Page 145 of Chased By My Grumpy Alpha
Tonight, I’m on my own again. Completely alone.
I lie in our massive bed, staring at the ceiling and listening for the sound of Lucian’s footsteps in the corridor. The sheets smell like him—cedar and something dark and masculine—but they’re cold without his warmth.
Luna is gone, too, probably sleeping in King Alaric’s chambers. She clearly prefers him over me, and honestly, I can’t even blame her. He feeds her treats and lets her nap on silk cushions while I can only offer her an herb-scented laboratory and my own restless energy.
I must drift off eventually, because suddenly, I’m not in the palace bedroom anymore. I’m in my cottage, the one where I lived until just a few months ago. But everything looks different—brighter somehow, more vibrant. The walls are freshly painted, and herbs hang from the rafters in neat bundles that seem fuller and more colorful than they used to be.
My mother is there, looking exactly as I remember her. Her long, brown hair falls in waves around her shoulders, but her green eyes—so like mine—are bright with pain and fear.
She’s on the floor in the corner of the room, her back against the wall, and her stomach is huge, swollen with pregnancy. Her face is twisted in agony, and there’s blood. So much blood. She iscrying, tears streaming down her face as she looks up at the front door.
“Please,” she gasps, her voice broken with desperation. “Please don’t do this. I’m begging you.”
A shadow falls across the room, and I turn to see a figure in the doorway. But the face is obscured, hidden in darkness that seems to shift and move.
“Choose,” the figure says, and there is something familiar about the voice, something that tugs at the edges of my memory, but I can’t quite place it.
Suddenly, rough hands grab my shoulders and shake me violently. I try to scream, try to run to my mother, but the darkness is pulling me down, down, down—
“Astra!”
My eyes fly open, and I’m gasping, my heart hammering against my ribs. Strong hands are gripping my shoulders, and concerned, blue eyes are staring at me.
Lucian.
The dream refuses to fade, clinging to me like a cobweb. My mother’s face, twisted in pain and fear. The blood. That familiar voice I couldn’t identify. The desperate begging.
“Sorry,” I manage, my voice hoarse and shaky. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
His grip tightens slightly. “You were thrashing around like you were fighting someone. And you kept saying ‘choose’ over and over.” His brow furrows with concern. “And ‘please don’t.’”
I try to sit up, to pull away from him, but his hands don’t let me go. The images from the dream are still so vivid, so real. My mother, pregnant and terrified. Someone forcing her to make an impossible choice.
“It was just a nightmare. I’m fine.”
“Like hell you’re fine.” His eyes search my face in the dim light. “You’re shaking, and you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
It’s true; I am shaking. My whole body is trembling with residual terror from the dream that felt far too real. Too much like a memory rather than just my imagination. What did it mean? Was it real or just my mind creating nightmares from fragments of fear?
“I’ll get you some water,” Lucian says, finally releasing me.
As he moves to get up, I catch a glimpse of his bedside table. Papers are scattered across the surface, some covered in his neat handwriting, others bearing official seals. He’s been working late again, probably until just before I startled him with my nightmare.
The moment he’s gone, I slip out of bed and walk around to his side. The papers call to me like they have secrets to tell. Most of them are reports, correspondence with various lords and officials. But one catches my eye—a thick document with an unfamiliar seal.
I pick it up, squinting in the dim light to make out the text. Most of it is bureaucratic language I don’t understand, but one phrase jumps out at me, written in bold script across the top:
Eclipse Born Investigation – Confidential
My blood turns to ice.
Eclipse Born… I heard Leon mention that term to Lucian, but what does it mean? Why does it sound so familiar?
I scan the document quickly, my heart racing. Most of it is beyond my comprehension—references to “bloodline purges” and “systematic eradication” and “Council directive 958.” But one line near the bottom is written in simpler language:
No living descendants confirmed. Bloodline considered extinct as of 1847.
When Lucian returns with a glass of water, my hands are shaking so badly, I can barely hold the paper. He stops in the doorway, his gaze immediately going to the document in my grasp.
