Chapter 256 - 0256

Callista POV

"Spread your legs wider."

Jaxen’s voice was commanding and gravelly, low enough to vibrate through the air. He rocked back and forth on his knees, the bed springs creaking softly beneath his weight as he rocked forward once, carefully testing the angle.

"I want to feel every inch of you when I push in."

"Like this, Alpha?"

The soft, hesitant voice didn’t belong to me. It belonged to the young woman lying beneath him.

She let her knees fall open against the sheets, a motion that was a little clumsy, a little shy.

Jaxen shifted closer, positioning the head of his length and dragging himself along her slick folds, lining himself up.

She was already wet from whatever slow preparation he had given her earlier, but her breathing still hitched in a ragged beat.

I, on the other hand, sat on the edge of the mattress, watching them with growing impatience.

His legally recognized wife.

The rightful Luna of the Silver Fang Pack.

The woman who was carrying his child.

With one hand, I gripped the girl’s trembling fingers while my other hand rested firmly over the round swell of my pregnant belly.

She was nervous, obviously.

It was her first time, and her knuckles had already gone white from how tightly she was squeezing my hand. I almost rolled my eyes again.

Seriously, what was she so scared of? Her timidness was starting to get on my nerves, but I wasn’t about to waste my time comforting her. I just wanted to get this over with.

Slowly, Jaxen pushed forward. The heavy wood of the bed frame groaned again as his hips advanced another inch, then another, until she had taken half of him.

Her breath hitched hard, and she made a small broken sound as she tried to pull her hand free, but I clenched my fingers around the girl’s, cursing her silently for making things difficult for me as she tried to adjust while putting on a sympathetic look.

Without giving her a single second to accommodate him, Jaxen’s expression darkened, and he began thrusting with powerful rolls of his hips that drove him deeper with every stroke.

The wet sound of him forcing his way into her tight hole filled the room, drawing a sharp, painful gasp from her throat.

And as he did, his gaze wasn’t on her. It was fixed entirely on me.

This was literally how it always went.

The pack healer had warned us that sex this late in my pregnancy could be dangerous for the baby, but apparently, Jaxen couldn’t go a few weeks without getting laid.

He wouldn’t stop whining about his needs, acting as though being denied sex for a little while was the end of the world.

Honestly, I was getting sick of hearing about it, so I’d finally agreed to let him sleep with other women.

My only condition was that I got to pick them.

Naturally, I wasn’t going to choose women who were prettier than me. I had enough problems without deliberately inviting that kind of competition into my own bedroom.

So, I picked women from poor backgrounds, with dark hair and brown eyes, women who looked nothing like me and certainly couldn’t hold a candle to my beauty.

That was the whole point.

Unfortunately, Jaxen had his own little condition.

They had to be virgins.

At first, I hadn’t understood what the hell he wanted with virgins specifically. It was very odd.

But it didn’t take long to figure it out.

He enjoyed watching them get all shy and nervous around him, especially when they didn’t know what to expect. How easily they blushed and how they seemed to hang on his every word. He clearly enjoyed having that much control over them.

And, as if that wasn’t irritating enough, he insisted I be in the room every time he was with them.

His excuse was that he loved me too much to enjoy being with another woman without me there. He supposedly felt guilty about it and needed me close to make himself feel better.

Please. I wasn’t stupid.

I knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted to look at me while he was with them just because I reminded him of her.

After all, I was literally the exact copy of her.

It was always the same.

Whenever he thrust inside the woman he was in bed with, his attention was always on me, his hand reaching out to gently brush my hair.

Even though I didn’t love him, having to put on this act every single time still disgusted me.

Smiling at him, pretending I was perfectly fine with sharing my husband, and playing the part of a loving, considerate wife was exhausting.

But I really didn’t have much of a choice now.

But tonight... tonight was different.

Usually, Jaxen was almost annoyingly gentle with the girls he brought into our bed.

He liked watching them blush and squirm, and he always seemed to enjoy making them feel comfortable enough to trust him.

Tonight, though, that familiar gentleness was nowhere to be seen. His expression was dark, his jaw tight, and there was a cold, simmering rage in his eyes.

Every thrust was so brutal, so unnecessarily rough, that I actually found myself feeling sorry for the poor girl. And that was saying something, considering how little I cared about the women Jaxen brought into our bed.

"Take it. Just take it, you fucking whore," he growled, his knuckles turning white as he held her down.

When he reached for me this time, it wasn’t to gently stroke my face like he usually did. He grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked my head back so hard that I winced.

Before I could even pull away, he kissed me, his mouth rough against mine, leaving no room for protest.

His teeth suddenly caught my lower lip, biting down so hard that I winced in pain. I tried to pull back, but his grip on my hair tightened, keeping me right where he wanted me.

A sharp sting spread across my lip, followed by the unmistakable metallic taste of blood.

When he finally released me, I instinctively brought my fingers to my mouth, only to find blood smeared across them.

I stared at him, stunned by his sudden aggression. He didn’t even look apologetic. If anything, the cold expression on his face made it clear that he couldn’t care less about hurting me, even as blood dripped down my chin.

An outsider might have assumed he was drunk, but I knew better. Jaxen was completely sober.

And I knew exactly who was responsible for this sudden change in his behavior. It wasn’t me, and it certainly wasn’t the terrified girl beneath him.

It was all because of that bitch, Lorelei.

Fuck. Even in her absence, she still found a way to get under my skin. She was always there, somehow, ruining everything without even having to lift a finger.

I hated her so much.

I fucking hated her.