Librairie
Rechercher
Accueil / The Alpha’s Rejected Luna: His Regret / Chapter 4

Partager

Chapter 4

Auteur: Cece West
So this was where he had struck.

The one place I couldn’t afford to take a chance.

“She helped you.”

My voice shook.

“When your grandmother was in the hospital, she drove you there. When you couldn’t afford the training camp, she paid for it.”

Jake took out a cigar but didn’t light it.

“Don’t confuse two separate issues.”

“Her life is in your hands. How am I supposed to separate them?”

He finally looked up.

“Susan, I don’t want to hurt her. But you can’t keep hurting Emily.”

I stared at him.

For a moment, I couldn’t speak.

He had put my mother’s access to treatment on one side of a scale and the possibility of Emily facing criticism on the other.

Then he had told me to give in first.

I rushed over and caught his arm.

“Please.”

As the word left my mouth, my wolf gave a low, broken whimper somewhere deep inside me.

I had never begged him like that.

Not when we were at our poorest.

Not when he was injured in the succession challenge and nearly lost everything.

I had always stood beside him.

Now I was on my knees beside the couch, clutching his sleeve, begging him to leave my mother alone.

He watched me for a while.

Then he pried my hands away.

“Then prove you understand what you did wrong.”

He wanted me to record a video.

To admit the mate contract I posted was false.

To say I had maliciously attacked Emily because I couldn’t accept the end of our relationship.

He didn’t ask me to deny the mating ceremony everyone had witnessed.

He only wanted me to claim the contract had already ceased to be valid, and I had concealed that fact.

Then Emily would no longer be the other woman.

And I would be the unstable ex-mate who fabricated evidence because she couldn’t let go.

I stared at him.

“You know we never ended the bond.”

“People online don’t need those details.”

Beside him, Emily sniffled softly.

Jake turned to her, his voice immediately gentler.

“Wait in the car.”

After the door closed, I asked one last time.

“If I do what you say, you’ll restore my mother’s treatment?”

“Yes.”

“Restore it now.”

He frowned, apparently displeased that I was still setting conditions.

After a moment, he took out his phone and sent a message.

“Record it.”

I sat by the window and opened the camera.

It took three attempts.

The first time, I couldn’t make myself speak.

The second, I began crying halfway through.

Jake wasn’t satisfied.

“It looks like someone’s forcing you.”

The third time, I set the phone down steadily and read the words he had sent me.

The woman on the screen was pale.

There was no color in her lips.

She said she had been wrong.

That Emily shouldn’t have suffered because of her jealousy.

That she hoped people would stop sharing the mate contract.

After I posted it, Jake finally stood.

“If you’d done that sooner, it wouldn’t have had to get so ugly.”

I didn’t move.

Not until his car was gone.

Then I ran into the bathroom, gripped the sink, and retched.

Nothing came up.

In the mirror, the mark on my neck was still whole.

It had once been the thing I treasured most.

Now it looked like a joke.

The doctor’s authorization was restored the following afternoon.

By the time she arrived, Mom had already missed a critical treatment.

The doctor didn’t blame me.

But after reviewing the test results, she looked more serious than usual.

“Let’s stabilize her first.”

I caught her hand.

“She’ll get better, won’t she?”

She didn’t answer immediately.

Those few seconds frightened me so badly I couldn’t close my eyes all night.

Mom was still trying to comfort me.

She thought the delay had been caused by a scheduling problem. She even told me not to blame the nurses.

“Everyone’s doing their best.”

She held my hand and rubbed her thumb over my knuckles.

“You’ve lost weight, Susan.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Did you and Jake have a fight?”

I shook my head.

She watched me for a while but didn’t call me on it.

After a moment, she smiled.

“Do you remember the first time he had dinner at our house?”

I remembered.

Back then, his father hadn’t acknowledged him.

He had been the pack’s illegitimate son, living in a trailer.

The other boys sneered at his old clothes. After training, they deliberately left him behind to clean up the grounds.

He rarely spoke.

Only when he walked me home did he say a little more.

Then one night, a group of wolves from outside the pack cornered me.

Jake pushed me behind him and stood across the entrance to the alley.

He broke three ribs.

The wounds on his back needed more than a dozen stitches.
Continuez à lire ce livre gratuitement
Scanner le code pour télécharger l'application
Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Dernier chapitre

  • The Alpha’s Rejected Luna: His Regret   Chapter 40

    I lowered my head.At last, the tears fell.“I still miss you so much.”“Sometimes, when I finish cooking, I reach for an extra bowl without thinking.”“And I still want to call and ask what to do when the sheep won’t eat.”I wiped my face with the back of my hand and gave a small laugh.“Though you probably wouldn’t know, either.”The wind stirred the paper around the flowers.I sat there for a long time.No calls came in.No one told me to hurry back.No one needed me to manage their feelings first.Before leaving, I took out a photograph and held it in front of her headstone.In it, I stood on my own porch, my hair blown loose by the wind, holding a lamb that had escaped through the fence.Beth had called my name just before taking the picture.I hadn’t had time to arrange my face.I had simply laughed.It wasn’t a polished photograph.There was mud on my shoes.My sleeves were rolled to different heights.Behind me sat a pile of feed I hadn’t finished unpacking.But I loved it.“Th

