༄Chapter 2

I was having the best dream. I don't even remember what it was about but I remember the feeling, warm, easy, like nothing in the world needed anything from me. I stretched into it, pulling the blanket higher, chasing the last soft edges of it…

“You're awake.”

My eyes flew open.

There was a man sitting in the chair beside my bed, watching me with an expression so full of disgust like I'd personally offended him just by existing in his vicinity.

I shot upright. “Who are you? I demanded, yanking the blanket up to my chest. “How dare you walk into the Blood Moon Luna's room? Do you know who I am? Get out…”

“You don't even know who you are talking to?”

His voice was sharp, cutting right through mine. He leaned forward slightly, his eyes narrowing, like he was looking at something that genuinely puzzled him.

I looked at him properly. The way he sat completely at ease in my space, like he had every right to be here. The cold authority sitting all over his face with complete absence of any fear whatsoever.

This was my husband. This had to be Andrew.

“Andrew,” I said, testing it.

Something flickered across his face. Not warmth, more like confirmation that yes, I really had lost my memory, and he found that both convenient and annoying.

“I heard you hit your head,” he said, leaning back in the chair. “that you were in a bad state. I thought…” he paused, looked around the room, then back at me “I don't know what I thought. You seem perfectly fine to me.”

“I'm glad my unconsciousness puts your mind at ease.”

He ignored that completely.

He stood up and reached toward me for what, I didn't know, and I didn't wait to find out. I rolled to the other side of the bed, putting as much mattress between us as possible.

He stopped, clenching his jaws.

“The lingerie,” he said.

I blinked twice. “Sorry?”

“Don't play dumb.” He walked around the end of the bed, slowly, and I tracked every step. “Last night. Someone put sets of lingerie in my room and aphrodisiacs in the nightstand.” He stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at me. “Was that you?”

“Yes,” I said immediately. There's no point denying it.

He stared at me coldly.

“I did it to help,” I said. “You and your mate are just starting out. I thought it would be nice to set the mood, you know foster the relationship. It's what a thoughtful Luna does.”

The silence that followed was long.

“Foster the relationship,” he repeated.

“Mm.” I shrugged 

“You put aphrodisiacs in my nightstand to foster the relationship.”

“I was being supportive.”

Andrew looked at me for a long moment, and then something cold and contemptuous moved across his face. “Hailey is not that kind of she-wolf. She's innocent. She doesn't need whatever you were trying to do in there.” He crossed his arms. “Don't assume everyone is as despicable as you are, Bella. Not everyone needs tricks and schemes and not everything is a seduction game.”

I stared at him blankly

“And before you try to tell me this was some selfless act…” he continued, his voice dropping lower, "I know you. You're trying to get my attention again with some new angles and new schemes. I don't know what you're playing at but it won't work.”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out of it. I was genuinely, completely speechless, not because he'd hurt me, but because the level of narcissism required to hear ‘I put things in your room for your mate’ and land on ‘she wants me’ was actually staggering. I didn't even have words for it. I just stared at him, blinking slowly.

“I want a divorce,” I said. “I'm serious, let's end this. Give Hailey the Luna title, she's your fated mate anyway, it makes more sense for her to have it. We can sort out the paperwork, I'll go back to Blackthron, everyone moves on with their lives.”

He looked at me the way you look at someone who's just said something so absurd you're not sure whether to laugh or be offended.

“You want a divorce,” he said flatly.

“Yes.”

“You.” He tilted his head. “The same woman who begged her father to arrange this marriage because she's completely in love with me, who has spent two years making my life…” he stopped, and rephrased “you want a divorce.”

“People change.”

“What scheme is this now Arabella?”

I frowned. “It's not a scheme, it's a divorce, and it's very common among people who are done with a…”

“Impossible.” He said it like that was the end of it, discussion over. He turned away from me and walked toward the door like I hadn't said anything at all.

“Andrew!”

“Get up.” He didn't turn around. “Get dressed, something presentable. We're going to the palace tonight.”

“I just asked you for a divorce…”

“It's abanquet.” He finally glanced back over his shoulder, and there was nothing in his expression that suggested he'd heard a single word I said about divorce. “We're meeting the King tonight. You have a few hours so I suggest you stop wasting them.”

“Did you hear what I just said to you?”

“Get ready, Bella.”

He walked out, closing the door behind him calmly like this conversation had been a minor inconvenience he'd already filled away and forgotten.

I sat there on the bed for a moment.

Then I flopped back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling.

Divorce: rejected. For reasons that apparently had nothing to do with love or wanting me and everything to do with him deciding I was running some kind of scheme. Which is fine, I was scheming by trying to leave.

This just confirmed something, and I think my plan is actually the right plan.