No Longer Your Luna, But the Alpha Queen Chapter 02

No Longer Your Luna, But the Alpha Queen Chapter 02

Zyra hadn’t expected that even after all the mud she’d slung at me, Bastian would still bring me along to dinner. A flash of venom crossed her eyes before it was quickly replaced by a look of helpless anxiety. “Bastian, is that really appropriate? I’m just a nameless omega with no status. How could I possibly let the Luna peel shrimp for me?”

But Bastian tilted her chin up and kissed her. “Don’t be ridiculous. In my eyes, you’re cleaner than she’ll ever be, title or not. Look at her, soaking wet like that. She might as well be standing there naked for everyone to stare at.”

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

He was the one who’d had a dozen men drag me into the pool until my clothes were plastered to my skin. And somehow I was the dirty one.

Certain that I had no choice but to let him mold me however he pleased, Bastian pulled Zyra even tighter against him. The look he gave me was pure ice and contempt. “Tahlia, I only slept with one woman. But you? You’ve been exposed in front of all these people. No one besides me would ever want to mark you now. Just don’t make a scene, and after tomorrow you’ll be the Luna everyone envies.”

He jerked his chin toward a maid’s uniform a server had brought over, indicating I should put it on.

What on earth made him think that after humiliating me like this, I’d sit down for dinner with him and his mistress and peel shrimp for her?

I didn’t take the uniform. I picked up my phone and dialed a number. “The presidential suite at the Obsidian Spire Hotel. I’ll be there.”

“Alright.” A deep male voice came through the speaker.

The color drained from Bastian’s face. He shoved Zyra aside and lunged for my phone, but in the struggle it slipped from our hands and plunged into the pool. By the time he fished it out, the screen was dead black.

He rounded on me, practically frothing. “Tahlia! How dare you? You’re sneaking around behind my back? Have you no shame? Tell me right now, who were you calling! Was it Zephyr Grimwood, that guy who wouldn’t stop chasing you? You said you weren’t interested in him. Or did you sell me out for his money?”

I stared at him, feeling as though someone had carved a chunk out of my chest with a dull blade. The pain was so sharp I couldn’t even form a single word in my defense.

My silence looked like an admission of guilt to Bastian. He smashed the champagne tower beside him, his eyes blazing crimson. “I knew it! You two were alone together in Novara for three days of so-called business negotiations. You were negotiating in bed, weren’t you?”

So that was what he thought. I’d gone to Novara alone and landed the deal that launched his career into the stratosphere, and this was how he saw it.

“Yes,” I said flatly. “You’re absolutely right. We negotiated in bed.”

The truth was, on my first night in Novara, I’d been clipped by a motorcycle. I hemorrhaged on the spot from a miscarriage, and that was how I found out I’d been pregnant at all. Zephyr had mobilized every medical resource in Novara overnight just to keep me alive. When I woke up, my childhood memories came flooding back, and I realized I’d been in love with the wrong person all along. The one who had saved me, from the very beginning, had only ever been Zephyr.

He’d been furious that Bastian, an Alpha, had sent me to Novara alone to negotiate. He told me outright that he was the one who’d saved me as a child, and he begged me to stop wasting my life on a man who didn’t deserve it.

But I’d insisted that my love for Bastian had nothing to do with a debt of gratitude. Lying in that hospital bed, I’d explained over and over that if Bastian had known I was pregnant, he never would have let me go alone. I begged Zephyr not to tell Bastian about the miscarriage because I was afraid the man who loved me so much would blame himself.

With an IV still in my arm, I’d sat there analyzing the pros and cons of the deal with Zephyr until I secured Silverveil Pack’s new project in Calythera.

And reality had slapped me across the face for it.

Someone splashed red wine in my face on Bastian’s behalf. “You slut! Bastian didn’t even care that you’re a broke heiress, and he still insisted on making you Luna! This is how you repay him?”

The wine dripped from my jaw onto my chest like blood seeping from a stab wound. Vivid and blinding.

Zyra stepped forward, gently rubbing her belly, and pulled my bathrobe closed for me. Then she leaned in and whispered, “Tahlia, while Bastian was busy suspecting you and Zephyr of spending three days and nights in bed together, he and I were doing exactly that.” She paused, letting the words sink in. “The baby in my belly is three months along. It’s a boy.”

My entire body went rigid.