Chapter 73
+25 Points
My legs felt like jelly, and I sank onto the edge of the bed, the mattress giving slightly under my weight. My head was pounding, a drumbeat of disbelief and pain. My chest felt tight, like a fist was squeezing my heart.
Every time I think she can break me anymore than she already has she does something better and I don’t know how I’m supposed to get through this.
“Why, Faith?” I managed to whisper, my voice rough and broken. It was barely a sound, but it was loaded with everything I felt. “Why did you do this to us? To me? How?”
My mind was a mess. For years I’ve had these strange feelings. Like little movie clips playing in my head. Of us. That particular night when I was drunk, when she left.
Together, touching, having s*x and I always thought they were just dreams, made up by my lonely mind. Happy endings I wished for. Never, not once, did I think they were real. Never did I think they were actual memories, hidden away, waiting for me to find them.
She moved but I didn’t look up. I just stared at my hands, clenched into fists on my lap. Then I felt her presence close, so close I could almost feel her breath. She knelt on the floor in front of me, her head bowed.
“Astor,” she began, her voice trembling. “No apology, no explanation can ever change what I did. I know that. But please… I am begging for your forgiveness.”
A single tear escaped my eye, then another, hot and stinging paths down my face. My breath hitched. An Alpha crying. It felt wrong, like breaking some ancient rule. But I couldn’t stop it. The dam had broken, and all the pain, all the confusion, all the hurt poured out.
My mind replayed the last few hours. The slow, painful puzzle pieces are falling into place. I remember overhearing her parents talking. Something about a son. I froze. My wolf inside me had stirred, a strange mix of fear and familiarity. I tried to push it away, to tell myself it was a misunderstanding, a cruel twist of words. My Faith wouldn’t do something like that.
Not to me.
Then Kimberly called. Her voice was hushed, careful. “Astor,” she’d said. “There’s a couple… they’ve been calling. They want to talk to Faith. About her son.”
About her son.
The world had tilted on its axis then. My stomach had dropped, and a cold dread had spread through me, making my blood turn to ice. It wasn’t a misunderstanding. It was real.
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+25 Points
I don’t remember much of the conversation that I had with them except the fact that they told me that she was only here because she was sick and she needed to be here to get better.
I remember asking them to come here and I made sure that they got the best flights but they were so concerned about her that they didn’t even care that I didn’t give them time to prepare.
I looked at her now, kneeling at my feet, my eyes bloodshot and full of tears, but also full of a burning disbelief. “You kept him from me,” I choked out, the words raw, tearing at my throat. “You kept my son from me!”
The tears stopped. Replaced by a cold, hard rage that surged through every fibre of my being. I stood up, abruptly, the bed springs groaning under my sudden movement. I pointed a finger down at her, shaking with fury.
“You are an awful being!” I roared, my voice now a savage growl that echoed off the walls. “You don’t deserve my love! I have done nothing but love you! It was always you! But it was never enough, was it?” My voice cracked with the sheer force of my anger. “It wasn’t enough for you to stay. It wasn’t enough for you to choose me. And it certainly wasn’t enough for you to tell me that we were going to have a son!”
Inside me, my wolf howled, a sound of pure agony mixed with a primal rage. I felt Faith’s wolf, a faint echo, breaking too. A wave of sorrow, of deep, mournful pain. But I didn’t feel sorry for her. Not a single bit. My own wolf snarled, rejecting her suffering. She deserved this.
Faith finally looked up, her eyes watery, her face pale. “I was tired, Astor,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “I was so tired. I needed to go away. Very, very far from you. And I… I didn’t know I was pregnant. Not until a couple of weeks later.” She took a shaky breath. “And when I did, I couldn’t tell you. Because… because I finally had my own person in the whole wide world who loved me unconditionally. Without any expectations.”
Her words hit me like a physical blow. Unconditional love? Without expectations? What did she think my love was? I scoffed, a bitter, hollow sound.
“And what about me?” I demanded, my voice icy now, stripped of all emotion but betrayal. “Didn’t I deserve that? Didn’t I deserve to be loved by my son? To love my son? You took that away from me, Faith! You stole years from us! Years of first steps, first words, first birthdays! You took my chance to be a father!”
It felt like I swallowed a hot potato because my throat was burning as much as my heart
was.
That little boy looks like me. he is exactly how I imagined my child would look like and I missed everything about his life.
He doesn’t know me. My son doesn’t know that I’m his father and I have done nothing to
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deserve this.
+25 Points
Maybe I wasn’t a good mate or a good fiancée but I am a good father and I deserved that.
She flinched, her shoulders slumping further. “I know,” she whispered, tears streaming down her face now. “I know I did. But… what happens next?”
