THIRTY

Alisha

I struggled to finish up the dinner I had eaten. It had been over a few days or maybe even up to a week now and still the memory of Derek’s callous, cruel words to me were stinging. Simon was silent as he ate and I pushed my food around with a glum expression.

“You know, you need to feed yourself. For the baby, dear, if not for too itself,” Simon was gentle as he said that, as usual. But his words packed a punch. “So I guess what I’m asking is, do you want to talk about what’s been bothering you recently?”

He had asked me this before but I didn’t respond. Or maybe, I didn’t know how to. I didn’t want to tell Simon that the Alpha, the son of the woman he was close to… had fully made it clear to me that he could never have me as his mate.

And I couldn’t tell him of how much my hopes had crashed and how I had somehow fallen in love with him in such a short time. I was going to end up putting my burden on him and that wasn’t what I wanted. He deserved to not always be my emotional