Chapter 6 — The Empty Bed
884 Words
LIORA
“Are you coming back to bed?”
Selene’s voice drifted through the narrow opening of her door.
Ronan looked at me, then at the warm strip of light across the corridor floor.
“Milo keeps waking,” he said. “I’ll stay until he settles.”
I had already asked him to return to our room.
I would not ask again.
“Then go.”
His brow drew together. “Do not turn this into something it isn’t.”
“I didn’t.”
Behind the door, Milo whimpered.
Ronan’s attention shifted toward the sound.
That was his answer.
I walked into our bedroom and closed the door. The lock clicked softly behind me.
For a moment, I stood with my hand on the handle, listening.
Ronan’s footsteps moved away.
Selene’s door opened.
Then closed.
Our bed had never looked so large.
I changed out of my ceremonial gown and placed the Luna’s necklace on the dresser. The moonstone caught the dim light while I lay with my back to Ronan’s untouched pillow.
Every time the house settled, I waited for the door to open.
It never did.
By dawn, his side of the bed was still cold.
I dressed for the infirmary before the household woke. Milo would need another dose of pain medication with breakfast, so I wrote the instructions and carried them to Ronan’s office.
The door stood open.
Patrol reports covered his desk. A wall monitor displayed silent footage from the northern border. His phone rested beside a stack of council folders.
Above the cabinet, two pale marks interrupted the dark paneling.
Our mating portrait was gone.
I stopped beneath the empty space.
The photograph had hung there since Ronan became Alpha. He had worn his formal black uniform; I had stood beside him in silver, his hand at my waist and the Luna’s necklace at my throat.
It had been the first thing visitors saw when they entered his office.
Now there was only a blank wall.
“I thought you would be at the infirmary.”
Ronan stood in the doorway behind me. He had changed his shirt, but shadows remained beneath his eyes.
I held up Milo’s medication instructions.
Then I pointed at the wall.
“Where is our portrait?”
His gaze followed mine. “In storage.”
“Why?”
“Milo asked why Eamon was not represented in the family display. Selene suggested reorganizing the wall before the memorial committee arrives.”
I looked around the office.
No other portrait had been removed. No tools, frames, or archival boxes waited nearby.
“When is the archivist coming?”
Ronan crossed to his desk and picked up a council folder.
“Next week.”
“The memorial committee arrives today.”
His hand paused on the cover.
“It was easier to clear the space now.”
“Easier for whom?”
His eyes met mine.
“Liora, it is a portrait.”
“It is the only public image in this office that names me as your mate.”
“You are still my mate.”
“Then why are you hiding the evidence?”
He aligned the folder with the others, though they were already straight.
“No one is hiding anything. The wall is being reorganized.”
“Our marriage is not clutter.”
His phone vibrated.
Selene’s name lit the screen.
Ronan turned it facedown without answering, but the gesture came too late. Even ignored, she had entered the room between us.
“I spent the night with an injured child,” he said. “I moved a photograph to make room for my dead brother. Neither act was meant to hurt you.”
“That is the problem.” I set Milo’s instructions on the desk. “You never mean to hurt me. You simply decide the hurt is acceptable.”
Something changed in his expression, but he did not deny it.
I left before he could ask me to understand.
The infirmary was already busy.
A patrol guard needed his bandages changed. A pregnant woman from the eastern settlement waited for routine bloodwork. Nora Hale, my senior assistant, moved between the examination rooms with her tablet tucked against her chest.
Work gave me structure.
Bodies followed rules people did not. Blood clotted. Bones healed. Medication worked or it did not.
By midmorning, the nausea returned.
I gripped the laboratory counter until the room steadied.
Nora stopped beside me. “You’re pale.”
“I didn’t sleep.”
“That does not explain the dizziness.”
Nine days late.
Nausea.
Exhaustion.
I looked toward the closed laboratory door.
“Lock it.”
Nora’s expression sharpened, but she obeyed.
“I need a serum pregnancy test.”
She went still.
“For which patient?”
I pushed up my sleeve and sat in the collection chair.
“Me.”
Questions crowded her face. She asked none of them.
Nora tied the band around my arm and cleaned the inside of my elbow. The needle pinched. Dark red blood traveled through the tube.
My vision narrowed.
“Liora?”
The ceiling lights stretched into white lines.
Somewhere far away, Nora called my name again.
The last thing I saw was the tube filling with my blood before the darkness took me.
- Writer
