The Curvy Human Behind The Alpha's Survivor

Nina's POV: "No, don't put the tomato paste now!" I rushed over to the open space where the helpers were making the rice. "But the oil is already hot." She pointed out. “I made sure to check with some slices of onions first.” "That's exactly why. You put paste into oil that hot, it burns before it blooms, and the whole pot tastes bitter." I took the spoon, lowered the flame. "Watch. It has to sizzle, not scream." "Well isn't this a sight?" I didn't need to turn around to know that voice. Lucinda stood in the doorway of the kitchen with a snorty look on her face. "I wanted to help with dinner." I replied with a smile. "Help?” She scoffed. "Nina darling, we have people for this who we paid and they're trained people if I may say so myself." "I am trained." "You were trained." She stepped further in, her eyes sweeping over the pots then to the flour dusted across the counter and back to me. "Things change, so do bodies and priorities." Her gaze lingered on my waist a beat too long. "You should be resting, not standing over a hot stove sweating through your dress." "I'm fine, Lucinda." If I gave her a reason to see that her words were eating deep, she'd continue so I kept smiling. "Are you? Because you don't look fine. You look tired. You look, if I'm honest, like a woman who's let herself go somewhat since the wedding." Heat crawled up my neck. Behind me, one of the kitchen staff suddenly became very interested in the rice. "I'm cooking dinner. That's all this is." "Mm." She picked up a spoon off the counter, turned it over like she was inspecting it for flaws, set it back down. "Well. Try not to make a mess of yourself before the Keslers arrive. First impressions matter, and you're already working with a deficit these days." She swept back out before I could answer, heels clicking against the tile. I finished the sauce with my jaw clenched so tight it ached. By the time I carried the dish out myself, dinner was already underway. I set it down in front of the visiting Alpha of Kesler and some members of his pack and started to step back. "Oh." Lucinda's voice cut across the table, pleasant on the surface. "Nina cooked tonight. How resourceful." A few polite chuckles rippled down the table. "I wanted to contribute." "Of course you did." She looked at me a beat too long. "Though I do wonder if all that time in the kitchen is wise for you right now, dear. Given everything." "I'm fine," I said. "I'm sure you are." Her smile didn't move. "It's just, we do worry. A human wife who can't manage her own health can hardly be expected to manage a household, let alone give this family what it actually needs from her." "What exactly does this family need from me, Lucinda? Besides my silence?" "Don't be dramatic." She retorted. "I'm not being dramatic. You just told a table full of guests that I'm too sick to be a proper wife. I'd like to know what you meant by it." "I meant exactly what I said." Her voice sharpened, the pretense thinning. "You've been to three different specialists this year. Your cycle is a mess, your moods are worse, and frankly darling, nobody at this table needs a diagram to understand what that means for an heir. The Keslers certainly don't." Someone at the far end of the table actually gasped. "You want to talk about heirs in front of the Keslers?" My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Fine, let's talk about it. Let's talk about how you've had every doctor I've seen report back to you before they report back to me. Let's talk about how this isn't concern, this is control, and you've dressed it up as motherly worry for so long you've started believing it yourself." "How dare you?!" She shot up to her feet. “How dare you speak to the pack's matriarch so condescendingly?” Yeah Pack matriarch, not my mother-in-law. "How dare you." I looked at her dead on. "I gave up on a restaurant with a two month waiting list to marry your son. I ran a kitchen that critics wrote about and I have sat at this table for a year while you picked apart my body like it's a business liability. So don't lecture me about what this family needs. You don't care what I give this family. You only care what I look like giving it." The room had gone completely silent. I looked at Jace. He was staring at his plate. "Jace." Lucinda's voice was ice now. "Say something to your wife." He looked up. For one second I actually thought he might. Then his eyes slid sideways, toward the Alpha of Kesler watching all of this with barely concealed interest, and I watched him choose, in real time, which fire mattered more to put out. "Mother, maybe we should—" "Maybe you should do what, Jace?" I cut in. "Defend me? Is that a hard sentence to finish?" "Nina, not now." "When, then? You've had a year of not-nows." I didn't wait for an answer. I set the serving spoon down hard enough that it rang against the table, and walked out. He caught up to me in the hallway, footsteps fast against the marble. "Nina." His hand closed around my arm. "You need to go back in there and apologize." "Apologize?" I was stunned. “Did you just tell me to apologize?” "She's my mother and the most revered person in this pack. You humiliated her in front of the Keslers. Do you understand how that looks?" "How it looks." I laughed, and it came out uglier than I meant it to. "She just told an entire table I'm too sick to be a wife, and you want me to apologize." "I'm not saying she was right to say it like that. I'm saying I need this alliance to hold. Common, I need to make this pack greater than what it is. Can you just, for one night, let it go?" "I've been letting it go for a year, Jace. I've let go of my restaurant. I've let go of my body being mine to talk about. I've let go of you defending me, over and over, until I stopped even expecting it. What's left for me to let go of?" He didn't answer. That was worse than anything Lucinda had said all night. "Go back to your dinner," I said quietly. "Tell your mother I'm sorry for embarrassing her." "Nina—" "I'm going home." I didn't wait for him to argue. I walked out into the cold, past the row of gleaming cars, past the topiary shaped into the family crest, and didn't look back once. I didn't cry until I was three streets away. Then I pulled the car over, put my hea d against the wheel, and finally admitted what I'd known for months. There was nothing left to save here. I'd just been too afraid to stop pretending otherwise.