Chapter 283 A Life I Could Never Have

Chapter 283: Chapter 283 A Life I Could Never Have

Emilia’s POV

"Primary infertility?" The diagnosis hit me like a blow to the stomach. "What exactly is that supposed to mean?"

The doctor folded her hands. "In plain terms, Miss Taylor, it means your body cannot carry a child."

"That’s impossible." I heard my own voice climb higher. "Absolutely impossible. I’m healthy. I’ve never been sick a day in my life. So how, precisely, does a perfectly healthy woman just wake up unable to have children?"

In wolf packs, pups weren’t just seen as part of a family. They were the future of the pack, the continuation of its bloodline. Everyone expected wolves to have pups, and infertility was treated as one of the worst things that could happen to a woman. A diagnosis like this wasn’t just devastating. It could destroy the life she’d always expected to have.

Eve stirred uneasily inside me. "This can’t be happening. Why is this happening?"

I kept my face still, forcing my voice to stay level. "Easy. It’s a piece of paper."

"There’s often no clear cause for primary infertility," the doctor said gently. "But medicine has come a long way. Even conditions far worse than this can be managed now. What I’d suggest is that you steady yourself first, then we can discuss treatment options."

"Is it possible the results are wrong?" I picked up the report, then slapped it flat against her desk. "Because I’m telling you right now, there’s a mistake in this thing."

She didn’t flinch. "If you have doubts, you’re welcome to seek a second opinion. We’re hardly the only clinic in Silverlake City."

"Oh, I intend to." I stood. "And if this turns out to be a mistake, I promise you I won’t be letting it go quietly."

I walked out with my chin up and my heart hammering somewhere near my throat. The sky over the pack territory had gone grey and heavy, but honestly, it looked cheerful compared to how I felt inside. I’d been picturing it, hadn’t I? A child. Sebastian’s child. Now some cold little slip of paper was telling me the picture was a lie, and it had gone in clean, like a knife between the ribs, with no warning at all.

I will not cry, I told myself. They botched the test. That’s all. I’ll get a second opinion.

Eve whined softly. " We can’t have pups of our own anymore?"

" Don’t decide that too quickly, Eve," I answered, and my jaw ached from how hard I was clenching it.

I drove straight to the top human hospital in the city, the one with equipment three generations ahead of the pack clinic. Better still, they didn’t make me wait three days. Three hours, they said. Three hours to overturn a death sentence.

Those three hours felt longer than everything I’d survived before them. And I have survived things.

I curled into a corner chair outside the maternity ward and watched women drift past me, round and glowing, one hand always resting on that swell. Nobody in that hallway knew how badly I wanted what they carried so easily.

I couldn’t sit still under it. I went out to the lawn instead, dropped onto a bench, and let the wind do what it could. Patients wandered by, some pale, some limping, all of them wearing that particular tiredness. I felt sorry for them. I felt sorrier, Moon Goddess help me, for myself. How much did a person have to bleed just to earn the ordinary things everyone else got for free?

Once, all I’d wanted was to settle old scores. That had burned itself out somewhere along the way. Now what I wanted was almost embarrassing in its smallness. A life with Sebastian. Children with his black hair and that impossible scowl. One report had walked in and set the whole thing on fire.

"Excuse me, would you mind holding him for a second?"

A woman in her thirties sat down beside me, a baby balanced on each hip. I took the one she offered before I’d even decided whether to. "Twins?"

"They are." She sighed, shifting the other one higher. "Two at once, I don’t recommend it. They’ve both got hemangiomas, poor things. Surgery’s tomorrow, so we came in early."

She kept talking, easy and unguarded, about sleepless nights and feeding schedules and everything that had run her ragged. She had no idea she was describing paradise. Every exhausted complaint out of her mouth was a door I’d just been told I could never walk through.

The baby in my arms stared up at me, all soft cheeks and unfocused eyes. My fingers trembled when I tried to touch him. They were shaking too hard to be steady. A tear slid off my chin before I could stop it and landed on his face, and he startled, screwing up his features and wailing.

"Oh, what happened?" the woman asked.

I couldn’t answer. My face was wet and my throat had closed. She looked at me then, really looked, and something in her expression shifted into understanding. She took her son back, held my gaze for a long quiet moment, and left with a small sigh that hurt worse than pity would have.

I watched her go and bit down hard on my lip. Stop it, I ordered myself. Don’t envy her. Don’t spiral. The real results aren’t even in yet. There’s still hope.

"Emilia." Eve’s voice was low, careful. "Whatever it says, you are still you. You still have me."

"I know," I told her, and I almost believed it.

That thin thread of hope was the only thing that got me through the three hours. When the nurse finally called my name, the fear that crawled up my spine was something I knew I’d remember for the rest of my life.

The specialist didn’t make me wait for the verdict. "I’m sorry, Miss Taylor. There does appear to be a problem with your fertility. Our preliminary findings point to primary infertility."

The room dimmed at the edges. Just like that, the last door swung shut and locked, and I was standing alone in the dark on the wrong side of it.

The tears came like a river breaking its banks. And somewhere in that flood, time slid backward, and I was small again, in a summer long gone, laughing up in the branches of a tree with the whole sky winking down at me.

I was lying in my mother’s lap.

"The best thing I ever did was have a girl like you, little Emilia," she was saying, her voice warm and near. "Because of you, I’ll never be lonely. And when you’re grown, you’ll have a daughter of your own, so you’ll never be lonely either..."