Chapter 205: I Need A Break

Selene’s POV

"No, William. I’m aborting this child. I shouldn’t be carrying a seed that belongs to a person like that," I said.

"And who told you the child will be like Lucian? It will grow up in our environment. There’s no need to abort the baby," William said, his voice low and steady, the way he spoke when he was trying not to push me over the edge.

We had been going back and forth on it for an hour. I had made up my mind to get rid of it because of what Lucian came to my chambers to display the other day.

What the fuck! How could he stand in my space and say such abominable things? I fucking hated it. I was so angry my hands shook, and I hid them in my sleeves so William wouldn’t see.

I kept asking myself how I had ever come across that wolf. I regretted meeting him. If I could turn back the hands of time, I would never have met Lucian. He wasn’t the man I thought I knew. I even wondered how I had pulled off my skirt to fuck him, or how I had let him fuck me at all.

I had been hypnotised. I had been fooled. I went from his breeder to his puppet to almost his queen, and now I regretted sleeping with him before I left Winterwood for good.

It was my fault, and now I was carrying his child.

This was not a position I wanted to be in, and the regret sat in my chest like a stone.

"You’ll be mine again, and I can’t wait for you to come back into my arms so I can fuck you."

Those words kept ringing in my ears. They sounded like an echo that refused to go silent, bouncing around my skull no matter how hard I tried to shut it out.

I would never go back to him. Not in my right state of mind.

What was so special about my pussy that he couldn’t let go? He was still reminiscing about our last time together, like I was something he had a right to keep. I had let him go, so he should do the same.

Keeping that child would remind me of Lucian every single day, and I didn’t want to be reminded of his cruelty. Every time I looked at that baby, would I see his eyes?

I couldn’t believe I had once fallen for that wolf. I was such a fool. What had I been thinking? It was crazy how you could go from loving someone so much to hating him with passion, but that was exactly how I felt about Lucian. I hated him.

In fact, I didn’t think there was any love left in my heart. Love felt unreal to me now, to the point that I began to think it didn’t exist at all, that it was an illusion. I had read so much in my life, studied biographies, devoured stories, and it amazed me how the people in them found love and lived happily ever after.

It was a fallacy, a myth, unreal as fuck.

Because here I was in real life, struggling to find the right person to stay with forever. Real relationships didn’t last. And somewhere deep down, I half expected the same to happen to me someday, even with the man standing in front of me now.

Fuck, my life was messed up.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Okay. I’ll keep the baby," I said reluctantly.

"Thank you, my love," William said, and relief washed over his face.

It wasn’t what I truly wanted. I only said it because I couldn’t stand to see him hurt.

"The child is mine too now. Our child. We’re going to raise it together," he said, and he laid his hand gently on my stomach, as if he were trying to listen for the baby’s heartbeat.

I was two months gone. Soon I would start to show, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to lose my shape or change at all. I only wanted to keep my perfect figure, because I needed it for my career and my business. And the scans, the endless scans, every other week. Damn, what the hell? It felt like a fucking drag.

Lucian, come and carry this baby yourself. After all, it’s yours.

"I’ll do my best to take care of this child, for the both of us, William," I said.

He kissed me on the forehead, and I felt a pang of guilt. I was still grateful to him. Accepting a child that wasn’t his was real work, the kind of love most men couldn’t manage.

"Thank you," I said, and this time I meant it.

My thoughts drifted to Valerie. I wanted to call her, or text her, but after what she did, I was angry with her too. She had held me down while Lucian beat the hell out of my husband. That was crazy work, and I still couldn’t wrap my head around it.

If I were as crazy as her Alpha, I would have had my guards pin her down, and I would have done to her what Lucian did to rogues. Fuck!

I froze.

Had I just thought that about my own friend, someone who had been there for me since day one? Maybe I had become cruel too. Maybe I had fully metamorphosed into whatever Lucian had been turning me into all along. If I could think something like that, then I was capable of anything.

What had he turned me into?

I needed a break from everything. I wasn’t even sure this storm inside me was good for the innocent baby I carried.

I needed a fucking break.

William stepped out of the chambers for some important business, and almost immediately Damien came in. I had been waiting for him. There was something important I needed to speak to him about.

"I need to know what’s going on with Bernia right now," I said.

"Ohh, Bernia? Nothing is going on with Bernia. They’re doing very fine," he said.

"But you know why I’m asking, right? The president said he would get back to us about his investigation into what happened a few weeks ago here in Icefang. We haven’t heard anything from him, so I have to be worried."

"You know investigations sometimes take longer than expected. I’m sure he’ll get back to you," he said.

"Hmm. I have to stay on the lookout. There’s nothing so complex about it that he shouldn’t have figured it out by now. Go and tighten all the loose ends," I said, and he understood.

I didn’t want it to turn out that Lucian had been right all along. We had to be extra careful.