My Fiction-161

Talia's POV I was trapped in the fire when my alpha mate finally came. But he didn't come for me. He ran past me—and lifted another woman into his arms. His first love. Imema. "Imema, are you hurt?" His voice shook with a fear he had never once shown me. I was lying three feet away, and he never looked down. "Aires…" My voice scraped out, thin and raw. The fire was too loud. I didn't know if he heard me at all. His men poured in. A boot came down on my hair, and the man didn't even slow. My wolf howled inside me. *Mate. Why isn't our mate coming for us?* "Alpha, the emergency room is ready," a beta said. "Get the best doctors in place," he said, hoarse but iron. "Nothing can happen to her. Do you hear me?" The words went into my chest like a blade and kept carving downward. He never even noticed that his own mate was trapped in the same fire. He turned toward the exit, carrying another she-wolf in his arms. Not me. Not his rightful Luna. My wolf went still. I felt nothing but cold, even as the fire crept up my arm. He flickered in the light beyond the door—then was gone. A beam cracked overhead and came down, snapping my ribs, pinning my legs beneath its weight. The pain whited out my vision. An ember dropped onto my cheek. My body began to feel weightless, as if something were lifting up and out of its shell. I felt like I was dying. When I woke, I was alone. White light. The flat smell of antiseptic. No flowers. No cards. No one in the chair beside the bed. Just that hollow ache under my ribs that no breathing could fill. I was seriously injured. And neither my husband nor my son even knew. A fire had nearly killed me—a fire I'd have walked out of without a scratch if my Alpha husband had spared me one glance. He'd chosen his first love instead. A she-wolf without a mark on her. I couldn't stay in that silent room. I held the wall and walked, step by step, into the corridor. That was when I saw them. Through a half-open door, Aires sat at the edge of a bed, cutting strawberries. He trimmed each stem, arranged each piece on the plate like it was the most important task in the world. Imema lay against the pillows, cheeks flushed, and opened her mouth for the berry he offered. My son sat on the other side, giggling, a spoon in his hand. "Open wide—this one's the yummiest!" "Good job, sweetheart," she said, ruffling his hair. "You'll make such a good husband one day." "I'm going to marry you!" Aeson announced. They all laughed. The sound came at me like needles. What a happy little family of three. And what about me? I'm clearly Aires' Luna. His wife. Imema's mother. But right now, I feel like a mistress—someone who can't be seen in the light of day. I turned and walked back, tears spilling over before I could stop them. I couldn't bear to watch anymore. Suddenly, my phone buzzed. The piano studio downtown. "Mrs. Talia? A customer has taken a liking to the piano your mother left behind. Can we sell it?" "Of course not," I said. "Don't let anyone touch it." "The customer said they'd arrive at four o'clock. Could you come over?" I turned to go—too fast. A medication cart came around the corner. A tray of glass shattered beside my hand; shards bit into my palm. The corridor went still. Everyone stared. Through the open door, Aeson's head snapped toward the sound. "Mom?" For a heartbeat his face was just confusion. Then it shifted into embarrassment—as if I'd shamed him simply by being seen. He looked away. Aires rose, set down the plate, and crossed into the corridor. His shadow fell over me where I knelt in the glass. He didn't offer his hand. He just looked down at me, cold as ever. "Are you following me?" I almost laughed. Following him. As if I hadn't been three doors down, bleeding, while he sliced strawberries into neat little pieces for someone else. "No," I said. "Then what are you doing on this floor?" His jaw tightened. Behind him, Imema had pushed herself up against the pillows, watching us. His eyes flicked back to her—just once. That was where his worry lived. "If you came to make a scene in front of her—" "I didn't come for anything of yours," I cut in. I pressed my bleeding palm to my chest and pushed myself to my feet. The glass shifted under me. I didn't let my face change. "Then why are you here, Talia?" There were a hundred answers. Because the fire nearly took my life. Because I screamed your name until it burned away in my throat. Because I'm your wife, and you carried another woman past my body like I was a fallen beam. In the end, I let just one of them out. "I almost died," I said. "Do you even care?" He said nothing. His face stayed calm. Unmoved. I had my answer. "…Never mind." I pressed my bleeding palm to my chest. "I'm fine. I only came to visit someone." Then I turned my back on him and walked toward the elevator. I don't want to explain anymore. No one will believe me, and no one will care. I have more important things to do. Chapter 2 Aires' POV Go to her. Vincent had been raking the inside of my skull since the second she hit the floor. She's bleeding. Something happened to our mate. Go— "She's fine," I said coldly. She was definitely faking it, just to get my attention. She'd done this trick too many times; I was sick of it. But I could smell it. Through the antiseptic, through the strawberries on Imema's tray, through the rosewater softness of the woman behind me—blood. Hers. It wasn't fresh—not from the fall just now. It smelled a day old, as if she'd been bleeding since before she ever got here. The awareness sat wrong in me. My wolf was more uneasy still. But I absolutely couldn't fall for it. She didn't have a mark on her that mattered. Imema was the one the doctors were still