Chapter 19
Chapter nineteen
Damien
Luna’s still awake when I arrive, even though it’s after midnight. She’s usually asleep by now. I’m late tonight because I had a target who needed my attention. Cade is disposing of what’s left of him now as I come to my little doe, desperate and aching for her.
I push open the door. She’s sitting on the bed in the dark, bathed in nothing but a thin sliver of moonlight cutting through the gap in her curtains. The look on her face stops me cold. This isn’t the breathless anticipation I’ve come to expect. This is emptiness. A void where emotion should be.
Her gaze lifts to mine, and I’m struck by how wrung out she looks. Exhaustion is carved into every line of her face, weighing down her shoulders.
I spent the entire day trapped in my Denver office, hammering out the final details of a new acquisition, which meant I only caught an early exchange with Maren about errands before my day spiraled into back-to-back meetings.
Then I had to attend to my target. But I should have checked the cameras and looked in on her.
Because the way she’s sitting here, the emptiness in her eyes—it sets off every alarm bell in my head. Something is very wrong.
I know how to make it right, though. And it involves my cock inside her cunt.
I shoo Shadow and the cats out of the room and close the door. In three long strides, I’m in front of her, my hand already at my belt, impatient as always.
“Stand up. Take that off.”
She rises, but when my hands move to the sash of her robe, she steps back. “Wait.”
I go still, my head tilting. Did I hear her right?
“Wait?”
“I can’t tonight. I… something’s happened.”
I step closer, lifting my hand to cup her pale cheek. “What’s happened?”
“I saw my doctor today. I woke up bleeding this morning.”
“Your period has never stopped me before, you know that.”
“It isn’t my period.”
My body goes rigid as last night replays in fragments. Her gasps, the way she arched beneath me, and how I held her down when she tried to move away from the intensity.
I drop my hand from her face. “Did I hurt you last night?”
“No. It has nothing to do with that.” She takes a deep breath. “I was pregnant. Six weeks. I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know, but I’m not anymore. I’m having a miscarriage.”
Pregnant.
The word ricochets through my skull like a bullet.
Luna was pregnant with my child.
Blood roars in my ears. My hands flex open and closed at my sides, fingers grasping at empty air, desperate for something tangible to hold onto, to control.
My pants are half-undone, and my cock is already hard, ready to take her as I always do.
Now I feel exposed, caught in a moment I don’t know how to respond to.
For the first time in her presence, my cock deflates.
“Say something.” The words break in her throat. Her eyes go wide, pleading with me, searching my face for any reaction she can read.
What the fuck am I supposed to say?
That I’m sorry? That I’m angry? That somewhere deep inside the monster I’ve become is howling with what… grief?
My hands move to her waist without conscious thought. My body operates on instinct while my mind refuses to function. I need her. Need her to calm the beast that’s clawing to get out.
“I’ll go easy.” My cock hasn’t completely softened. It pushes against her belly through the fabric between us, making my desire obvious. “But I need you, Luna.”
Fury flashes across her face, and she shoves both palms hard against my chest, catching me completely off guard. I rock back on my heels.
“No. Didn’t you hear what I said? I’m having a miscarriage. I can’t have sex with you tonight. I can’t have sex for at least two weeks.”
Two weeks.
The words land like a prison sentence. Two weeks without losing myself inside her body, without feeling her fall apart underneath me, around me. Two weeks without the only thing that makes me feel human.
“My body needs to heal.”
I turn away, fumbling with my pants, trying to cage the beast that still demands I take her. My hands shake, and my fingers won’t cooperate. Her stare burns into my spine.
“So that’s it? You have nothing to say?” Her voice climbs, sharp with anger. “I tell you I was carrying your child, that I’m losing it right now, and you can’t even say you’re sorry?”
I spin to face her, rage burning through my veins. “Sorry for what? Something we didn’t know about? Something that was never supposed to happen?”
The words come out harsh, but I can’t pull them back. Can’t make them gentle. This isn’t what we do. What we have exists in the realm of flesh and possession, of dominance and surrender. Not this. Not loss and grief and things neither of us can control.
“Sorry that I’m hurting.” Her voice rises to match mine. “Sorry that I’m losing something that was part of both of us, even if neither of us knew it was there.”