  • The Alpha’s Rejected Luna: His Regret   Chapter 39

    I sat in front of her and slowly told her about the past year.I told her I’d bought a ranch.It wasn’t big, but it got wonderful sunlight.I told her about my neighbor, who was very direct and had informed me on her first visit that my sheep might be smarter than I was.I told her about the young French man I’d hired.He had been a good worker with an equally good appetite. Now he was interning at a much larger ranch.I told her I’d learned to repair a small section of fence.Though Beth hadn’t trusted it and had gone to check it again the next day.I laughed at that.Wind moved through the pines with a soft rustle.I paused.“Mom, I didn’t go back with Jake.”My eyes still burned when I said it.Not because I felt guilty.Because I could finally sit in front of her and tell her what I had truly chosen.“I know you used to love him.”“I did, too.”“But I don’t want to make excuses for him anymore.”I touched her name on the headstone.“And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hat

  • The Alpha’s Rejected Luna: His Regret   Chapter 38

    He had lost a lot of weight.His once carefully styled hair had been cut short.His jacket looked worn. The sleeves were rolled back, exposing his wrists.When someone came to buy apples, he looked up and told them the price in an even voice.No one called him Alpha.No one rushed to explain themselves when he frowned.He handed over the change and said thank you.I watched for a while from behind the flower shop’s window.My chest didn’t suddenly tighten.There was no sense of victory, either.Only the clear realization that the man I’d once believed I could never escape was now simply someone making a life by the side of a road.He had lost his power because of what he’d done.Losing his legs was a separate act of violence. It wasn’t something to celebrate.The two things didn’t need to be confused.I didn’t have to save him.I didn’t have to watch him suffer to prove I’d survived.The florist wrapped my white roses and asked whether they were a gift.“For my mom.”“Would you like a

  • The Alpha’s Rejected Luna: His Regret   Chapter 37

    Before summer, Lucas finished his courses.He was offered an internship at a large ranch and came to tell me, hesitant.I was happy for him.“Of course you should go.”“What about this place?”“I’ll hire someone else.”He looked a little disappointed.“You answered too quickly.”I laughed.“Should I have started with, ‘What will I do without you?’”He considered that seriously.“You could say it once.”“All right.”I cleared my throat.“What will the storage shed do without you?”He finally laughed.Before leaving, he organized all my tools and wrote a simple maintenance checklist.He even made a special note about the sheep most likely to squeeze through the fence.“Don’t trust it just because it looks innocent.”I promised I wouldn’t.After he left, the yard was quieter for a little while.I didn’t feel abandoned.Someone could come into my life, do good things, leave warmth behind, and then go on to follow his own path.It could be that simple.A relationship didn’t have to last for

  • The Alpha’s Rejected Luna: His Regret   Chapter 36

    In spring, I planted a small herb garden behind the house.At first, it was a mess.Beth came over, took one look, and told me I’d crowded together plants with entirely different watering needs.No wonder none of them were happy.I crouched in the dirt with a hand trowel and started separating them.She stood beside me, giving instructions.Lucas passed and asked whether we were having a meeting.“An emergency meeting,” Beth said. “About Susan’s gardening skills.”I laughed and threw a glove at him.That evening, Claire arrived for a visit of a few days.She looked thinner than she did on video.When she saw me, she held me for a long time.Then she stepped back and looked at me.“You really are different.”“How?”She thought about it.“You used to talk like you were waiting for someone’s permission.”I stood by the door, momentarily still.At the main house, I had been so used to watching Jake’s face.If he approved, I continued.If he frowned, I began wondering what I’d done wrong.S

  • The Alpha’s Rejected Luna: His Regret   Chapter 35

    I held the phone without speaking for a long time.Once, he had shielded me from those boys in the snow. His ribs had broken, but he hadn’t let go.Later, he had stood so far above everyone that he thought no one could touch him.Now all of those images belonged to the past.I felt no satisfaction.I didn’t want to visit him, either.My attorney asked if I wanted him to pass along a message.“No.”After hanging up, I stood in the kitchen and listened to the faint metallic sounds of the tray cooling.Lucas knocked twice at the door.“Can I come in?”“Yes.”He smelled the bread and smiled.“Did I come at exactly the right time?”I handed him the knife.“Go ahead.”He washed his hands, then carefully cut the loaf into even slices.I watched for a moment.Suddenly, I remembered Jake’s first time in our kitchen, years ago.My mother had asked him to slice the bread.He had kept his head down, so afraid of getting it wrong.My eyes burned.Lucas noticed. His hands slowed.“Did I do something

Plus de chapitres

Vous vous intéresseriez aussi à

Découvrez et lisez de bons romans gratuitement
Accédez gratuitement à un grand nombre de bons romans sur GoodNovel. Téléchargez les livres que vous aimez et lisez où et quand vous voulez.
Lisez des livres gratuitement sur l'APP
Scanner le code pour lire sur l'application
DMCA.com Protection Status