4. I’m Pregnant, Sebastian

“I object,” Sebastian said, his voice carrying across the suddenly silent ballroom. “Chelsea, please. Don’t do this.”

The look on Chelsea’s face wasn’t shock or confusion or even anger. It was annoyance. Like Sebastian was a mild inconvenience, a pest that had shown up at her perfect wedding and needed to be dealt with quickly.

“Sebastian,” she said, her voice tight and controlled. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m fighting for you.” He started walking down the aisle, and I felt my feet move to follow him even though every instinct screamed at me to run in the opposite direction. “I’m fighting for us, isn't that why you sent me the invite? Chelsea, you can’t marry him. You love me. I know you do. We’re meant to be together.”

“We’re not meant to be anything,” Chelsea said coldly. The warmth from moments ago, the happiness that had radiated from her as she walked down the aisle, was completely gone. Now she just looked disgusted. “You need to leave.”

“Not without you,” Sebastian said desperately, “I can mark you if you want. We can be together forever, Chelsea. I can give you everything…”

“You can’t give me what I want!” Chelsea’s voice rose, her carefully maintained composure finally cracking. “You can’t give me a normal life, Sebastian. You can’t give me children without worrying about what they’ll be. You can’t give me a future where I don’t have to explain to people why my husband disappears during full moons or why we can never just be normal.”

She looked at Jonathan, at her safe, boring, human fiancé, and her expression softened. “Jonathan gives me that. Jonathan gives me everything I actually want.”

“But I love you,” Sebastian said, and I watched in horror as he dropped to his knees right there in the aisle. “I love you more than anything. Please, Chelsea. Please don’t do this.”

The ballroom was completely silent now. Two hundred people watching Sebastian beg and humiliate himself.

But Chelsea looked down at him with nothing but contempt.

“You want to know why I could never marry you?” she said, her voice cutting through the silence like a blade. “Because this is what you are. This pathetic, clingy thing that can’t take no for an answer. You’re not a man, Sebastian. You’re an animal. And the thought of binding myself to you for the rest of my life, of letting you mark me like some kind of dog claiming territory?” She actually shuddered. “That’s not love. That’s bestiality.”

The word hung in the air, and several people in the crowd shifted uncomfortably. Jonathan looked like he wanted to intervene but didn’t know how.

I walked forward and grabbed Sebastian by the arm. “Let's go,” I whispered, but Sebastian just knelt there, his face pale, his eyes wide with shock.

Chelsea's eyes found me, standing a few feet behind Sebastian, and something cruel flickered across her face. “You know what’s really pathetic? Her…” she pointed at me, and I felt every eye in the room turn my way, “… she's been stuck to you like a leech for how many years now? But you’re so obsessed with me that you can’t even see what’s right in front of you.”

My face burned. My hands clenched into fists at my sides. Chelsea had just laid it all out there. Now Sebastian would turn around and he would finally see me.

Instead, he shoved my had off his arm and grabbed Chelsea’s leg, still on his knees.

“I swear I’ve never seen her as a woman, Chelsea. She’s just my friend. But you, I can’t live without you, Chelsea. You’re the only one I love.”

The world tilted and everywhere suddenly became blurry.

I heard the words, understood them intellectually, but they didn’t seem real. Of course they couldn’t be real because Sebastian couldn’t actually be on his knees in front of two hundred people, in front of me, declaring that I was “just a friend” while begging another woman to love him.

Except he was.

He absolutely was.

“Get off me,” Chelsea said, trying to pull away, but Sebastian held on tighter.

“Please. Please, Chelsea, I’m begging you…”

“Security!” Chelsea’s voice was sharp now, frightened. “Someone get him off me!”

Two large men in suits materialized from somewhere, grabbing Sebastian’s arms and hauling him to his feet. He struggled, still reaching for Chelsea.

But Chelsea had already turned back to Jonathan, who wrapped an arm around her protectively. She looked at Sebastian one last time, and when she spoke, her voice was almost pitying.

“I’m pregnant, Sebastian. With Jonathan’s baby and I’m building a real, normal life with him. Whatever you thought we had, whatever you thought we could be, it’s over. I just wish you’d accepted that instead of forcing me to humiliate you like this.”

The security guards were dragging Sebastian toward the exit now. He wasn’t fighting anymore, just staring at Chelsea with devastated eyes.

My feet finally remembered how to move. I took a light bow, turned and walked out of the ballroom with my head held high, even though I could feel my composure cracking with every step. The whispers started before I was even through the doors. Thankfully, the doors closed behind me, cutting off the whispers.

The hotel lobby was blessedly empty, the ceremony having pulled everyone into the ballroom to witness the spectacle. Sebastian was nowhere to be seen, the security guards had probably escorted him all the way out of the building.

Good. I didn’t even want to see him. Didn’t want to hear whatever apology or excuse or justification he would try to offer. Didn’t want to be the understanding friend who patted his back and told him it would be okay while dying inside.

My feet carried me down a hallway, following signs that promised a bar. I needed a drink, or perhaps several drinks. I just needed to drown out the sound of Sebastian’s voice declaring my complete insignificance in front of two hundred witnesses.

“Whiskey,” I said, my voice sounding strange to my own ears. “Double. Actually, just leave the bottle.”

The bartender raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment, setting a bottle of decent whiskey and a glass in front of me. I poured with shaking hands and downed the first glass in one burning gulp.

The alcohol hit my empty stomach like a bomb. I hadn’t eaten today, I was too nervous about the wedding to force food down. Now the whiskey was going straight to my head, making the room blur at the edges, making everything feel slightly unreal.

I poured a third glass. Fourth. Lost count somewhere around six.

And that’s when I caught the scent.

It hit me like a physical force and that made my wolf surge to attention. Mate, she howled, suddenly awake and alert despite the alcohol dulling my senses.

But that was impossible. Sebastian had just… he’d just been…

Unless he’d come to find me. Perhaps watching Chelsea reject him so completely had finally broken through his obsession, and he'd come to find me to apologize. Hope flared in my chest, desperate, pathetic and impossible to suppress.

I turned on my barstool, searching for the source of that scent, and found him standing at the entrance to the bar, turning his head like he was in search of me too.

After some seconds, his eyes met mine and he stared into them with an intensity that made my skin prickle, and made my wolf howl louder.

But I was too drunk, too hurt, too desperate to care about the strangeness. If Sebastian wasn’t going to come to me, then I would go to him.

I slid off the barstool, swaying slightly, and closed the distance between us. Without a second thought, I grabbed his head with my hands and pressed my lips to his.