Chapter 2 — What is Alpha Lucien doing here?

Lara's POV

I didn't waste a single second after that call.

I threw on the first decent outfit I could find, grabbed my bag, and was out the door before the thought of breakfast even crossed my mind. Whatever was in that hospital report wasn't something I was going to sit at home and stare at the ceiling over. I needed to hear it properly. From Dr. Asher's mouth, in his office, with the actual paperwork in my hands. That was the only way any of it was going to feel real to me.

So that was exactly where I went.

The hospital corridors were already busy by the time I arrived — the usual morning movement of clan members coming and going, nurses cutting from one wing to the next with their arms full. I kept my head down and walked straight to Dr. Asher's office, knocked once, and let myself in when he called out.

I sat down across from his desk. Folded my hands in my lap as I tried to look like a woman who had everything under control. If Dr. Asher believed it, he was being very polite about it, because even I could feel how unconvincing that was.

He looked up from the papers he had been reviewing and adjusted his glasses carefully up the bridge of his nose. Then he smiled in a way that answers the question before the mouth even opens.

"Congratulations, Luna Lara." He reached across the desk and held out an A4 sheet that had neatly printed words across the page. "You are having a baby."

I took the paper from him, and just stared at it for a moment.

Something cracked open in my chest suddenly and cleanly, like a window thrown wide after being shut for too long. The smile came before I could do anything about it. Wide, unguarded and completely beyond my control. And then the tears followed right behind, spilling before I even felt them coming, and I pressed my free hand to my mouth and tried to blink them back but failed completely.

"Really? I am actually pregnant?" I was all smiles but then the tears wouldn't stop, and I wasn't even embarrassed about it.

I already knew as he had told me over the phone barely an hour ago. But there is a version of something you hear with your ears, and then there is the version that lands when you're sitting in the room with the paper right there in your hand and the person who confirmed it is looking at you from across a desk. That second version was the one that hit me now which felt all solid and real in a way the phone call hadn't quite managed to make it.

"That's right," Dr. Asher said, still smiling.

"Oh my God." A small, watery laugh slipped out before I could catch it, which probably looked ridiculous, but I couldn't help it. "This is amazing. I'm… I'm going to give Alpha Lucien an heir."

The thought had come out ahead of my thinking — running straight from that quiet, stubborn corner inside me where I kept hope stored like something too fragile to throw out. I knew it was fragile. I knew better than most people exactly how fragile it was. But it was still there, and this news had given it a little oxygen.

Because even after this morning — I mean those words from him on that bathroom floor, and that grip on my jaw that would probably still be visible by tomorrow — there was still a part of me that couldn't quite stop itself from wondering. What if this was the thing that got through to him? News like this which is real, undeniable and already in motion, had a way of shifting things that nothing else could. People rethought decisions when something like this landed in front of them. Including difficult people and the ones who delivered verdicts the way Lucien did.

Just maybe.

I held onto that thought for exactly as long as it took Dr. Asher to speak again.

"We should tell Alpha Lucien as soon as possible," he said, leaning forward slightly in his chair. He clasped his hands together across the desk in that genuinely warm expression. "He will be delighted to hear this."

And just like that, the warmth in my chest cooled right down.

My mind went back to this morning without being invited. Back to the bathroom. The cold tile under my palms. Him crouching down in front of me with his fingers pressed into my jaw, his voice completely level and eyes giving absolutely nothing away.

‘We will never have children. And I will never let you carry my child.’

Not in the middle of a fight. Not something blurted in a heated moment that he could later walk back. He had said it deliberately and slowly, looking straight at me like a man closing a door he had already made a final decision about. There was no generous reading of those words and there was no version of that sentence that ended in delight.

And I knew it. The hopeful part of me knew it too, even if it wasn't ready to admit it yet.

"No." The word came out before I had finished thinking it through. "No, no, no. Please don't tell him just yet. I…" I caught the slight shift in Dr. Asher's expression and smoothed my voice out fast. The last thing I needed was for him to leave this office carrying the wrong impression of what life looked like inside our walls. "I want it to be a surprise in person," I said, reaching for something that sounded reasonable and settled. "You know how these things are."

Dr. Asher held my gaze for just a beat longer than felt comfortable, then nodded once. "Of course, Luna Lara. Whenever you are ready."

"Thank you." I let out a slow breath and looked back down at the paper still in my lap.

Whatever Lucien was going to feel about this — whatever that conversation was going to look like when it eventually came — it could wait. Right now, in this office.with this paper still in my hands and nobody else in on it yet, this was entirely mine. I wasn't going to rush past that.

I folded the paper carefully and was about to slip it into my bag.

While I was just pulling myself back together, thinking of what else to say to Dr. Asher, when the voice came from outside. It cut right through the ordinary noise of the hospital corridor like it owned the space.

"Quick! I need help! I need a doctor!"

My whole body went still.

I knew that voice even from a distance. I knew it the way you know something you have had no choice but to memorize over five years of sharing the same walls, the same rooms, the same silences. I knew how it sounded giving instructions at a clan gathering. I knew how it went flat and quiet when he had already decided he was done with something. I knew how the edges of it sharpened when he was genuinely angry and hadn't decided yet whether to show it.

This version — loud, stripped bare of all that usual control, carrying something that sounded dangerously close to real alarm — was not one I usually get to hear much from him before.

"Lucien?"

His name came off my lips before I had processed a single thing and I was already on my feet.

What was he doing here? What had happened? Because those words — ‘quick, I need help, I need a doctor’ — are not used by one who is fine because that was all about urgency. So, it means that something was genuinely wrong.

"Is he hurt?" I asked out loud, to nobody in particular, and I was already moving toward the door before Dr. Asher had a chance to say a single word back to me.

My feet had already decided and the rest of me was just along for the ride.