Chapter Six: You are weak

His visit surprised me and at the same time caused me to feel a very dangerous emotion. 

Hope.

I shouldn’t be entertaining such silly emotions, especially with the way this day has gone, but my heart couldn’t help itself. 

Did he come because he still cares? 

My heart entertained the question, while my eyes gazes upon Victor like he is the moon. 

But the expression on his face is one that sends my heart bleeding with pain, for the expression in his beautiful eyes isn’t one that I recognizes, but the eyes of a stranger gazes back at me as if the last five years we shared was nothing but an illusion. 

The question in my heart changes as the silence between us stretches like the desert. 

Why is he here? 

As if he heard my thoughts Victor steps towards the bed, his stunning features arrested with austere expression, and even though those brown eyes watches me like I am just a woman he picked from the street it didn’t stop my heart from leaping to my throat. 

I wish the little organ fluttering inside me would realize that the man we once knew is gone, and looming over us like a towering shadow is a stranger. 

And not just a stranger, but a cruel one. 

Even though looking at him brings me an enormous pain, I couldn’t stop watching him. He sits beside me on the bed, his action intentional, carefully curated that neither part of his body touches mine. 

I buried a scoff in my head. He acts as if my body is riddled with a transferable disease. 

Even as his body fights to avoid mine, the smell of him teases my nose, washing me with bittersweet memories that brought tears to my eyes. 

The days when I met the world to the man beside me. Days when the sun still commanded the skies, but now is all covered in darkness. Darkness that rains down pain. 

“I brought something for you,” he says without looking at me, his voice flat and detached, as if he couldn’t be bothered to spare me even a drop of feelings in his voice. 

He doesn’t say what he brought, but pauses as if he is waiting for the curiosity in me to speak. 

I couldn’t speak, for my heart felt too heavy to utter the words needed to break the heavy silence between us. 

It doesn’t take him long to realize that I wasn’t going to speak, so his broad hand holding whatever he brought slips open, revealing a small rounded ceramic jar. 

This time I couldn’t hold my silence. 

“What is it?” My brow scruches in confusion as I stare at the jar in his hand. 

“A cream for your back.” 

My heart lurches itself against the hard cage of my chest. Hope, like a candle light immediately lit inside me, my eyes lightning up as the cloud which has hoovered over me all day long cleared slightly. 

Does this mean that he still cares? 

The idea of Victor still holding a torch of feelings from me brought a smile to my face even though my lips felt tired to express it. 

I needed a confirmation of this, so instead of taking the cream from his palm like I am supposed to, I looked up into his brown eyes, searching for a glimpse of warmth that would make my world of pain better. 

But I found none. In the muddy depth of his eyes I only found a stranger. Not the man I spent five years sleeping beside him every night. Not the man I shared my pain and joy with. 

None of those, just a stranger, with the coldest stare. 

I don’t know which cut the most. His apathy or his disgust. 

I looked away in disappointment, reaching for the jar. A feeling of warmth rush through my hand to my body when our skin touched. 

Isn’t it ironic? I should hate him for what he did to me, yet my body trembles like a leaf at a mere touch of his skin.

I want to call myself all kinds of fool, but is it a crime to love this hard? 

I pushed down my pain and disgrace to thank him for his kind gesture. 

“Thank you,” I mumbled. 

He doesn’t say anything, but stands to his feet to leave. 

Is this it? 

The end of our interaction? A five minute conversation that involves him bringing me a remedy for my brutalized back. Something his so called fated mate is responsible for. 

Is he not going to offer me an explanation? Do I not deserve one? 

I couldn’t let this be the end of our conversation. I needed to know why? I deserve to know why. 

Wait! I call out before I could rethink my actions. 

He stops, but doesn’t turn in my direction. 

Staring at his tall frame, I noticed how rigid he held himself. He acts as if he doesn’t want to be around me, and if it is so, why did he come? 

“Why?”

The question leaves my lips in a soft whisper, but as a wolf, he is able to hear me and he did, for his stiff back grew stiffer.  

I never got the chance to ask Victor why he did what he did. There was no warning, no explanation. One minute he is away on a business trip, the next he is coming home with a beautiful blonde in his arms, claiming they are fated mates.

I know fated mates are paramount. They are like your destiny. Still for the sake of all we shared he could have warned me. I didn’t want to entertain the idea that he never cared for me at all. 

What difference does it make knowing why I did what I did? Selene is here and she is here to stay. The sooner you accept it the better for you, he snaps and heads towards the door.

His coldly delivered words left me feeling emptier and cold, but I persisted. I couldn’t let it go. 

“I deserve to know!” I scream after him, bursting into tears. 

He stops, then turns to face me, his expression wearing a look I have never seen on them before. 

Disgust. 

I flinched back from the expression on his face even before the words came. 

“Because you are weak,” he snarls, and then leaves, the chill air of the night from the open door chilling me to the bones. 

Or maybe it is just his words. 

I sat frozen like a statue as his words sang like a broken record in my mind. 

Weak! Weak! Weak! The words taunted me until it is all I could hear. 

I have always believed that I wasn’t worthy of Victor because of the lack of my wolf, but a part of me had hung on to the belief that Victor believed in me. 

To learn that all these years, where I had believed he chose me because he cared were false shattered the little piece of my heart not already broken. 

The tears when they came were like a gentle river down my face. 

A shadow appeared by the doorway startling me. I look up to find the cook standing there, with something in her hand, and an expression of worry on her face. 

I wasn’t in the mood to entertain visitors and wanted to be left alone in my misery, but I didn’t have the strength to send her away. I turned away from her, lying back on the bed, and curling on my side like a baby. 

The world felt too painful to exist in and all I craved at this moment is not to be in it. 

The man I loved with my whole heart has abandoned me. What is there to live for? 

In answer to my gloomy thoughts the little one growing inside me kicked, and for the first time. 

The little kick to the belly shocked me, and at the same time reminded me that all wasn’t bleak in my world. 

I lowered my hand to cradle my belly even though there is still absence of a baby bump. 

“Luna, are you okay?” The cook voice intrudes into my thoughts, reminding of her presence.  

She has got to stop calling me that, I snap unkindly in my mind. Her words instead of placating my injured heart, only made me feel worse as it reminded me of the things I lost.