fell.”

“Careful. You shouldn’t walk on that.” Without further warning, Lucian bent, scooped Shelia into his arms, and held her in a bridal carry against his chest.

“My hero,” Sheila said, smiling now.

Lucian turned and, holding Sheila, began to carry her away from the crowd – and away from me.

“Lucian? Wait, I…?”

He was already gone, beyond the barricade of seats and people. Reporters filled the space he had been.

Between the shouted questions, and the flashing lights, I started to feel overwhelmed. Everything was getting blurry around the edges.

Then, suddenly, a sharp pain tore through my stomach so strongly that I doubled over. I wrapped my arms around my waist, but the pain only amplified.

“Lucian!” I called out in hurt and in fear.

Then I collapsed.

***

For a time, I felt as if I was floating in darkness. I couldn’t see or feel anything, but I knew I wasn’t dead. Instead I was caught somewhere between unconscious and awake, unable to drift fully into one or the other.

Around me, I heard voices.

“Lucian, you know how I feel. I’ve never stopped loving you.” That was Sheila’s voice, but it was broken and watery, like she was sobbing.

“But with you, everything changed for me. If we had never mated, I wouldn’t be suffering like this. You can’t possibly know how devastating it is to be a barren she-wolf.”

Silence was her only reply for a long moment. Then, soft as a whisper and filled with guilt, Lucian replied, “I’ll make it up to you, Sheila. Somehow we will find a way to cure you.”

“The pack healers are useless!” Sheila snapped, her voice suddenly much stronger than before. “If you really want to make it up to me… If you mean it about finding me a cure… Then I need Dr. A! That legandary genius Healer!”

“No one knows how to find Dr. A. They disappeared a few years ago and –”

“You promised,” Shelia said, her voice wobbly again. “Unless you didn’t mean it…”

“I don’t say things I don’t mean,” Lucian replied. “If Dr. A is the only one who can cure you, then I will track them down.”

“There’s the man I love… You know, maybe when I can have children again, I could finally give you a child of our own.”

Lucian said something. I was sure he did. But the words were lost in the haze of my mind as I fell into unconsciousness once more.