testing, the one who could barely stand. Imema was the one I should be concerned about. Talia was performing. She was always performing. I turned back to the room. Imema was holding a strawberry out to Aeson, the two of them laughing, my son's face open and bright in a way it never was for his mother. Good. That was how a family was supposed to look. Warm. Uncomplicated. I made myself watch it. I made myself not look at the door. I lost. When I turned my head she was already walking away—down the long white corridor, one hand on the wall, that oversized gown swallowing her, her hair loose down her back the way she'd worn it the first year, before she learned to pin it up small and quiet like everything else about her. She didn't look back. Not once. And something in my chest pulled tight, an old hook in old scar tissue, and dragged me five years down into the dark. I was twenty-four. I was dating Imema. She wasn't my fated mate, but I was sure I'd be with her forever. Then a scout dragged a half-dead she-wolf out of the eastern gorge, and the second the wind carried her scent to me—rain, something pale and flowering under the blood and silver—my whole life cracked down the middle. Mate, Vincent breathed, reverent, ruined. Finally. Ours. No. I knelt over her anyway. She was beaten near to death, poisoned, her veins gone black at the wrists. I carried her to our healers and sat by her bed three days, telling myself it was duty. When she finally opened her eyes, I had the words ready. I reject you. I'd practiced them in the dark like a prayer. I opened my mouth— "It's you," she breathed, before I could speak. Her eyes were steady on mine, clearer than they'd been in three days. "I knew you'd come back." And she pulled me down and kissed me. I never said the words. I've told myself a thousand times she knew what she was doing—that some cunning in her felt me slipping the hook and closed it for good. But the truth is I didn't fight it. The second her mouth touched mine, every generation of Alpha control bred into me burned off like fog, and there was nothing left but the bond and her scent and the starving pull of finally. "Stay," she said against my mouth. Not begging—certain. "Just tonight. I want to have you, my mate." "You'll regret this," I told her. It came out rough, unsteady—nothing like an Alpha's heir. "Then let me." Her fingers tightened in my hair. "Tomorrow's yours to ruin. Tonight is mine." I stayed. I let the bond take what it had been screaming for since the gorge. But even then, one cold thought stayed lit under the heat: Imema. I can't betray her. Vincent was wild for the rest of it. Mark her. Bite. Claim. Make it true— My teeth were at her throat, her pulse hammering against my mouth, my wolf howling for it. I didn't. It's the one thing I did right that night. You don't get to keep this one, I told him. She isn't ours to keep. I woke before dawn with her asleep on my chest and the weight of it caving in on me. I dressed in the dark. Before I left, I stood over her for a long moment—asleep, small, her hand still open on the sheet where I'd slipped out of it—and I did something I have never been able to explain to myself. I took the pendant from around my own neck. Old silver, my mother's before me, the Perseus crest worn nearly smooth. The one thing I never took off. I closed it into her palm. Later, I forced myself to forget that night. To forget that I'd found my destined mate at all. Imema and I were still together. But I was always distracted. I knew the pull of a fated bond was something an Alpha couldn't fully control. But I refused to let the mistake happen again. A few weeks later, Imema left to chase her dream at the conservatory. No warning. A letter, a closed door, a number that stopped ringing—gone, the way she was always threatening to go when things got hard. And in the wreckage she left behind, there was only one thing my mind kept circling back to. Her. So when the Coopers came—cars, lawyers, old-blood arrogance, her father at the front—and laid the pregnancy on the table between us like a winning hand, I didn't feel trapped. That's the part I can't forgive myself for. Your heir. Our daughter. You'll do right by both. She stood pale and silent behind her father, not begging, just watching me with those beautiful eyes— —and I wanted to. Goddess help me, I wanted to say yes for the right reasons. A mate. A child. A second chance at the thing I'd just lost. For one breath I let myself believe the bond had been mercy, not a trap. Then Theo pulled me aside and told me a cruel truth. The hunting "accident" that had taken Caleb the spring before—my oldest friend, the brother I chose, found dead in the cold two days too late—was no accident. It was her brother. A Cooper. A blood debt buried quietly in the dark, and I'd been standing there one signature away from marrying into the house that killed him. Ready to hand them my name, my heir, my real and stupid heart, while they laughed at me behind their lawyers. Something in me went out like a snuffed candle. I married her anyway. She carried my heir, and an Alpha pays his debts even to his enemies. No guests. No rings. No wedding she could ever show the world. I signed the papers with her hand cold in mine and hated her with everything the bond had tried to make me feel—because for one breath I'd let her in, and that was the most dangerous thing I'd ever done. Then, as if to prove I'd been right to seal myself back up, the money started to move. "Household expenses" at first. Then larger—sums leaving the pack's accounts every month, vanishing into Cooper hands. The family that took Caleb from me, bleeding my pack dry through the woman they'd planted in