Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Mia
I was under house arrest.
To be precise, I'd always been under house arrest. The difference now was that they'd dropped the pretense of me being "an honored guest" and just turned my room into a goddamn cell.
Half the windows were sealed. Two guards posted outside my door.
Even when Aila brought my meals, she had to pass through three checkpoints.
And Zane Caster—my darling fated mate—came once a week.
Punctual as a clock.
Perfunctory as a chore.
The first time was three days after the wedding.
He showed up past midnight, reeking of whiskey and perfume—Leah's perfume.
Didn't say a word. Just shoved me onto the bed, did what he came to do, then rolled off and left.
The whole thing couldn't have been more than five words.
I lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, feeling like a rented copy machine.
The second time he came, I decided to try one more time.
That afternoon, I had a note ready. I'd written it all out clearly. "I wrote that song in the square. Leah's lying. I still have the manuscript. She was the one who drugged you."
I handed it to him.
He took it. Glanced down at it.
Then he looked up at me with an expression that made my spine go cold.
"Who the hell told you I cared about that song in the square?"
I froze, signing frantically. "Please believe me!"
But he couldn't read my signs. All he saw was my frantic gestures. Then his gaze shifted to Aila in the corner. The girl who knew sign language. The girl who helped me communicate. The only person who could understand what I was saying.
"Did you tell her that?" His voice was cold as a winter blade.
Aila's face went white. "Your—Your Majesty, I—"
"Tell me the truth."
Her lips trembled. She looked at me, then at him, and then—
"Yes... yes, Your Majesty. Lady Mia asked me to tell her things you cared about."
I felt my heart skip a beat.
What?
"I told her how moved you were by Miss Taylor's song." Aila's voice kept shrinking, tears starting to fall. "I... I told her that someone who could write songs like that would win your favor..."
What are you saying? I lunged for her shoulders, but Zane caught my wrist and yanked me back.
"Keep going." His voice was terrifyingly calm.
"Lady Mia... She was furious," Aila sobbed. "She said she was Your Majesty's fated mate. Why should Miss Taylor get everything... She made me help her come up with a plan, made me lie with her and say those songs were hers..."
I felt my blood flowing backward.
This wasn't real. This couldn't be real!
Why was Aila saying this?
Aila looked up at me—that look held apology, held fear. Then she dropped her head and kept crying.
"Enough." Zane released my wrist. I stumbled backward, hitting the bedpost. He turned to Aila, his voice carrying a judge's cold finality. "You're dismissed. Pack your things. Be out of the palace before dark."
"Your Majesty, please—"
"One more word and I'll ship you to the border mines."
Aila ran out, face in her hands.
Only he and I remained.
He turned to face me. Those gray-blue eyes held no anger, no disappointment. Only a cold, complete contempt. That expression hurt worse than any insult—because it meant he didn't even think I was worth getting angry at.
"I thought you at least had some kind of bottom line," he said, voice low and calm. "Turns out you're exactly what I thought you were."
I opened my mouth.
My throat couldn't force out a single sound.
I just stood there, watching him turn and leave, the door slamming shut in my face.
That night, he came again.
Rougher than before.
I didn't fight. I lay there, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, counting the rhythm of his breathing, waiting for it to end. My body hurt, but somewhere inside, a part of me had gone numb. That numbness was more terrifying than the pain—because it meant I was getting used to this.
Used to being treated like a tool.
Used to not being believed.
Used to being seen as a liar, a manipulative mute, by the man I'd once fallen for at first sight.
Four months.
A full four months.
My life became a grotesque loop. Locked in my room during the day.
Waiting for Zane at night. He came once a week, sometimes twice, like checking off an item on his schedule.
He never talked to me, never looked at me for more than three seconds.
When he finished, he'd get up, get dressed, and leave, as if staying one second longer would make him sick.
I learned to stare at a crack on the wall, counting sheep in my head. By the time I reached a thousand, it was over.
I learned to eat breakfast alone, read alone, count the cracks in the ceiling alone.
I wanted to escape. Wanted to leave this cage.
But one morning, I threw up.
Not ordinary nausea—this was the kind that surged up from the pit of my stomach, overwhelming and violent. I hunched over the toilet, retching up breakfast and bile until I was limp as a beached fish.
Then I felt it.
That tiny, faint thing, fluttering like butterfly wings.
In my belly.
