You Wanted Me Too Late, Alpha

0005: Forced To Watch

ANNA'S POV

I was making coffee when she arrived.

Three days now she'd slept in the east wing, in the room Lucy had given her without asking Luca first. Felicia had never needed permission to walk into this kitchen. She still didn't.

No knock. Her hair loose, unbrushed. Her eyes red-rimmed — the red of a woman who has spent the night rehearsing, not crying.

"I saw him." Already past the doorway. "Last night. Going to your room."

I set the pot down. "Then you know he's keeping his word."

"You're cruel." The word cracked on its way out.

I turned around.

She'd been standing long enough for her hands to lose their stillness. The moment she caught me looking, they found it again.

"You're calling me cruel," I said.

She didn't stop for it. "Taking him to your bed. Putting your arrangement on display for this whole house. You could have taken money. Property. You could have simply left. But you chose this—you chose to make him perform wanting you."

I carried my mug to the counter and set it down before I answered. Small thing. It bought me a second.

"I chose to make him keep one promise," I said. "One. In six years." I let a breath go. "I could have fought the divorce. Dragged it through the courts two years, three. Made you wait it out." I met her eyes. "I didn't. I gave him a clean exit. Thirty days, and I'm gone. You should be thanking me."

"Thanking you?" Her pitch climbed. "You slept in his bed. After everything I lost—"

"You didn't lose him to me." Flat, now. "You lost him to your father's debt. And I never asked for any of this. I was bought too, Felicia. The only difference is no one ever came back to claim me."

She stared. Her chest rose and fell, too fast.

"You think you're so strong," she whispered. "So dignified. But I see you, Anna. I see the way you watch him." A pause — something measuring in her eyes. "You're not doing this for closure. I'm not sure you even know what you're doing it for."

I didn't deny it. I couldn't.

"Maybe," I said. "But that's my burden. Not yours."

Footsteps in the hallway.

Luca.

He filled the doorway barefoot, shirt creased from sleep, hair still flat on one side where the pillow had held it. His eyes went from me to Felicia, and his jaw didn't move but his eyes did — toward her, and away.

"Felicia," he said. "This isn't—"

He didn't finish it.

Felicia moved. Not away — toward. Her hands found his face before he could step back. Her mouth found his.

My mug was still in my hand. Then it was on the floor, and I hadn't felt myself drop it.

The bond didn't ache. It tore. My hand found the counter's edge and I held on, because letting go meant going down with it.

Luca stood frozen — one second, two — before he pulled back.

"Felicia—" Rough.

"No." She held his face still, her eyes wet. "No, you don't get to say my name like that. Not when you spent the night in her bed. Not when you're pretending she's your wife."

"She is my wife." Quiet.

Felicia flinched like he'd hit her. "For thirty more days," she said. "And then she's nothing. And I'll be here. I've always been here, Luca. I waited. I survived him for you." She pressed her forehead to his. "Don't make me wait anymore."

I kept my face flat. My hands had started shaking somewhere in the last ten seconds; I made them stop by gripping the counter's edge until they did.

Luca stepped back. Her hands slid off him.

"Not here," he said. "Not like this."

Her eyes found mine. Dry now. Pleased.

"You can pretend with him all you want," she said, low and even. "You can play Luna. You can warm his bed. But he is mine. He has always been mine. And when these thirty days are over, he will come back to me."

She walked past Luca — let her fingers trail his arm on the way — and left.

I didn't move. Luca didn't either, not at first. His back was to me, his shoulders locked, his hands opening and closing at his sides like he was deciding whether to make fists.

"Anna—"

"Don't." I kept it flat. "You don't have to explain."

"I wasn't—"

"I said don't."

He turned. Whatever was in his eyes, I didn't try to read it.

"I didn't want that to happen." Rough again. "You should know that."

I laughed — a short, ugly sound I didn't recognize as mine.

"You don't have to perform honesty for me, Luca. I know what I am. I've always known." I pushed off the counter. "Today is day two. I expect you to be home for dinner."

"Anna, wait—"

I didn't.

The coffee sat where I'd left it, going cold, the steam long gone. I walked past it, down the hall, past the two housemaids who had clearly heard every word of it and were now studying the floor very hard, and into my room. I closed the door. I turned the lock.

Then I slid down against the wood and put both hands over my mouth, and let it out.

Not because Felicia had kissed him.

Because for one terrible, hopeful second — before his hand had even moved — I had let myself believe he wouldn't allow it.