Reality

Arabella’s POV
I woke up feeling more than a little parched but better. My nausea and headache had dissipated.
I opened my eyes in increments. The room was too bright. Come to think of it. I was no longer in the dungeon. I inhaled deeply. It was Luciano’s scent. I was in his bed.
What was I doing here? I moved only to wince at the pain of pulling on the IV I was connected to. I remembered him telling me he was going to kill me, I remembered the sensation of the world fading around me, my building nausea, and my total and complete loss of strength.
“Oh, you are awake.” Margaret exclaimed.
“Water.” I whispered. I heard her pour me a glass and I took it still feeling disoriented. I sipped then gulped down the water.
“You should be more careful about skipping meals. Alpha Luciano told me about how you collapsed because you wouldn’t eat anything. You need to take better care of yourself.”
What? He didn’t tell her that I had stolen his drugs and bugged his office? When Emery had come to see me, I had assumed it was public knowledge. It would seem that was not the case.
Why would he lie to Margaret though? After I was treated, he would continue to torture me so what was the point of lying now?
“Where is Luciano?” I sat up slowly with Margaret’s help.
“He had an important meeting, or else he wouldn’t have left your side. He has become even more protective of you than usual. It’s no surprise seeing as he has been looking forward to this for a long time. He didn’t want you to wake up all alone so here I am.”
It felt like I was listening to half of a conversation. Why would Luciano have been looking forward to me passing out for a very long time?
“I don’t understand Margaret. What has he been looking forward to?”
The door opened and Luciano stepped in.
He looked surprised to see me up. “Margaret, you may leave us, I want to speak to Arabella alone.”
Margaret squeezed my hand then bowed and slipped out of the room.
The tension in the room shot up and Luciano came to sit next to me on the bed.
“How are you feeling? The doctor said you might not have an appetite when you wake up. Should I get you something to eat? Do you need anything?” His blue eyes roved over me in concern like he wasn’t the reason I was here in the first place.
“What’s this, Luciano? Why are you acting so concerned about me? Margaret isn’t here anymore. You don’t have to pretend anymore. Didn’t you say that you would kill me, so why bother with all this?”
Luciano took my hands in his and dropped a kiss on them before looking at me. “Thank you, Arabella. For this gift you have given me, I forgive you for all your transgressions and hope you will do the same for me. I want us to be a team in this venture.”
“Luciano, stop talking in riddles. What venture are you referring to?”
“You are pregnant.” He informed me, his hand touching my belly possessively. “For this child, I will pardon your mistakes. We will be good parents to this child.”
I don’t know if he kept talking but I stopped listening. Parents? Pregnant? Child?
No, there was no way I could be pregnant. We’d had sex over a month ago. Surely I would have noticed the signs of my pregnancy… I recalled my bouts of nausea, the way I couldn’t stomach rich foods that I had blamed on Anastasia starving me. And of course my frequent loss of balance and the emotional turmoil that always seemed to make me cry every other second.
If I had been standing, my legs would have given out beneath me. I was pregnant. I wasn’t ready for a child. And the father was Luciano. Good goddess, please tell me this was a joke. The man who had tortured me mere hours ago was now telling me how we would make good parents.
What a joker.
How exactly had I fallen for him again?
“I have prepared a new set of rooms for you in this wing for you.” I tuned in to him again.
“You cannot stay in the harem anymore. It is unfit for both you and the child and too far from my quarters. You will have Margaret taking care of you. For now, you can’t have any other maids until I deal with the Creole then we can inform the pack about the pregnancy.”
“Luciano, look at us. We’ll be terrible parents. We can’t even see eye to eye, much less raise a pup together. Look at me, my father killed your parents.” It felt good to finally talk about the issue that was the genesis of all their problems.
“He is someone who wouldn’t mind using and discarding his children for the sake of his purpose, growing up my entire life with him, how can I be sure that I won’t turn out exactly like him? And you? You are one of the most volatile and uncaring people that I know. With a history like ours, does that scream parent material to you?”
Luciano seemed to consider what I said then he sat on the bed next to me and looked at me.
“Arabella, I know I haven’t treated you like it but you aren’t your father. You are a better person than I am sometimes. You are fierce, brave, and protective. You would be a phenomenal mother and me? I will try my best. I really want this to work. I never really wanted a child but now. Now I feel differently. It’s not even here yet but I care about it so much that it scares me.”
It scared me too, I realized. More than I knew. He must have felt the fear in me because he hugged me somewhat awkwardly with the IV between us. And we stayed that way for a while joined by the shared fear of parenthood and at the same time the small hope of becoming better people for the sake of our child. And in my case, a better parent than my dad had ever been.
********
Being pregnant was tiring. It was like now that I knew that I was pregnant the symptoms came more frequently. I woke up in the toilet puking or sometimes dry heaving. My new set of rooms had to be infused with essential oils and scents because the scent of anything strange turned my stomach thoroughly.
I existed mostly on dry crackers in the mornings and on fruits in the afternoons, and juice at night. They were all my body seemed to accept without a violent reaction these days.
Luciano dropped in at least twice a day whether I was awake or not, according to what Margaret told me. He would come in, touch and kiss my belly. Margaret said when I was asleep, he actually had one-sided conversations with the child. It was funny but slightly annoying because I never got to experience these so-called conversations.
The other thing was the mood swings. Now that I was pregnant, nothing was off limits to me so I got a cell phone, a laptop, and anything I asked for except Luciano’s time – not that I asked for it anyway. He was busy with some business and the only times I got to see him was during the baby greetings when I was awake for them. Then he would ask me if I had eaten well and to sleep well so that the child would develop properly. It was like I was just a walking incubator to him sometimes and to my dismay I would find myself crying about it or just getting mad angry at him.
Even Margaret was wary of my temper tantrums even though they mostly consisted of me mostly pouting and crying while eating ice cream when I could stomach it or a fruit salad when I couldn’t and furiously destroying stress balls when I wasn’t.
I watched movies and dramas on the laptop I had been given and did the workouts that the doctor said were crucial even from the early months.
It was a cool evening and I was pissed. I was a little over two months pregnant and had a little pouch already. I hadn’t seen Luciano for close to a week. Margaret assured me that he came just when I wasn’t awake. When it was time for my bedtime – yes, I now had a bedtime for the sake of the baby – and he still wasn’t there yet, I pulled on a robe and my extremely soft flip-flops.
I was done waiting for him to come to me. I ignored Margaret’s protests and just continued walking on. I was more than a freaking incubator for his heir. If he didn’t start treating me the way I deserved to be treated, we would have a very big problem. When we had spoken about our fears about this baby a month ago, I felt that maybe we could become something more with the child tying us together.
Obviously, my head had been so far up in the clouds that I couldn’t see reality.
However, immediately I entered his room, I wished I hadn’t come. I pushed open his door to see Emery kneeling in front of him naked, her hand on the crotch of his suit pants. Luciano’s gaze met mine. His eyes widened with shock but I turned away, tears in my eyes. Of course, nothing had changed. Dedication to his child didn’t mean that I would mean anything to him.