My wolf let out a low whimper inside me—not pain, but something... tender, protective, answering some ancient instinct.
She told me. We were pregnant.
My hand pressed against my flat stomach. I sat on the bathroom floor, mind blank.
Pregnant.
I was carrying Zane's child.
The child of a man who came to my room once a week, left as soon as he finished, wouldn't even look at me.
Should I be happy? I didn't know. But my eyes were burning, my heart pounding in my chest, a complex, nameless emotion rising from my chest and clogging my throat.
I had a little life inside me.
Someone who was only mine.
My first impulse was to run to him and tell him the news. I even made it to the door, hand on the handle—
Then I heard laughter from down the hall.
Leah's laughter.
Then his voice, low and pleased, carrying a relaxed tone I'd never heard before. They were talking about something—maybe tonight's banquet, maybe their upcoming honeymoon? I couldn't make out the details, but I could hear the tone. Intimate. Easy. Full of understanding.
The kind of tone he and I had never shared.
I stood behind the door, hand on the handle, listening to their laughter fade away.
Then I slowly let go.
Tell him? Tell him what?
"Hey, Your Majesty, your breeding tool successfully conceived, congratulations on completing your final mission?"
Would he be happy? Maybe. Not because of the child, but because it meant—his mission was complete. Heir secured. I, the tool, could be shoved into a corner and forgotten.
Leah would take my place. She'd become the real Luna, stand by his side, raise my child, enjoy everything that should have been mine.
And me—a mute orphan, a defective product who couldn't even defend herself—I'd be completely forgotten.
I dropped my hand from the handle.
No. I couldn't tell him.
This child was my secret. Mine. In this palace full of lies and betrayal, this was the only thing I could have that was purely, completely mine.
After the child, something strange shifted in me.
I stopped counting ceiling cracks. I started noticing the little courtyard outside my window—a patch of land the size of a napkin, overgrown with weeds, neglected for years. One day, after signing for what felt like forever, I finally got the guard to bring me flower seeds.
"You want to plant flowers?" The guard looked at me like I'd lost my mind.
I nodded.
He shrugged, probably figuring a mute pregnant woman didn't have much else to do besides gardening. The next day, he brought me a small bag of seeds—daisies, lavender, and some wildflowers I didn't recognize.
I started digging.
I pushed my fingers into the damp soil, feeling that primal, rough texture. I buried each seed one by one, covered them with earth, watered them, then crouched beside them, waiting for them to sprout.
A week later, the first sprout broke through.
In that moment, kneeling in the courtyard, watching that tiny, fragile green shoot trembling in the sunlight, tears came without warning.
It lived.
In this place full of lies and betrayal, it lived.
I started spending more and more time in that little courtyard. Weeding, watering, fertilizing, talking to the flowers—though I couldn't speak aloud, I talked to them in my head. I named each one, made up stories for them, told them what I'd eaten that day, and how many times the baby had kicked.
The flowers wouldn't betray me.
They wouldn't steal my songs.
They wouldn't pretend to be my friend and then stab me in the back.
They just grew quietly, bloomed, swayed in the wind, repaying my care with their beauty.
A month later, the little courtyard had become a small sea of flowers. Purple lavender, white daisies, pink wild roses—they swayed in the sunlight, giving off a faint fragrance. Sometimes butterflies came, dancing among the blooms.
I started thinking maybe this life wasn't so bad.
No freedom, treated like a tool, but at least I had this garden, this little life inside me. I could spend the rest of my days here quietly, watch the child grow, watch flowers bloom and fade—
Then one day, I looked up and saw him standing outside the courtyard fence.
Zane.
He wore a simple white shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, collar open. He stood there, looking at my garden, his expression something I'd never seen—not cold, not contemptuous, but... confused, soft, almost gentle.
His gaze settled on the flowers and stayed there a long time.
I crouched in the flower bed, small trowel in hand, dirt on my hands, hair messy, a petal stuck to my forehead. We stared at each other across the fence for several seconds.
Then he looked away and left.
Didn't say a word.
But that one look made something shift inside me—like ice that had been frozen for so long, showing its first crack.
Since I'd arrived at this palace, he'd always looked at me with condescension, suspicion, like I was some troublesome thing that needed handling. I'd never seen that kind of warmth in his eyes—not even a little.
I told myself it didn't mean anything.
But what if?