Chapter 44

Celine felt her heartbeat slow down at Asher’s words, she hoped that it had been static and she hadn’t actually heard what she thought she did. “M-Moonstone?”

She never thought that she would hear the name of that town again but she wasn’t just hearing it, it was where she would be going on a business trip to, *with Asher*. Celine tried to hide how shaken she was and react normally to Asher’s words but she was having a difficult time doing that.

“Having second thoughts?” Asher’s voice filtered through her cellphone, startling her.

“N-No,” Celine quickly denied, the pitch of her voice climbing higher. She didn’t remember what she said to Asher before hanging up, staring at the lighted screen of her phone for several seconds before it blacked out.

*Moonstone.*

She did not want to return to that town that held all her past demons, she was even less willing to go there with Asher. Because he would find out that she was mated in name only to the Alpha of Moonstone - that’s if he didn’t already know that.

*Wouldn’t it be better for her to tell Asher about it before they went to Moonstone?* She quickly scrapped that thought because there was no way she could bring herself to tell him. Besides, there was a high chance that he already knew so she would wait for him to bring up the conversation himself.

She might end up worried over nothing because there was no way that the people living in the pack house would have anything to do with the Mafia so she might not even come in contact with them. The tightness in her chest eased at that thought and she got started on the luggage to distract herself, the weather was currently temperate as it was late spring so she didn’t have to do anything special.

Celine didn’t want to stay up late for the first time, usually, she tried to stay up as long as she could until Asher returned but tonight, she didn’t think she could face him so she tried hard to fall asleep. It also helped that Asher sometimes returned quite late so she was spared a conversation momentarily.

Her temporary solution blew up in her face the next morning when she opened her eyes to a face full of Asher’s sleep-tousled hair, his hazel eyes flicking down at her. She was so startled by this that she flinched and jumped off him much to Asher’s amusement, one of his brows cocked curiously.

“It’s n-nothing, sorry.” She mumbled, pushing her hair out of her face. “How did you sleep?” She tried making small talk to dispel the awkward atmosphere between them but it only served to worsen things.

“Great,” Asher replied but his tone at a questioning lilt at the end of it.

“Oh, look at the time! I should get cleaned up so we can leave on time,” She said in a rush, dashing off the bed to hide away in the bathroom.

She half-expected Asher to come right after her and she was grateful that he didn’t because she didn’t know how she would have handled that. It was rather ironic, she had been the one to push for them to spend more time together and now she was the only one who had an issue with it.

This would probably be all resolved if she just talked to Asher about it but she would rather spend an hour alone with Mafia King Nolan than do that, the dangerous Mafia King was a far better option than this conversation. And it was because she was scared of how Asher would take it, would he be put off by that? *Would he leave her behind in Moonstone when he found out?*

Celine rested her head on the counter, groaning silently in misery. It still wasn’t too late to call this off, all she had to do was tell Asher that she couldn’t go and she wouldn’t have to face all of this. But what was she going to say when Asher asked her reason for backing out?

Another sound of misery left her before she pushed herself up and quickly cleaned up, the last thing she wanted was to spend too long in the bathroom and have Asher come to check up on her.

To her surprise, Asher said nothing about her odd behavior, and nothing about the awkward silence that fell over them after she stopped trying to make the air between them less tense. He didn’t act any different either, having her sit on him while she ate her breakfast and he had a conversation with Jael who was surprisingly not coming along. She wondered if it had something to do with Mafia King Nolan’s attack that had happened when they were both absent at the same time.

Soon it was time to leave and Celine was having a difficult time sitting still, her anxiety worsened as they drove out of the mansion, making her inch closer to Asher because as much as he was the cause of her anxiety, his scent did a lot to calm her down.

Asher was busy on his tab and when she leaned her head on his shoulder, all he did was press a kiss into her hair and keep working. Celine’s sigh was soft, silently pep-talking herself. The truth was that Asher had never treated her differently regardless of the situation, she just had to trust that he wouldn’t change.

Celine hadn’t been able to focus on the scenery when she was leaving Moonstone, and now that she was returning barely a month later, she couldn’t focus either. It seemed like the wretched little town would always haunt her.

She wore comfortable clothes for the trip and unlike when she was running off to Reef, Asher made sure she was comfortable, stopping the entourage of cars frequently to make sure her every need was met. All that helped to calm her anxiety down until it was nothing but a small nervous hum.