Chapter 5 — Alpha, I want a divorce!!!

Lara's POV

I swiped the screen open fully.

And there it was.

A photo of Alpha Lucien lying across Raina's body with his eyes closed and completely at ease — the kind of relaxed that only comes when a person feels truly safe where they are. And Raina was looking directly into the camera, front-facing, and that angle was too deliberate to be accidental. She had taken that picture herself as she must have arranged herself underneath him, waited for exactly the right moment, and captured it on purpose.

Then she sent it to me…I wouldn't know if all of these actually happened today, who knows?

Or maybe she only decided to share this with me today just to get on me or something.

But then, the message that followed the image was there in plain text.

'Hey loser. Alpha Lucien doesn't care about you. I am the only one he loves.'

I stared at the screen for a long moment without moving. Not because I was shocked though — I wasn't feeling that way anymore. But because something about seeing it written out plainly and casually, with that particular brand of cruelty sitting behind every single word, made everything that had been quietly building since this morning finally reach the end of its rope.

I had swallowed a lot in five years. I had absorbed a lot and said nothing, kept my head down and kept trying. But this — right here — was the height of all of it. And I was not having this anymore.

I set the phone face down on the table.

I reached over to the photo album that was still open beside the divorce papers and found the picture — the one I had always called my favourite. Which had the two of us in it, standing close to each other, back when I was still willing to read things into the way he occasionally looked at me. Back when I still believed that what we had could eventually become what I needed it to be, if I just gave it enough time.

I picked up the scissors.

Cut it clean down the middle into two separate halves. Him on one side, me on the other.

I set my half down and looked at it for a moment. There was something almost peaceful about it — the clean edge of the cut, the way the image separated so neatly, like it had always been two different things held together by nothing more than paper and wishful thinking. More like, it had been waiting to come apart.

Five years. That was how long it had taken me to pick up a pair of scissors and do what this picture had apparently been ready for from the very beginning.

"I am not going to burden you anymore, Alpha Lucien." The room was empty and my voice was quiet in it, steadier than I expected. "I will leave with my unborn child. Forever."

I closed the album.

Pulled the divorce papers back in front of me and picked up the pen.

I won't pretend it felt simple. My hand wasn't shaking, but my chest was carrying something heavy — that particular kind of ache that isn't about losing something good, but about finally admitting that what you were holding so tightly was never really what you believed it was.

Five years of swallowed words and careful steps…and hope I should have let go of much earlier. Five years of telling myself that if I was just patient enough, steady enough and good enough, then something would eventually give.

But honestly, nothing was going to change. And the only person in this situation who had refused to fully accept that until today was me.

The pen touched the first signature line.

I signed it.

Then the second. Then the third. Each one more final than the last. Each one quieter than the one before, the way things go quiet when they are actually finished instead of just paused.

It wouldn't be as easy as the papers made it look — I knew that. My heart knew that better than anyone. But it was the only choice left that still came with any dignity attached to it. At least for the sake of my mental health. At least for the sake of the child I was carrying, who deserved a life that wasn't built on the foundation of a man who had already decided they weren't worth having before they even arrived.

I would give Lucien his copy. He would sign it and then it would be over.

He wanted this — I had known that for longer than I was willing to say out loud. He had wanted out of this marriage from the very first day it was decided for him. The only difference between then and now was that back then I had been the one absorbing everything quietly, shrinking into whatever shape was easiest for him, staying on the edges of his life while pretending I was the center of it.

But that was over.

I finished signing the last page just as the door creaked open behind me.

I heard the wheels before I heard his footsteps — the soft, familiar roll of Raina's wheelchair across the floor, followed by the particular weight of Lucien's walk. And so, I turned around.

He had barely cleared the doorway before he started. "Lara." His voice was already clipped, carrying that edge that meant he had decided before entering the room that someone in it was wrong. "Can't you just act like Luna just once? I have already had enough trying to secure an alliance with the Moonshade clan. I do not need you shoving Raina around and in turn causing more trouble for me."

I looked at him.

I had been sitting at this table since I came home. I had not left this room. I had not been anywhere near either of them since I got back. The accusation was so far removed from anything that had actually happened that for a second I just stood there, absorbing the sheer confidence it took to walk through a door and say something like that without blinking.

"No," I said, keeping my voice even. "I never pushed her."

