I Gave The Prince To My Sister And Found My True Mate Chapter 04
At the time, though, I took that concession as a lifeline.
After Rosalie left, Lucian’s treatment of me truly changed.
The things I had never dared hope for began finding their way into my hands.
Once, in Rosalie’s dressing room, I had seen a blue crystal hairpin from the west coast. Werewolves can’t wear silver, so the pin was set in platinum. Under the light, it looked like a shard of the sea.
I had only glanced at it twice.
Three days later, Lucian set a hairpin in front of me—a deeper blue, more expensive.
“If you like it, keep it.” He was flipping through Council briefings on his tablet without even looking up. “You’re the crown prince’s wife. Stop acting like you’ve never seen a nice thing in your life.”
I held the hairpin, my fingertips trembling.
Not because I had never seen nice things.
But because no one had ever noticed that I might like something, too.
Later, Lucian started taking me out of the estate.
When he was in a good mood, he would hold my hand as we walked through weekend markets. Plainclothes Royal Guards trailed us at a distance, and we looked like any ordinary married couple.
He took me to the festival of lights and to a small theater to watch the puppet shows that had been popular when we were children.
Little by little, I began to believe that he had truly come back to me.
I believed that after enduring so much coldness and neglect, I had finally earned a warm place in his life.
In the third year of our marriage, I lost my first child.
That day, I ate a piece of almond cake delivered to the royal estate.
Aconite had been mixed into the cake, enough to suppress a wolf’s instincts and healing. The dose wasn’t enough to kill an adult werewolf, but it was enough to stop the heartbeat of an unborn child.
When the pain hit, I grabbed the hand of the healer on duty and sobbed, begging them to save my baby.
The medical team rushed me to the medical wing at the Royal Castle. Every record, sample, and bit of kitchen surveillance footage was seized by the Royal Guard, but they couldn’t save the child.
When I woke, Lucian was sitting by my bed, his face pale.
He held my icy hand, his fingertips trembling faintly.
“We’ll have other children,” he said hoarsely. “Audrey, don’t be afraid. I’ll stay with you.”
I cried for a long time.
I thought he was finally, truly hurting for me.
What I didn’t know then was that on the same day I was taken to the hospital, Rosalie, newly widowed and home for a visit, had just landed on a flight from the south.
Lucian had turned off his royal tracker and had waited for her at the airport all day himself.