His Human Wife, His Fated LunaChapter 3

Damien took one look at my drenched, bedraggled state and frowned in displeasure.

"I just had the living room cleaned. And now you've gone and dirtied it again."

My heart turned to ice. The tears I had only just managed to stop spilled over again.

A gust of cold rain slipped in through the open door, and Vanessa sneezed.

A flash of tender concern crossed Damien's face. He immediately stripped off his coat and draped it over her shoulders.

"Why haven't you closed the door? What if Nessa catches a chill?"

Numbly, I shut the door. Each step sent needle-sharp pain through the soles of my feet, blood seeping out with every footfall.

Damien didn't spare me a single glance. He instructed the staff to start a pot of beef broth.

He guided Vanessa carefully into a chair, as if she were made of porcelain.

She laughed coquettishly and pushed his hand away.

"I'm not that fragile."

Then, as if only just noticing the blood on the floor, she gasped and covered her mouth.

"Dami, Scarlett's feet are torn up. Hurry, have someone bring the first aid kit."

At last the man's gaze fell on my mangled feet.

His brow furrowed.

Just as I was bracing myself to refuse his help, certain he was about to call for the medicine box—

He swept Vanessa into his arms with an expression of disgust and snapped at the staff.

"Bring the alcohol! Disinfect everything."

The maid hurried over and poured alcohol all across the floor I had walked.

It splashed into the wounds on my feet, burning like a thousand ants gnawing at the bone.

The look Damien gave me was the look one gave a pathogen—as if he wanted nothing more than to throw me out at once.

After a moment of thought, that was exactly what he did.

"Housekeeper. Pack a few of Scarlett's things and send her to a hotel."

Vanessa nestled smugly into Damien's chest, fingers brushing her faintly swollen belly.

"Sorry, Scarlett. He's just worried you might carry germs that could harm the baby."

"You'll have to put up with moving out for now."

I lifted my eyes. The home I had once known was now unrecognizable.

Our wedding photo, once hung proudly on the wall, lay shattered in the trash.

The custom fridge magnets I'd made from our pictures were strewn across the floor.

Even the flowers I had planted on the balcony had been uprooted by someone's hand.

To make Vanessa feel comfortable, Damien had personally erased every trace of me—he'd even switched out the scent diffuser to mask my smell.

I stared at the childish couple's mugs on the dining table. It felt as though an invisible hand was crushing my heart, squeezing the breath out of me.

After I'd induced labor at five months, I had hired a specialist to fashion my child's ashes into a small silver crescent-moon amulet.

I had wanted to keep it with me always, as though my baby had never left.

I had hung it on my bedpost that night, and for the first time in a long while, I'd slept well.

But when I opened my eyes, the amulet was gone.

I had torn the room apart looking for it, finding nothing.

Damien had emerged from the study and said, with casual indifference:

"It was just a childish little trinket. I tossed it. It was an eyesore."

He had found my child's ashes childish, an eyesore, and thrown them away without a word.

And now—now he was using childish matching mugs with Vanessa, childish couple's stickers...

I curled my lips in a bitter smile and met Damien's frigid gaze.

"No need to trouble the housekeeper. I'll pack my things myself."

"I'll disappear soon enough. You won't have to see me again."

I hurried upstairs, wanting only to grab my documents and the keepsakes my mother had left me and flee this loveless house.

But as I rounded the corner, the sound of glass shattering rang from the bedroom.