No Place For Her.

Chapter One

The vial was cold against her palm..

Aurora sat at the edge of the sofa, in her quiet sitting room. Her fingers curled slightly around the cold glass of the vial in her left hand. The other was holding her cellphone on which her gaze was fixed upon at the moment.

There was an image displayed on the screen.

An image of Ethan Langford, her husband at a charity gala. Ethan stood tall and immaculate in a tailored suit, with his arm wrapped around an exquisitely dressed woman whom she recognized at first glance.

Celeste Moore.

A beautiful and brilliant medical scientist.

Ethan’s first love.

The woman whom he’d never been able to forget about, and quite literally the one he lived for.

The woman who was more capable and pleasing than his own ordinary wife, huddled at home.

Aurora started breathing hard, the sound oppressive in the quiet sitting room.

In the image, Celeste was reaching up to plant a kiss on Ethan’s cheeks.

That was not the reason why Aurora’s eyes blurred with tears, or why her hands clenched tightly around the vial that it almost broke.

The main reason was Ethan’s smile.

It was so wide. So beautiful. So happy and so…rare.

She had never seen him smile like this before, at least not to her.

Nope, Ethan had never smiled at her.

Ever since he’d woken up in the hospital six years ago, and his grandfather had introduced them and brought up their marriage, Ethan Langford had never smiled at her.

She had never had any problem with that, however. She was too in love with him, and was content to give him all her smiles.

But here he was, his arms wrapped around his first love while his dazzling thirty-two teeth were on display.

“What a joke.” Aurora uttered calmly, her breathing slowly returning to normal. Although, there was still the dull ache in her heart that normally happened whenever she comes across any one of this kind of pictures.

Ethan Langford and his first love, Celeste Moore, on vacation.

Ethan Langford and his first love , Celeste Moore, the most attractive couple in all of Crestmont.

Ethan Langford and Celeste Moore, Crestmont’s power couple.

The comments were worse.

“They look so good together!”

“Thank God, Celeste is back. I can’t get enough of both of them!”

“How can they be so perfect for each other?! I love them!”

Aurora swallowed hard as another image came up on the screen. It was an image of Ethan and Celeste once more. This time, Ethan held a little girl in his arms, while Celeste was reaching up to to caress the little girl’s hair, her eyes filled with love and affection.

The little girl was all smiles, basking in Celeste’s love filled gaze. Her dark hair was as curled as Ethan’s was, but her light colored eyes were all gotten from

Aurora.

This was her daughter Riley, a child she’d almost lost her life while birthing.

In a bid to get them closer and for their flailing marriage to work, the Chairman of Langford Capital Group, Ethan’s grandfather had urged them to have a child together.

They did have the child, Riley Langford, which proved to be a breath of fresh air to her in her suffocating marriage.

Riley was the best thing she could ever ask for and Aurora was grateful to Ethan for giving Riley to her.

But then Celeste returned, and just like her father, Riley was immediately enraptured by this oh-so-great woman.

What’s more, Ethan encouraged it. He took their daughter to his meetings with Celeste, letting images of three of them as a perfect family circulate the internet while she stayed back at home, forgotten and miserable.

With time, Riley had grown cold towards her as well and their marriage…

It never got better, even with Riley’s birth. It was the same.

Cold as ice.

The way it had been for six years.

“Six years,” Aurora muttered, closing her eyes and swallowing hard because her throat was suddenly too tight.

Her hand closed around the vial of serum once more, and she let out a shaky breath.

This was the only thing still keeping her here, still tying her to this marriage…

The only reason she was able to forgive, and hope for a bright future with her husband and daughter.

Just then, her phone buzzed again.

This time, it wasn’t social media.

Caspian:

“It’s been six years, Aurora. The monitoring period should be complete by now. When will you return like you promised?”

Aurora’s breath hitched.

It was time, already?!

She let out a shaky breath, her gaze calm as she looked at the vial in her hand once more.

The bottle was tiny, and the content was as clear as the glass which surrounded it.

Aurex-9 stabilization serum.

Six years ago, when Ethan had been plagued by that illness, this was the only thing that had pulled him back from the brink of death.

And for many years after that, it was the only thing that had kept him healthy.

This serum was created by Seraph, an unknown medicine god whose exploits was widely heard of but no one had ever seen him or her.

Aurora was grateful that he appeared when he did, creating the Aurex-9 serum and stabilizing Ethan.

Not only that, the Aurex-9 had been supplied to the house for six years now.

Because of the unique components of the serum and how it was tailored to Ethan’s body alone, this serum had to be administered twice a month for the stabilization process to work.

Aurora stood up from the sofa, slipping the vial of serum into her pocket, while picking up the white box on the low table, that contained the other vial.

Two doses.

For six years, she’d administered this serum to Ethan twice in a month, never once missing the dosage, keeping him in good health just like she’d always wanted.

This was the last month to complete the six years. There were just two doses remaining and then maybe…

Just maybe, she would get her life back.

Aurora glanced at her phone, at the image of three once more. Ethan, Celeste, and Riley. They looked so happy, so perfect.

There was no place for her anymore.

Her heart lurched with pain at the sight, and her usual calm, light colored gaze became hard.

No.

She was definitely getting her life back.