Chapter 36

Elena

I have been in and out of consciousness for hours, finally able to sleep. I hadn’t realized how little I had while staying with Jake. Yet I am beginning to believe safety and stability are a mythical concept as I wake up to the doctor jamming a needle in my arm. My eyes flutter open at the sound of Axton’s voice. That painful reminder of him rejecting me, making me realize my connection to him is severed.

How I hadn’t noticed that the bond wasn’t fully broken is beyond me. Now, to match the pain in my back, there’s a void in my chest, a coldness, and a sinking feeling to go along with it. It feels like dread, like someone has removed a limb, and I am now having to learn to live without it.

Lexa has fallen quiet. She revels in the sound of his voice, despite the broken bond, and the safety he can offer. Yet some part of me knows I am not safe here either. And his words prove it.

“I don’t care about her. I just want to know if my twins are okay,” he says.

I look at the doctor; his eyes flick down to me before moving behind me, which makes me turn my head to find Axton on the other side of me while the doctor draws blood. Axton glances down at me, his face expressionless, before he looks at the doctor again.

“Call me when you get the results back,” he says before walking out.

We watch him leave, and the doctor sighs heavily.

“Quite the mess you made there, Luna,” he murmurs as he slides the needle from my skin and places a cotton ball over it. He offers nothing else in the way of explanation, but after a few seconds, he removes the cotton ball and takes his vials, moving toward the door.

“Doc?” I ask him.

He stops, turning back and looking at me.

“Are my babies okay?”

“Yes, the Alpha’s babies are okay,” he tells me, walking out and shutting the door.

My brows scrunch together at his wording. The Alpha’s babies? Sure, he helped make them, but I am the one carrying them. The Alpha’s… Not ours. For some reason, my mind’s hyperfocused on that. Some unsettling feeling washes over me, and I can’t explain why it bothers me so much.

Looking down, I see that I am in a blue hospital gown, and I vaguely wonder who changed me. Not that it matters; I am safe here. Any form of clothing I am grateful for. Nothing is more degrading than being forced to be naked.

Standing up, I wander toward the door and grip the handle, wanting to find Axton and see what is going on. And if he has spoken to Alisha’s parents. I am also hungry, absolutely ravenous as my stomach growls, yet as I grip the door, I find it locked. I try it again, thinking it must be some kind of mistake or that the door is jammed, yet twisting it again, it doesn’t budge. I even try yanking on it. Still, it does not open.

Lexa wanders forward, examining the door and then the room with me. Why am I locked in here?

“He probably thinks we will run,” Lexa tells me, yet she feels oddly numb with her words in my head. Void of emotion.

I knock on the door, wondering if anyone is on the other side, before giving up when I get no answer.

There is a bathroom off to the side, and I wander in, wanting to shower and feel some semblance of normal, but what is normal now? I hope the void and sinking feeling that keeps overwhelming me isn’t my new version of normal because not even the heat from the shower could warm the coldness seeping into me. Yet as I emerge out the door into the hospital room, I find Axton sitting in a chair beside the bed. He motions toward the clothes neatly folded on the bed.

“Thanks,” I tell him, quickly snatching them up and darting back into the bathroom. I slip the jeans on and the cashmere sweater before coming back out to find him near the door.

“I’ll show you around,” he says, simply opening the door and walking out.

I make haste to follow him, wanting out of the confinement of the small space that feels like the walls are drawing closer with each second. He leads me through this place, which I find is some sort of apartment complex. He takes me to the highest floor, which I know is the penthouse apartment. Thank the Goddess for elevators because we are around twenty stories high as I glance out the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“Elena!” Axton calls, stopping me from taking in the breathtaking view of the city. Peering over my shoulder, he nods toward the hallway beside the oversized kitchen with its stainless steel appliances and marble countertops. This place resembles something out of a magazine. It doesn’t look lived in, everything too clean and nothing out of order.

Axton leads me to a bedroom and pushes the door open. This room is vastly different from the other parts of the place, bare even. It contains a bed and one bedside table.

“You can sleep in here. There are clothes in the walk-in closet, and the bathroom is the door beside it,” Axton tells me as I take in the room.