Chapter 124

Lucian’s POV

For the rest of the day, I allowed the routine to take over my actions, while I kept my thoughts very quiet. Even my wolf was silent, as if mourning in his own way.

The numbness stayed wrapped around me like a cold, damp blanket. I moved through a fog, completing my work. On the outside, I acted as I always did, but on the inside I was encased in ice as a survival mechanism.

I imagined I would stay frozen forever now.

Aria was the perfect match for me, and I had pushed her away so much that she had found another. Now they had a house and a family.

The husband couldn’t be Jasper. That much I knew. He worked in the Alpha headquarters building now, a budding politician who really seemed to turn himself around. He didn’t even seem to date around anymore, unless he was keeping everything more secretive than before.

I wondered if he knew about Aria and her new family, but I wasn’t going to ask him. We barely spoke at all to each other nowadays, not even an awkward hello in the hallways. Only for work-related purposes would we speak at all.

With my parents declining health, they stopped insisting on family gatherings. Without their insistence, no one else took up the mantle and we simply stopped having them. At least I no longer had to socialize needlessly. I’d rather just stick with my routine.

That night, lying in my bed, I stared at the ceiling and didn’t sleep at all.

In the morning, at work, Ben brought me the newspaper. As he was leaving, I stopped him.

“Ben.”

“Yes, Alpha?”

“Can you assemble the elders today? I’d like to have a meeting with them.”

Ben’s expression became curious. I could understand why. Usually I dreaded meeting the elders. It was incredibly rare for me to actually request a meeting on my own.

Still, Ben, ever diligent, agreed. “At once, Alpha.”

Ben was extremely efficient, and the meeting was arranged for that afternoon. The elders were assembled in the board room, already sitting around the long table when I arrived. One of them was in my chair.

I decided to stay standing rather than point that out and cause a scene.

“I’ve been avoiding you for years,” I said. “Because I did not want to face a reality without my wife Aria.” Realizing my mistake, I cleared my throat. “My ex-wife.” I let the word sit for a moment, hating the way it sounded.

“You’ve been through a lot,” said one of the elders. “We’ve tried to be understanding.”

They hadn’t. Not really. Over the past five years, I’d received weekly calls from each of them encouraging me to find a mate and provide heirs to the pack. They’d also send notes, sometimes attached to headshots of available women.

I’d always pushed them off, not ready to move on from Aria. Even now, I didn’t feel ready to move on, but given that she had, I realized I owed it to her to try to, as well. She had a family now; she didn’t need me mooning after her.

Ignoring the elder’s words, I said, “Perhaps it is time.”

“You will consider remarrying?” one of the elders asked, shocked.

“I will consider dating,” I corrected. One thing at a time. I wasn’t going to jump straight into marriage so easily again.

But, for Aria’s sake, as well as my own, I would force myself to forget Aria. Even if I could never love the woman the elders pushed for, I could at least try.

I needed to move on.

Cathy’s POV

As an employee of the hospital, Cathy was used to the off-white walls and the tiled floors. She’d many times visited patients in examination rooms just like the one she was currently in. She’d sterilized the rooms, making sure everything was in place for the next patient.

Maybe that was why it was so strange to be sitting on the examination table as a patient this time.

It started with a stomach ache. A persistent thing that not only lasted several days but grew worse each day. She’d lost her appetite, became lethargic. When the fever started, she knew she needed to see a Healer.

Now, at least, they’d handled her fever, but not the rest. She was tired all the time. Even sitting up on the examination table felt like too much, and her stomach felt like it was in a constant battle of indigestion and sharp stabbing pain.

This wasn’t Cathy’s first visit for this. Now, it was the fifth in just as many days.

None of the Healers could decide what was wrong with her. They tried so many things. She’d felt like some kind of experiment with how many medicines and treatments and testing she’d gone through.

Now, however, she knew she was closer to an answer, if only because of the bleak, drawn expressions on the Healer’s face, as well as the fact that he brought another nurse, one of my closer friends, in with him.

“We have an answer,” the Healer said.

“That’s good, right?” Cathy asked.

The Healer didn’t answer my question directly, another red flag. “It’s a rare disease. One that only appears every few years or so. As it’s not contagious, we believe it might be genetic.”

“’Might?” Cathy did not like the sound of that. Words that weren’t definitive coming from Healers usually meant they had no idea what they were dealing with.

The Healer looked down at Cathy’s chart, and then back up at her face. “I’m sorry, Cathy. I know this is the answer you don’t want to hear, and Gods help us, I wish I had a better one.”

Cathy’s nurse friend stepped closer to her. Cathy braced herself, knowing the worst was about to be revealed.

“This disease has no known cure,” the Healer said. “And it’s fatal. Records of previous patients show you could live another three to five months.”

3 to 5 months? “That’s it?”

“I’m sorry,” the Healer said.

“I don’t want to hear apologies,” Cathy said. “I want to know what you are going to do to cure me.”

“There is no cure, Cathy,” the nurse said. Looking at the Healer, she said, “She’s in shock.”

“I’m not in shock,” Cathy retorted.

“We can treat your symptoms,” the Healer said. “We will ensure you are comfortable.”

“I don’t want to be comfortable. I want to be cured!”

“It’s just not possible,” the Healer insisted.

Maybe he was right, maybe Cathy would meet her end in 3 to 5 months, but the fact that the Healers weren’t even going to attempt to cure her disease made her so unbelievably angry. Perhaps some of that anger was driven by fear. She didn’t want to die.

But the rest of it, the purest outrage, was in seeing the incompetence and lack of ambition of these Healers.

Aria wouldn’t give up. Aria would search for a cure until Cathy’s final day, and then even after, making sure no one else suffered the same way.

Looking away from the Healer, Cathy turned my attention to my friend. “I need a phone. One that can make a long-distance call.”

“Who are you calling?” my friend asked.

The answer was simple. “Dr. A.”