Chapter 83: Aunty Liona

Azura’s POV

His hand was still over my mouth.

I looked up at him. Brown hair falling forward, sharp jaw, amber eyes catching the pale morning light coming through the window. He was looking down at me with that expression that gave nothing away and somehow gave everything away at the same time.

My body was warm.

I told it to stop. It didn’t listen.

I was lying flat on my back on my own bed in my own room, and he was right there above me, and every single part of me that had any sense was screaming that I needed to create distance between us immediately. The other parts, the traitorous, inconvenient, completely unhelpful parts, were doing something else entirely.

He slowly lifted his hand from my mouth.

I opened my mouth to say something. I had no idea what. Something sharp and unbothered that would make it clear I was completely fine and totally unaffected and absolutely not thinking about last night.

The door opened.

Not a knock. Not a warning. Just Liona’s voice coming through before the rest of her did, easy and familiar, already in the middle of a sentence, the way she always was, because Liona had never once in her life waited for permission to enter a room.

"Azura, you’re not gonna believe what Torin said to me this morning, and I can’t believe that I’m still crushing on..."

She walked through the door.

She turned right automatically, the way you do when you know someone’s room, already looking toward the bed in the middle of the room where I always was in the morning.

She stopped.

Her mouth was still open from the last word she had been saying.

She looked at the bed. At me flat on my back. At him above me. At the open window on the opposite wall. At the small table beside the window, a plate of food was sitting quietly as if it had always been there.

Her eyes went from the window to the food to him to me and back to him again.

Her mouth closed.

Her eyes went very wide.

She stood completely still for about three full seconds, which was the longest Liona had ever been silent in the entire time I had known her.

Then she straightened up. Cleared her throat. Looked somewhere above both of our heads like the ceiling had suddenly become very interesting.

"I am so sorry," she said, in a voice that was trying very hard to be normal and not quite getting there. "I will just. Yes. Outside."

She stepped back out of the door and pulled it gently shut behind her.

The room was quiet again.

I looked at the ceiling. Speechless.

He got off of me.

I felt the mattress shift as his weight left it and I sat up slowly, pulling my knees to my chest, not looking at him directly. I could hear him standing there. I could feel him trying to figure out what to do with himself, which was a feeling I recognized because I was having the exact same problem.

He cleared his throat.

I looked up.

He was not looking at me. He was looking somewhere in the direction of the window, jaw tight, one hand moving to the back of his neck. He looked at the plate of food on the small table beside the window. Then he looked at me. Then back to the food.

"I brought you a meal," he said.

I blinked at him.

Then I stared at the plate.

Then I stared at the window.

"You brought me food," I said slowly. "Through the window."

He said nothing.

"Who on earth brings someone food through a window?"

He scratched the back of his head. Actually scratched it, his hand moving through his hair in a way that was so far from the controlled, unbothered Alpha I was used to that I almost did not recognize him. He looked like a boy who had done something and was now standing in front of it trying to explain his reasoning and finding that the reasoning had disappeared completely.

"It will help you," he said finally.

I looked at him. "It will help me?"

"Yes."

"The food."

"Yes."

I opened my mouth. Something in his expression made me pause. He was not looking at the food anymore. He was looking at me, just for a second, and underneath the closed-off expression and the tight jaw, there was something else. Something that was trying to say what his mouth clearly did not know how to say.

He was talking about last night.

The realization landed quietly in the middle of my chest. He meant the food would help after what happened between us. He came through a window before the sun was properly up and brought me food because he did not know how to say anything else and this was the only way he knew how to say it.

Something warm moved through me so fast I almost missed it.

Then I remembered Isadora’s hand in his. I remembered them kissing. I remembered the word meaningless sitting in my chest for days after he said it. And the warmth got complicated and tangled and I did not know what to do with any of it.

I wanted to say something.

He did not give me the chance.

He looked at the window. Then back at me once, brief and unreadable. Then he moved across the room, climbed through the window with the easy practiced movement of someone who had clearly done this before, and was gone.

Just like that.

I sat on the bed and looked at the window, and looked at the plate of food, and looked at the window again.

The door opened immediately.

Liona came back in like she had been standing with her hand on the handle the entire time, which she absolutely had. She stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and turned to face me. Her eyes were so bright, and her expression was so full of everything she had been holding in for the last three minutes that I already knew there was nothing I could say to stop what was coming.

"Since when?" she said.

"Liona."

"Since when, Azura? How long has this been going on? When did this start? Was it in the Wraithfen? It was in the Wraithfen wasn’t it? Oh my goodness, it was absolutely in the Wraithfen, you were alone together for a day, and I was out there worried sick, and you were in there falling in love..."

"I am not in love..."

"He came through your WINDOW with FOOD, Azura!"

"It does not mean..."

"I cannot believe this." She cut me off then pressed both hands to her cheeks and spun in a small circle. "I cannot believe this is happening. I need to sit down. I am sitting down."

She sat on the edge of my bed without waiting for an invitation and looked at me with the expression of someone experiencing profound joy.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. I am going to be an aunt."

I stared at her. "You are absolutely not."

"I am going to be the best aunt." She was not listening to me at all. "I am already thinking about names. What about Sonita? For a girl? I think Sonita is beautiful. It is strong but soft at the same time. And for a boy." She paused, thinking deeply, as if this were a serious matter that required her full attention. "Michael. And I will call him Mike. Little Mike." She smiled to herself. "I love little Mike already."

"Liona." I grabbed her hand. "Stop talking!!"

She looked at me with complete innocence. "I am just excited about becoming an aunt."

"Nobody is becoming an aunt. I am not pregnant. There are no babies. There is no Sonita and there is absolutely no little Mike."

Liona tilted her head. Her eyes were dancing with laughter she was barely keeping inside. She looked at my bed. At the window. At me. Then she asked the question with the most peaceful, genuinely curious expression she had ever worn in her life.

"Then what exactly was the Alpha doing on top of you?"

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

"In your bed," she added helpfully.

Still nothing.

"In the morning."

"It is not." I stopped. Started again. "We were not. Nothing happened."

Liona looked at me for a long moment.

"Nothing," I said again. Firmly.

She nodded slowly. Pressed her lips together. Nodded again like she was taking this information very seriously and filing it away carefully.

Then she reached out, held my face in both her hands, and looked at me the way you look at something small and precious and unbearably cute. Her thumbs rested gently on my cheeks. She studied my face for a second.

Then she moved my hair.

She pushed it back slowly from the side of my neck, the curtain of dark hair falling away, and looked at what was underneath.

I felt the air hit my skin before I remembered.

The marks.

I grabbed my hair back and yanked it forward so fast my neck snapped sideways. I pressed it flat against my skin with my hand and looked at Liona with an expression that I hoped communicated that she needed to forget everything she had just seen.

Liona was not forgetting anything.

She was sitting completely still on the edge of my bed. Her hands were still raised in the air where she had moved my hair. Her eyes were very wide.

And the Alpha scent that was soaked into my skin and my dress and everything I had been sitting in all morning, hit her at exactly the same moment her eyes confirmed what she was looking at.

Her hand flew to her mouth.

Her eyes went wider than I had ever seen them go.

She looked at my neck. Then at my face. Then at my neck again.

And then Liona opened her mouth and screamed.

"AHHHHHHH"

That’s it. I give up.

Nothing I say from now on will get into her mind, so why bother?

I stood up from the bed, walked to the table near the window, carried the tray back, sat down, and started munching on the bread.