my house. When I asked where it went, she went silent. Always silent, as if I were the one who should be ashamed for asking. So I stopped asking. I stopped looking at her. I built the ice back inch by inch, thicker than before, until I could stand in the same room and feel nothing. That's the woman down the hall with a scratch on her palm and wounded eyes. My mate. My enemy. The snare I'm still caught in. "Aires?" Imema's voice pulled me back. "You went somewhere just now." "It's nothing." Rougher than I meant. I should have sat down and cut the next strawberry. Instead I was in the corridor. Finally, Vincent breathed. The bed was stripped. The room was empty. "Sir." A nurse hovered. "Were you looking for—" "No." I turned away. "Aires!" Imema came hurrying down the corridor, bright-eyed, breathless. "You'll never guess. The piano—the one I've wanted for years. They found it. A little shop downtown, a real Di Lian." Her fingers curled around my arm. "Come with me? You know how I sound when I play for you." I looked at Imema. She was the one I was supposed to want. "Okay," I said. Chapter 3 Talia's POV The cab let me out in front of Melody Works. Electra was waiting under the awning. She'd kept Di Lian safe for me for years—my mother's piano, the last thing of hers left in the world. "I tried to stall them," she whispered. "I said it wasn't for sale, that the owner was coming. Talia—it's him. He's already inside." I knew before she said it. I felt him through the glass. Aires. He stood beside the piano, and tucked against his side, gazing up at the worn black lacquer with shining eyes, was Imema. So he was the buyer. I pushed the door open. "It's not for sale," I said unequivocally. Imema turned first. "Talia… we were only looking." "That piano is mine." My voice came out rough, but it didn't shake. "The consignment is done. I came to take it home." Aires finally looked at me. His jaw tightened, as if my being there were one more thing I'd arranged to inconvenience him. "It's just a piano," he said, the way you'd reason with a difficult child. "I'll buy you ten." "I don't want ten. I want this one." "Don't be selfish." His voice cooled a degree. "It's Imema's dying wish." Imema said softly, one hand pressed to her chest. "I only wanted to give my last concert with a real Di Lian." Her eyes lifted to mine, wet and luminous. "But if it means so much to you, Talia, I'll find another. I would never want to take something precious from you." Said sweetly. Said so the whole shop could hear how gracious she was, and how cruel I'd have to be to refuse a dying woman who'd just offered to back down. She'd always been good at this. "At least you know your place. Anyway, I'm not selling it," I said again. "Not for any price either of you can name." Aires's expression hardened. "What if I insist that you sell? You cannot disobey my orders." "Or what." I looked at him. "This piano is the only thing I have left of my mother. She taught me to play on it before she died. Every key on it remembers her hands." My voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "Do you really have to do this?" For a moment he said nothing. "I'm asking you to stop being difficult," he said. And there it was. Five years, distilled into a single sentence. Everything I was, everything that mattered to me, weighed against Imema's passing whim—and found difficult. My heart was filled with bitterness. "No," I said. "I will never give it up. Not for her wish. Not for your patience. Not for anything." I let my eyes move from him to Imema and back. "You can buy every piano in this country. You can stand here and call me selfish in front of strangers until you're hoarse. It won't change the answer." Imema's lip trembled. A single tear slipped free. "Aires, it's all right. Please don't fight with her over me. I never wanted to come between you—" "You didn't come between us," I said. They both went still. "There's nothing left between us for you to come between." I said it to her, but it was for Aires. "I used to think there was. I told myself if I waited long enough, was good enough, quiet enough, he'd turn around one day and see me." I shook my head slowly. "He just looked right at me and called me difficult for wanting the last thing my mother ever gave me. I don't think I'll be waiting anymore." Aires's brows drew together. "Talia—" "Have the piano delivered to my address by morning." I looked at the shop assistant. Then I walked to the door. Electra stayed quietly by my side the whole time. But at this moment, she could no longer hold back. "How does he dare." Electra's voice shook with fury. "How does he stand there and call you difficult—over your own mother's piano—with that woman hanging off his arm." She caught my sleeve and turned me to face her. "Talia. He doesn't even know, does he. He still doesn't know." "Know what," I said quietly. "That it was you." Her eyes were wet and bright with anger. "The rogue attack, all those years ago. You were the one who pulled him back from the edge. You saved his life—and he's spent five years treating you like something he scraped off his shoe." Her hands curled into fists. "You even gave up everything for him. The stage, the music, your own name. You were going to be one of the great pianists of your generation, Talia, and you buried all of it in that house—for a mate who can't even let you keep your mother's piano." I froze and looked back at the lit window of the shop, where Aires was bending his head toward Imema, gently. Noticing my gaze, Electra took my hand and held it. I wanted to cry. The pain and the disappointment had gone somewhere too deep for that. I was already thinking, clearly and calmly: I want a divorce.