I cross the space between us in two strides, using every inch of my height advantage to loom over her the way I do when I want to intimidate. She doesn't cower.
“Is that what you want? Pretty words about a clump of cells that never had a chance? Would that make you feel better, Luna?”
Her eyes fill with tears, and my stomach turns over. I’ve made her cry before. In passion. In surrender. But never like this. Never with words meant to wound. The woman I love is hurting, bleeding in front of me, looking for comfort I don’t know how to give.
“You want to know what would help? Knowing I matter to you. That I’m more than just a body you use and then leave behind.”
Her words find their mark, cutting through the man beneath the monster. We’ve talked about this. I told her she means everything. How does she not understand?
I love you!
The words lodge in my throat, thick and choking.
Why else would I come to you night after night, reveal the darkest parts of myself, and trust you with the beast that lives inside me?
“You think that’s all this is?” My voice drops, turning dangerous. “After everything I’ve said to you? Everything I’ve shown you?”
She doesn’t flinch from my anger, doesn’t back down.
“You’ve shown me your cock. You hide your face behind that mask and your body beneath those clothes.
You won’t show me anything real. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?
You strip me bare, body and soul. You tell me I’m yours, that you’ll never let me go.
But the second something real happens, you just stand there with your pants undone, pissed off because you can’t get what you came for. ”
Her words penetrate the red haze of my anger, leaving clarity in their wake.
She’s right. Whatever twisted path I’ve been walking with her—this moment demands more.
Something I’m not sure I’m capable of giving her.
But I take her hand, driven by the sudden need to undo the damage.
“Come.” I guide her toward the bed. “Lie down.”
She hesitates, suspicion clear in her eyes.
“No sex. I won’t touch you that way. Just lie down. Please.”
The “please” feels foreign on my tongue. When have I ever asked instead of commanded? When have I ever given her a choice?
Her face registers her surprise, but she lets me lead her to the bed.
I arrange the pillows behind her, my hands fumbling with the task.
I pull the covers up to her waist, then adjust the curtains to keep the moonlight only on her before I sit beside her, placing one hand flat against her stomach.
I’ve touched her everywhere, claimed every part of her with greedy hands, but never like this.
Never with a touch this careful, this tentative.
She stares at me like I’m someone she doesn’t recognize, and it cuts deeper than any blade.
“Does it hurt now?”
“A little. It comes and goes, like bad cramps.”
I move my hand in slow circles over her abdomen, applying the lightest pressure. I know how to make her come undone, how to break her down until she’s pleading with me, but this—this simple act of comfort—feels like speaking a language I never learned.
“I don’t know what to say, Luna. I never considered pregnancy a viable possibility.”
“Neither did I. I’m on birth control.”
“Which obviously failed.”
“Obviously.” She echoes my sarcasm. “It was probably the antibiotics I took for my UTI or after my bear attack. I didn’t even think about it, but it can interfere with birth control. Not that it would’ve mattered. You’ll never wear a condom.”
“No, I won’t. But if I’d known there was a chance, I would’ve brought you a dozen cases of the morning-after pill.”
She sighs. “It’s my fault. I’m a doctor, and I know better. I should have thought about it and insisted you wear a condom while I was on the antibiotics.”
“I wouldn’t have worn one, Luna.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter anymore now, does it? There’s no more baby.”
Silence settles between us, and inside me a war rages.
Anger at her for getting pregnant. Anger at myself for being careless.
Fear that this ruptures what we have, that the raw connection we’ve built will twist into something unrecognizable.
And underneath all of it, grief I have no business feeling.
“Are you sad?”
I have to ask because the need to understand what’s happening inside her overrides everything else.
“I think so.” She exhales. “Not in the way I would be if I’d known about it, if I’d had time to imagine a future with it. But there’s this emptiness that wasn’t there before. Like a door closed on something that could have been.”
I nod. A door closed. A future that never had a chance to exist. A version of me that might have been a father, a notion so absurd it would be laughable if it didn’t ache so badly.
What kind of father would I have been? Would I have removed the mask? Stopped killing? Would I have buried that part of myself, become someone new for the sake of an innocent life?
“Will you be alright? Physically, I mean.”