03: D*e! B*tch!

TARA

Riding up to Aidan’s room floor, questions flooded my mind, along with an uneasy feeling that clawed at my chest, but I pushed it all to the side. My skin was prickly too, my head was pounding with a terrible headache, and I said a quick prayer.

“Please, moon goddess, let Aidan be okay,” I prayed.

The hallway was quiet in the dead of the night, and when I made a fist with my trembling and sweaty palm to knock, the door creaked open on its accord.

Dread curled in my stomach, bringing a sour taste to my already dry mouth, but I stepped inside, regardless.

Everywhere was dark, save for the dim lamp on the tabletop. From that, I made out Aidan’s form, sound asleep under the rumpled covers, but it did nothing to dull the sour feeling in my chest.

As if noticing my presence in his sleep, Aidan’s eyes peeled open.

“Tara?”

“It’s me, baby.” I moved on instinct.

“Goddess, so help me if you take a step closer, peasant.” Aidan sat up, and from his icy tone, the sleep was gone from his eyes.

“Aidan, we should talk about this.”

“How did you get in here? I warned you to never let me set eyes on you.”

My lips parted in confusion, worry settling in my bones. “You asked me to come,” I managed to say.

He scoffed. “You shameless liar.”

“You texted me, Aidan.”

Aidan crossed his hands over his chest, anger and frustration tensing his muscles.

I pulled out my phone from my pocket and opened our chat to show it to him. The text was gone. Without any trace.

“I swear, Aidan, I saw a text. It…it must have been deleted.”

My heart sank as tears gathered under my eyelids again.

“Leave, right now, or you’ll regret it.”

The sound of the adjourning door opening caught my attention, and my brows furrowed in the dark.

“Is someone else here?” I asked in confusion.

The lights turned on, illuminating the entire room, and the world stopped spinning when my eyes fell on Kayla.

I looked around, and I gasped as I pieced things together.

“No!”

I stared back at Aidan, praying that this was a prank, but the indifferent look on his face was worse than the betrayal itself.

Aidan was barely clothed under the covers, and it dawned on me that the sheets didn’t get rumpled from just sleeping.

On the floor, Kayla’s clothes were scattered, including her ripped panties and bra, Aidan’s trousers, and their shoes.

Tears fell from my eyes, and with a haggard breath, I looked again to see Aidan’s shirt over Kayla’s shoulders. She was bathed in his scent. My mate.

“This is not possible. You didn’t, Aidan. Not with her.” I sobbed, feeling something akin to sandpaper grating the insides of my throat, making me sound distorted.

The sour feeling from earlier multiplied, and my insides burned with an intensity that brought me to my knees, and I clutched my stomach.

Cheating severed the bond between mates, and as my wolf howled at the back of my mind, processing my betrayal and automatic rejection, it hurt physically. More than any pain I had ever felt.

“Tara, it’s nothing serious. I was just here to comfort Aidan through his heartbreak.” It was Kayla’s nonchalant response.

“By sleeping with him? You have a freaking mate. Four years, Kayla!” I turned to Aidan, and I broke. “Why would you do this to us?”

His voice was so unlike him. Cold and detached. “It’s nothing you didn’t do. Now you know what it feels like. You’re a liar and a cheat, and I wish you all the evil in the world.”

He shot out of the bed in his boxer briefs, grabbing my chin so roughly with a deathly glare in his eyes. “And if a word of this gets out, you will not live to tell the tale.”

My knees gave in, and I fell to the floor, weeping more than I ever had. So this is what true pain felt like.

“Aidan, I didn’t do any of this. My life is in shambles, and I need you,” I pleaded anyway. We could still make this work.

“Tara,” Kayla spoke. “I think you should leave. Aidan is really upset.”

Aidan beat me to speak. “Come back to bed and leave her there. I don’t care about her.”

Staggering to my feet, the realization hit me like a bucket of ice that I was utterly alone in this world.

I turned and wobbled outside, and before I closed the door, I heard Aidan say. “I wish she never came into my life at all. She’s better off dead.”

Tears flooded down my face and neck as I tried to stifle the scream that fought to tear through my throat. I ran with whatever strength I had left, the pain gutting me deep in my core.

“How did it all go wrong?” I asked myself. “Who did I offend?”

Things with Aidan had been more than okay over the past month. How did it turn to this in a twinkle of an eye? And Kayla? My best friend, who was mated to another. Why would she do this to me?

I’d somehow made my way to an abandoned corner, away from everything. With the cold numbing my face, and the pain numbing my heart, I was as good as gone.

I crouched there, wheezing and shaking until a voice startled me.

“If you claim to love him so much, you’d just die and be gone.” It was Kayla, staring down at me with disgust so intense, a gnawing feeling clawed at my chest.

“Why, Kayla?” I stood up to my feet, anger coursing through my veins. “I thought you were my friend.”

“You’re just a pathetic thief. I came so close to having Aidan to myself, only for me to introduce you once, and you’re fucking him already? Mate?” She scoffed. “Are you a clown? This pregnancy did the job for me, but you’re not worthy to even carry his child.”

“And you think you are? Who is going to hear of you and Aidan being together, Kayla?”

“I don’t care. Aidan is mine to keep, and that includes his seed. That thing in your stomach,” she pointed scornfully. “Is a pollution, and it has to be cleaned out.”

I took a step back. “What do you mean?”

“May this acid kill you,” she spat. “Die! Bitch!”

When I noticed the opened bottle in Kayla’s right hand, it was too late. Even if I could run, Kayla was faster than me because of her werewolf abilities. She splashed the entire content on my stomach, and an agonizing scream tore from my mouth.

I fell backward, my life flashing before my eyes, and I ripped my clothes from my body in an attempt to stop the sharp pain coursing through my body or cease my skin from disintegrating like melting ice on a mountaintop. I couldn’t heal.

“Die. You stupid thief. You and your bastard baby. Die!”

Acid brutally burnt through my stomach, but I couldn’t think about the pain I was in. All I could think about was my baby.

Kayla was trying to kill my baby.

I scrambled backward on the floor, tearing my clothes like a mad woman, acid peeling my body, and pure white patches replacing my skin.

Kayla came after me, brandished a knife in my face, and my eyes shot wide.

“Kayla, please. I don’t want to die.”

“That’s not enough? I hear that this is where babies put their heads.” She pointed to my stomach, and fear like I’ve never known spiked in my veins. “If you won’t die, then the baby will.”

Before I could fight, Kayla swiftly reared her hand back, and dug the knife deep into my stomach, drawing a howl from deep down my lungs, and blood from my already battered stomach.

“No. No. No. Not my baby,” I whimpered, tears falling from my eyes.

I was hyperventilating. My heart was giving out, and I could feel my baby slipping away from me.

Was I going to lose my child? I had met him/her only hours ago. I hadn’t even named it yet.

I cried as I lost consciousness because I knew there was no way I was going to survive this. Right before darkness pulled me under, I heard Kayla’s singsong voice.

“When you meet the moon goddess, can you ask her who gave me this knife and acid?”