Chapter 3

Evelyn POV

When I got back to the villa, Damian was already waiting.

He was sitting on the sofa, his dark eyes drilling into me like ice picks. "Where have you been all afternoon?"

He couldn't reach me for hours, and his patience had clearly run out.

I looked at him, but all I could see was the image of him kissing Isabella on the yacht.

"Why aren't you talking?" Seeing my silence, Damian stood up and stepped closer. He wrapped his long arm around my waist, pulling me flush against him. "Do you want me to punish you again?"

At the word "punish," my body went stiff.

I remembered when I was twenty. We had a huge fight, and I ran off to go surfing at the beach to blow off steam.

Damian went absolutely crazy. He deployed the entire pack guard to search the city.

When he found me, he locked me in our beach house for two full months.

It wasn't until I cried and begged, swearing I would never disappear again, that he finally let me go with bloodshot eyes.

I was afraid of him. I was terrified of his suffocating, obsessive control.

Right now, I couldn't let him notice anything. I couldn't let him know I was planning to run.

"I..." I clenched my fists, forcing myself to calm down. My voice shook slightly. "I went to the hospital... to ask the doctor about some tests."

I couldn't tell him I was pregnant.

I was already three months along.

Sure enough, Damian's expression softened, and the grip on my waist loosened.

He assumed I had gone behind his back to do those painful fertility treatments again.

Immediately, a look of deep pain and guilt washed over his face. He leaned down and kissed my forehead, his voice deep and raspy. "Didn't I tell you not to go anymore? I told you, having you is enough for me. I don't want to see you suffer through those painful procedures."

If this were yesterday, I would have been deeply moved by his words.

Today, it just made me sick.

Damian's phone rang. He answered it, muttered a few quick words, and hurriedly left the house.

Half an hour after he left, my phone buzzed. An unknown number sent me an audio file.

I tapped play. Damian's familiar voice, mixed with the clinking of glasses, filled the quiet room.

"...Isabella is four months pregnant. I have to give her a proper title."

His friend's shocked voice followed. "What about the girl at your house? I thought you loved Evelyn to death."

"Evelyn can't conceive," Damian's voice sounded incredibly tired. "But the Elder Alpha insists that the Frostveil Pack needs a pureblood heir."

My face drained of all color.

In the recording, his friend sighed. "The Elder Alpha's control is getting out of hand. If he hadn't forbidden you from marking Evelyn back then, and literally forced you to feed her those wolfsbane suppressants to prevent her from conceiving, you wouldn't be in this mess right now."

Wolfsbane suppressants...

It felt like a lightning bolt struck me. The blood in my veins turned to ice.

I remembered seven years ago, the morning after the Luna Gala. Damian had handed me a cup of herbal tea with a strange, bitter smell.

He told me it was a special blend to help with my weak constitution.

So, from the very beginning, he had been poisoning me.

From our very first night.

At the end of the recording, Damian murmured, "I love Evelyn. That will never change. We grew up together, and she's perfect as a Luna. But Isabella... she's my fated mate. When I'm with her, I feel a passion I've never felt before."

His friend snorted, hitting the nail on the head. "You're just greedy. You want a passionate mistress, but you also want a quiet, obedient Luna to keep your house."

The recording cut off.

My knees buckled, and I slid down to the cold floor, clutching my phone.

He loved me?

He loved me with a fake mate bond and a lifetime of poison?