I Loved You Through Seven Losses Chapter 03
“Roxie, when did you get back?” He tried to hold himself steady, and his voice shook anyway.
I met his eyes, cold and steady. “Why? Am I interrupting something?”
The color drained out of Asher’s face, and he grabbed my wrist. “Roxie… you misheard. Let me explain.”
I ripped my hand loose and pointed at Sienna with a hard laugh. “Explain what?”
“Explain how many positions it took before you got Sienna pregnant?”
“Or explain how you and Garrett sat down and planned the murder of my pups?”
Every word landed like a hammer. Garrett shoved Sienna behind him and shouted.
“Roxie, keep your voice down! If the Pack hears you, it ruins Sienna’s name!”
I almost laughed out loud. I held the rage down, and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Asher caught my shoulders and bent down, and those gold eyes were full of pleading.
“Roxie, this is on me! Give me one more chance, please.”
I put everything I had into shoving him off.
Asher hadn’t expected that kind of strength from me. He stumbled, and his elbow cracked against the wall.
Sienna rushed over and checked him for injuries with her whole face full of concern.
“Roxie, what is wrong with you!”
“You wanted to know what positions we used? Fine. I’ll show you!” She reached for her phone.
Asher tore it out of her hand and smashed it against the floor.
“Sienna! Shut your mouth!”
Sienna bared her teeth, and years of buried jealousy finally came out of her all at once.
“You still don’t know, do you? We slept together the first month you two were a couple!”
“You drank too much and passed out cold in the next room!”
“I loved him before you even knew his name! If I’d said it first, he would’ve been mine!”
She pulled the signed page out of her pocket and threw it in my face.
“So what if the two of you were getting mated?”
“All I did was say you’d never have his pup, and he went right ahead and planned how to make you lose it!”
“They threw that bet on purpose, both of them. Want to guess why?”
She hadn’t even finished, and the anger was coming up through my skin.
I grabbed the mug off the table and got ready to throw it, and Garrett clamped down on my wrist.
“Have you lost your mind!”
“She’s pregnant!”
The hot water in the mug went all over my hand, and my arm came up red and scalded.
Garrett acted like he hadn’t seen it at all, and he shoved me backward.
I lost my footing, and my temple caught the sharp edge of the coffee table.
The skin split, and the blood came fast.
Fresh out of the procedure, my wolf was weak, and I was healing at a crawl.
Everything in front of me went red, and I saw Asher lunge toward me.
Right then, Sienna clutched her stomach and screamed.
“My stomach! My stomach hurts so bad!”
Garrett didn’t hesitate for a second. He swept her up and ran for the door without looking back.
Asher hesitated for exactly one.
Then he ran out after them.
That left me sitting alone on the wreck of the floor, with tears and blood dropping off my chin.
I don’t know how long it took before I got my numb body upright again.
Then I packed my bags one piece at a time, like something already dead and walking.
As I put the last of my documents in a bag, my phone rang.
Sienna was calling me over voice chat.
I hit answer and heard her voice come through.
“Asher, what do we do now?”
Asher sounded worn all the way down.
“She knows. Let’s have the baby first. After the mating ceremony we’ll figure the rest out.”
Sienna pushed back. “And what about Roxie’s pup? You think she’ll agree to end it?”
Asher’s voice went slowly cold.
“She doesn’t get a choice.”
“We’re the only three people she has left in this world. Who else would want her?”
“After the ceremony, Garrett and I will arrange a hysterectomy. That takes care of it for good.”
I almost crushed the phone in my hand.
Then I heard Sienna drag her words out on purpose.
“Good thing she still doesn’t know we had anything to do with how her parents died.”
“Otherwise…”
“That’s enough!”
Asher’s voice was shaking.
“I told you that stays buried. We never speak about it, not once, not ever!”
“Sienna, keep your mouth shut. I let it go once and I won’t do it twice!”
Footsteps scrambled, and then a door slammed hard.
A few seconds later, Sienna laughed into the phone without a shred of shame.
“You heard all that, didn’t you?”
My teeth were locked, and my voice came out wrecked.
“Tell me what happened to my parents!”
The night they died, I had been deep in the mountains on a shoot, where there wasn’t any signal at all.
By the time I made it back, their bodies were already in the morgue.
Garrett told me through his tears that the brakes had failed, that the car went off the cliff, and that the ambulance got there too late to do anything.
Sienna made a small, contemptuous sound.
“So close. They could have lived. The doctors said ten minutes earlier and they’d have made it.”
“Too bad I was in a mood that night, and Asher and your brother felt so terrible for me that they stayed and drank with me.”
“We were less than a mile from the crash the whole time.”
Her voice turned crueler.
“Your parents called each of them dozens of times, and not one of us picked up.”
“How much pain do you think they were in, Roxie? How much did it hurt to give up?”
The call ended.
I stood where I was without moving, like something carved out of grief and ice.