"Please, Alpha Lucien, don't blame her." Raina's voice floated over from the wheelchair — soft, generous and dripping with a performance of grace so polished it almost deserved its own round of applause. "She probably didn't mean to push me. It was probably just an accident."

I looked at her.

This was the same person who had sent me that image not twenty minutes ago. The same person who had typed, ‘hey loser', without blinking, and attached a photo of herself underneath my husband like it was something worth celebrating. And now she was sitting there with her hands folded in her lap and that wounded, forgiving expression on her face, playing the part of the bigger person for Lucien's benefit with everything she had.

Who would have believed it was the same person? Honestly, if I didn't know what I knew, even I might have been swayed by the performance.

I would have asked — ‘when exactly did I push you, and where?’ — because I knew exactly how careful I had always been around her. You know, I had spent years being careful. Moving around her like she was made of glass, watching my words, watching my distance, never giving Lucien a single opening to look at me the way he was looking at me right now. Not because I owed her that level of caution, but because I had always known that any misstep on my part would land exactly like this…With Alpha Lucien already decided before I opened my mouth.

But I already knew how it would go if I tried to explain any of it. I could lay out every fact, walk through the entire timeline of the last two hours, present the evidence clearly and calmly — and it would not move him one inch. Lucien would still end up on her side, the way he always did without questioning. Maybe it was the pity given to one who is unable to walk without the help of a wheelchair. Or better still, it was years of shared history between them that I had never been fully let into. Whatever the reason, the result had never once changed — he believed her, and he did not believe me.

And I was finally done trying to change that fact.

Lucien stepped forward, away from the wheelchair, and brought his voice down low. Not quiet in any gentle sense, rather it was quiet in the way that was always more threatening than raised. 

More controlled, deliberate and mean in the specific way that left no marks and took no accountability. "Lara. Apologize to Raina. Now!"

I stood up.

Not loudly and not dramatically either. I just rose from the chair and turned to face him completely, and the steadiness that came with it surprised even me. It wasn't forced as it just arrived, the way courage sometimes does — not with fanfare, but like something that had been sitting quietly in the back of you for a very long time, waiting for exactly this moment to finally stop waiting.

‘Is this the man I have been in love with?’

The thought moved through me clean and without heat. Five years of being on the losing side of every single decision he made that involved me. Five years of never once being trusted, not even in moments when the truth was sitting directly in front of him. Five years of watching him give Raina everything he never once offered me — patience, softness, the version of himself that smiled without being asked. Five years of apologizing for things I hadn't done, shrinking from rooms I had every right to stand in, and asking myself every single morning if today would finally be different.

But, it never was.

And right now, after all of that, he was standing in front of me demanding I apologize to the woman who had sent me that message with those exact words attached to it less than twenty minutes ago.

‘What have I been doing here? What had any of this been for?’

Lucien's hand shot out and gripped my right arm — tight and rough, the grip of someone who had run out of patience with a person they had stopped respecting a long time ago. "Are you deaf or something?" His jaw was tight. "I am talking to you."

I pulled my arm free quickly, the way you pull away from something you have finally decided you are done letting it touch you.

Then I reached across the table, picked up the divorce papers — already signed at every page, and held them out to him.

"Alpha." My voice did not waver. Not even slightly. "I want a divorce."

He stared at the papers. Then at my face. And then the most unfriendly smirk I had ever seen in five years of watching his expressions crossed his face — slow and sharp. As much as I know, this was the smile of a man who couldn't quite decide if he was being challenged or humoured, and didn't like either option.

"Say it again," he said.

He wanted this and I had always known that. I mean, he had wanted out of this marriage from the day the shaman pointed at me instead of Raina, and he had spent every year since then making sure I felt the weight of that. But he had never expected me to be the one to pick up the pen and actually do something about it. I could see it clearly on his face — not anger exactly and not hurt either, but the particular expression of a man who had held all the power in a room for so long that he genuinely didn't know how to stand in it when someone else decided to straighten their spine.

I held his gaze…I didn't flinch and there was no way I was going to look away at this point.

"I said," I began again, my voice steady and completely certain, "I want a divorce."

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

How do you think Alpha Lucien would react to this?...From what you seem to have known about him.

Now, let's get on to the next chapter but don't forget to share your thoughts because we are in this together.