Page 192 of His Fated Luna

Lorraine had left out two plates of pasta before going home. I slid one plate towards Rose.

“I’m not all that hungry,” Rose protested.

“Come on, Princess. You need to eat something,” I urged. “If you want something else, tell me.”

“I don’t really want…anything,” Rose confessed, looking down at her plate of food. “I think I want to go lay down.And my head is also hurting,” she added. But deep inside I knew that she didn’t feel comfortable at all sitting with me in this huge empty house.“It’s so quiet without the kids here,” Rose mused irrespective of my thoughts. “My fondest memories of this house are of dinners with your family,” she confided a little hesitantly.

I wanted to tell her we’d made new memories in this house. Memories that were ours and ours alone.

“Eat some fruit before you go,” I intoned, grabbing a few bananas from the fruit basket. “You like bananas.” I put them in her hands. “It can’t be healthy for a pregnant lady to go to bed on an empty stomach,” Ireasoned when Rose looked like she was about to protest.

There was pin drop silence over my reminder that she was carrying my child.

Rose gripped the fruit tightly in her hands, sliding off her stool and slowly crept away up the stairs. She was tired and neededto rest, but I knew she would never be comfortable in my room and probably had to find a room she felt comfortable sleeping in. And as I looked at the spot she’d been sitting in as her smell got fainter and fainter, I felt the slow cleaving of my heart. The woman I loved more than life itself couldn’t even acknowledge the life we’d created together.

A few hours later, I rubbed my eyes tiredly as I got off the phone with a memory specialist halfway across the world. I was willing to do whatever it took to help Rose. So far, the doctor agreed to look over Rose’s file and advised me pretty much the same as Dr. Danvers.

I checked my watch as I walked up the stairs to my room, wondering how exactly I was going to survive this. I bit back the impulse to sniff Rose out and figure out which room she'd walked into earlier to go to sleep. I would not suffocate her. I would give her space.

The memory specialist in Germany made it clear that chances of her recovering her memory were 50/50 at best for now. How was I going to get Rose back?

Alistair marked her, our mate bond had broken after I was defeated, and now there was no mark or bond to pull her to me, aside from the bond the alpha had to the chosen luna. Which in retrospect paled in comparison to the love that had blossomed between us. It was like we were back to square one again after making all that progress together. As desolation seemed to engulf me, I slowly opened the door to my bedroom and was taken aback to see a lump under the covers.

Rose, sleeping on her side of the bed, her hair splayed out on the pillow under her like she belonged. Because she did belong. And even though every atom in my body yearned to go, to lay in bed next to her, I slowly crept back, closing the door. She might not remember, but on a subconscious level, on her first nightback in our home, she knew this was her room. She knew where she belonged.

For the first time ever since I'd woken up, I smiled a relieved smile.

Chapter 61

“Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.” – Washington Irving

Rose's POV

I tossed and turned all night, sometimes waking up with a pounding headache, other times waking up and wanting to cry. I’d looked at my phone before falling asleep but couldn’t remember the passcode.I’d seen the screensaver of myself and Aiden sitting together, his arms around my shoulders. He looked at the camera smiling as if he was on cloud nine and his arms were around my shoulders while my body was pressed into his side. What’s worse,I’d seen the way I looked at the camera. Happy and utterly besotted with the man next to me.

I'd always thought, eventually, we would mate out of necessity, and he'd stay with Lexia while I found someone to keep me happy. What had happened? My falling for Aiden was understandable.I'd always found him attractive. But Aiden falling for me...how did that ever happen? And thinking about it made me feel like my head was going to explode.

By the time I woke up the next day and began looking through the closet for clothes to wear, I realized two things:

1) This was a shared room.

2) My taste in clothing had gotten outrageously expensive.

But as I showered and shrugged into a comfortable pair of jeans and sweater, another thought struck me. Where had Aiden slept last night if I’d slept in our room? And didn’t he need his clothes? They were all here. The guilt-ridden thought that he’d had to sleep in his clothes from yesterday and was in a room somewhere unable to get his own clothes entered my mind. Horrified, I made my way downstairs, hoping to find him.

Aiden’s POV

“I’m going to take some time off,” I explained to Dylan and Tony as they sat in my study.

I’d slept on the couch in the TV room last night. My jeans and shirt were creased, my hair was still a mess, and I desperately needed a shower. But I’d wait until Rose was awake. She loved to sleep in, and I didn’t want to barge in and make her uncomfortable.

“Don’t worry. We’ve got it under control,” Dylan assured. Dylan was back to full health since Lexia found the antidote and administered it to him.

I smiled at my brothers. I wouldn’t be where I was without their support. Tony had always been there to back me up and Dylan had stepped in when I needed him.

“Thank you for everything,” I said, my voice brimming with emotion.

“I don’t think we deserve a thank you, not after what happened to Rose on our watch,” Dylan replied somberly. “We wanted to fight Alistair. Rose…Rose wouldn’t let us. She told us to wait for you. She knew you’d come back. But I wish we had challenged him. This wouldn’t have happened then.”