Free Web NovelChapter 171: Chapter 171
Nathan’s POV
Collins took Lana from the nanny. I carried Aria into the ambulance.
The sirens wailed. The world blurred. All I could think was—
Not her, not again. Moon Goddess, not her.
The hospital smelled sterile, it was too bright and too loud. I hated it. I hated everything except the rhythm of her heartbeat.
I waited outside the operating room, staring at the red light like it held my own life hostage.
When it finally switched off, I was on my feet instantly.
“How is she?” I asked the doctor.
“She swallowed water,” the doctor said calmly. “We’ve handled it. She just needs to wake up.”
A breath I’d been holding for too long finally escaped.
She was going to be okay.
I moved her to a private VIP room. The nurse tried to stay, but I dismissed her. I couldn’t have anyone else hovering.
She lay there, silent, peaceful, unaware of the chaos she stirred in me.
Her face looked softer asleep, almost ethereal like a porcelain doll. But she wasn’t fragile, she was fire. A woman who didn’t break easily.
My wolf lay down inside me, watching her with a quiet reverence, watching the rhythm of her breathing.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her, not even for a second.
Aria’s POV
Consciousness drifted back to me like a frayed thread being tugged through water. Something cold and unseen kept pulling me downward, back into the dark. Back into a place where memories tangled with nightmares.
A thick black fog curled inside my mind, clinging to me like shadow-wolves. But slowly... painfully... it lifted. And the moment it did, I realized the truth.
It wasn’t a nightmare.
It was a dream of a life I once wanted.
A life that never truly belonged to me.
In the dream I’d been sitting at my old wooden desk, doodling tiny wolves in the corner of my notebook. My wolf, restless even then, had pressed against me, wanting to be anywhere but trapped in that suffocating classroom.
“Aria Darvin! Answer the question!”
I remembered the sting of embarrassment as I jerked my head up. The sharp scent of chalk. The rustle of pages. The window behind the teacher where sunlight hit the trees—so green it almost hurt.
I hesitated. The teacher’s irritation thickened in the air.
Before I could form a word, a calm, cold voice cut in:
“You’re distracting me.”
It was Nathan.
Even in the dream, my wolf flinched at the memory of him...those glacial eyes, emotionless yet impossible to ignore. His voice held no warmth then, just like now.
He answered the question flawlessly. Then stood and walked out of the classroom in the middle of the lesson. No one dared stop him. No one even breathed.
Why is this Alpha so full of himself?
I remembered thinking back then. I was young and stupid, entranced by a boy who smelled of winter forests and unspoken storms.
From that moment on, I watched him.
And somewhere along the line... watching him became my ruin.
A bitter smile tugged at my lips even before my eyes opened. My body felt foreign...heavy, stiff, as if my wolf were curled deep inside, too shaken to come forward.
A single tear slipped down the side of my face.
When my eyes finally opened, all I saw was a whitecold, empty, mercilessly bright ceiling. It looked like it was staring into my soul and judging what remained. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
Then that familiar voice reached me.
“You’re awake?”
Nathan’s deep voice overlapped the cold echo of his teenage tone in my fading dream. The sound of him always did that, pulled the past into the present like a chain around my neck.
My lashes fluttered as my vision cleared, and I focused on the large hand wrapped around mine.
His touch was cool. His scent hit me a second later, awakening my wolf just enough to bristle.
I pulled my hand away on instinct, the rejection immediate.
Nathan froze, stunned for the briefest moment before that familiar mask of cold indifference slid back into place.
“Do you feel any discomfort?” he asked, his voice low and rough, uncharacteristically so.
Only then did the memory strike me like a blow: the pool, the water closing over my head, my wolf howling in panic, claws scraping against nothingness as I drowned...
“No,” I rasped. My throat felt scraped raw, like I’d swallowed gravel instead of water.
The VIP hospital room was large, quiet, and sterile. My wolf jolted awake, panic spiking through us so sharply I sat upright.
“Where’s Lana?”
My pup...My child...My wolf’s heart.
Nathan’s expression shifted for the first time, something flickering in his gaze.
“Collins is taking care of her at Hemsworth Villa,” he said, his tone controlled.
But beneath it... I felt it, a simmering displeasure.
A possessive ripple of Alpha energy that brushed against my senses like frost.
My wolf growled inside me.
