Chapter 3 — Losing her composure.

Lara's POV

I moved out to the corridors, and guess what?

Alpha Lucien was right there, placing a lady into a wheelchair that one of the nurses had just wheeled over — on his instruction, obviously, since that was what all the urgency had been about… The emergency. The ‘quick, I need a doctor.’ That was what had sent me flying out of Dr. Asher's office like something was on fire.

I mean this.

"Doctor," he said to one of the physicians standing nearby, his voice back to its usual composed authority now that the drama had settled. "Take a look at her leg. It's flaring up."

I was still far enough down the corridor that he hadn't spotted me yet. Standing just close enough to see every detail and just far enough that I could still pretend, for another few seconds, that I had the option of turning around.

But then, I didn't turn around.

I would have thought he was simply helping out a stranger if I didn't know better. More like a good deed and maybe an Alpha doing the right thing because that was what Alphas did.

But I knew better than that. I had known better for a long time now, even when I was busy convincing myself otherwise.

The lady in the wheelchair was Raina.

Raina was Alpha Lucien's childhood sweetheart. The woman who had never quite exited the picture, even after the marriage, even after five years of me standing in the same house with him and trying to be whatever it was he needed. She was always somewhere within comfortable reach of him. And Lucien always found a way to make sure she stayed there.

To a fault, I wasn't as surprised as I probably should have been. I had felt it in too many silences. In the way he looked through me at clan dinners. In the distance that never seemed to close no matter how hard I leaned toward him. I knew something was pulling him in another direction. I just hadn't stood here and watched it happen in real time before.

And knowing something in the back of your mind is a completely different thing from watching it play out two meters in front of you. The ‘knowing’ doesn't prepare you for seeing it for real. Not even a little.

"Thank you so much, Lucien." Raina's voice was soft and carefully warm. She reached out and moved her hand slowly up his arm, her fingers trailing like she had every right in the world to be doing exactly that.

Alpha Lucien had squatted briefly to meet her at eye level where she sat in the wheelchair, close enough that their faces were almost level, and Raina was looking at him like the rest of the corridor didn't exist. "I don't know what I'd do without you," she added, her thumb pressing gently into the inside of his wrist.

"Don't say that." He said it easily like there was nothing complicated about any of this. He was smiling in that kind of soft and unhurried smile I hadn't seen on his face in so long I had almost stopped remembering it was something he was capable of. "You hurt your leg trying to help me. It's the least I can do."

I stood there and felt those words settle somewhere cold inside me.

When was the last time he had smiled at me like that? Not the tight, controlled one he occasionally produced in public when appearances demanded it. I mean, the real one. The one that was easy, warm and reached his eyes without being dragged there. The one he was wearing right now, for Raina, without even thinking about it.

I genuinely could not remember. And that, somehow, was the worst part.

My hand tightened around the strap of my handbag. It was the only thing available to hold, so I held it like it was load-bearing.

That was exactly when Raina's eyes drifted over Lucien's shoulder and found me at the far end of the corridor.

She didn't flinch. She didn't look away quickly or pretend that she hadn't seen me. She held my gaze for a long, steady moment in a calm and unhurried manner. And in those few seconds I understood every single thing about what I was looking at. The ‘’I don't know what I'd do without you.’ The hand on his arm. The carefully timed softness of her voice. The smile she had drawn out of him without even trying. None of it was accidental. Every single part of it had been placed exactly where it would do the most damage, and she wanted me to know that. She wanted me to stand here and see all of it.

And it worked perfectly well as she could see from my face that it had landed exactly where she intended.

Alpha Lucien must have caught the change in her attention, because he started to turn around. His head was already shifting toward the direction she had been looking. But Raina was faster. Her hand came up and curled around the back of his neck before he could complete the turn, drawing his eyes back to hers.

"Alpha," she said, her voice dipping into something soft and helpless. "I think I have something in my eye. Can you take a look?"

"Yeah." He turned back to her without the slightest hesitation.

Just like that.

And then they were back in their little world — their heads tilted close together, her hand still resting at the back of his neck, him leaning in with all his attention on her like she was the only thing in the space worth focusing on.

I stood there and watched it. And felt the pieces fall into place one by one, quietly and certainly.

This was why he had never marked me.

Five years of marriage and not even in a moment that felt close. I had told myself so many things over the years to make sense of it; That he was guarded. That he needed more time. That the coldness was his own damage and not a reflection of someone else. I had stretched every benefit of the doubt I had until it was thin enough to see through.

But there was nothing left to misread here.

It was her. It had always been her. Every wall he kept between us, every time he pulled back, every morning I reached toward him and found nothing — all of it pointed here; To this corridor. To this woman sitting in a wheelchair with her hand at the back of my husband's neck.

It just dawned on me that I had never been the one he wanted. The marriage, the title, the five years — all of it a sham dressed up as something real.

Abruptly, my free hand moved to my stomach without intending. It just rested there, with my fingers flat against the fabric of my gown.

‘I should have known from the start.’

My legs went unsteady all at once without any warning, in a way one's body does when it is done being held upright by sheer willpower. Luckily, there was a seat right behind me and I dropped onto it before I hit the floor, the legs of the chair scraping the tile on the way down.

The sound must have been heard more than necessary, because in the corner of my vision I saw Alpha Lucien's head begin to turn.

But a nurse was already moving across the corridor between us, cutting his sightline before it could fully land on me. She had probably been passing through and clocked me on the way, because she doubled back without missing a beat and was at my side almost immediately.

"Ma'am, are you okay?" She placed a steady hand on my waist, warmly and evenly.

I nodded because that was the reflex, even when the honest answer was something else entirely.

She didn't wait for a more convincing response. She guided me up from the seat and steered me gently toward a small side room just a little further down the corridor quietly, away from the open space. But to me, that was away from all of these.

I let her lead me. You know, there was nothing left to resist.

The door closed softly behind us.

And I sat down in the quiet of that room with one hand in my lap and the other still resting on my stomach, staring at nothing, trying to figure out which part of the last ten minutes I was even supposed to start with.

As much as I needed to take this breath… it just occurred to me that I forgot the pregnancy report paper on the doctor's desk and I needed to go pick it up.

For security purposes, I wouldn't want a 3rd party involved in it, for now.