Chapter 95

Chapter 95
Bella's POV:

The morning light filtered through the curtains of my new villa as I checked my phone for the third time. The prenatal appointment was scheduled for 9 AM, and I'd requested a two-hour leave from work. Victor had been understanding when I'd texted him last night, simply replying: "Take care of yourself. That's an order from your boss."

I smiled faintly at the memory as I grabbed my jacket. Jane appeared in the doorway, her weathered face creased with concern.

"Miss Bella, are you sure you don't want me to come with you?"

"I'll be fine, Jane. It's just a routine checkup." I squeezed her hand gently. "Besides, I need you here to make sure nobody snoops around while I'm gone."

The drive to Emberhold General Hospital took twenty minutes. The waiting room smelled of antiseptic and artificial lavender, and I found myself gripping the armrest of my chair as I waited for my name to be called.

"Bella Moore?"

Dr. Stevens, a kind-faced woman in her fifties, gestured me into her office. The ultrasound room was dimly lit, and I lay back on the examination table, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"Everything looks perfect," Dr. Stevens said after a few minutes of silence broken only by the steady whoosh-whoosh of the baby's heartbeat. "Strong heartbeat, good growth measurements. You're about eleven weeks along now. Have you been experiencing any complications?"

"No bleeding, no severe cramping," I reported. "Just the usual morning sickness and fatigue."

"That's excellent. Your body is handling the pregnancy well, considering the stress you've been under." She gave me a pointed look. "Though I would recommend reducing that stress as much as possible. Your blood pressure is slightly elevated."

I nodded, accepting the printed ultrasound images she handed me. The tiny figure on the grainy photo looked more human now, less like an abstract blob. My throat tightened.

"I'll do my best," I murmured.

As I stepped out of the examination room, tucking the ultrasound photos carefully into my purse, I nearly collided with someone in the hallway.

"Bella?"

My blood turned to ice. Faye stood there in a hospital gown, one hand pressed to her stomach, her face pale and drawn. Behind her, a nurse hovered with a wheelchair.

"What are you doing here?" Faye's eyes narrowed, then widened as she glanced at the OB-GYN department sign on the wall. "You're... you're pregnant?"

Before I could formulate a response, heavy footsteps echoed down the corridor. Ethan appeared, his face tight with worry that transformed into shock when he saw me.

"Bella." His voice came out strangled. "What—"

"I came for a checkup," I said flatly, meeting his gaze without flinching. "Not that it's any of your business anymore."

Faye swayed slightly, and the nurse steadied her. "I don't feel well," she whispered. "I think I'm going to be sick."

Ethan's attention snapped to her immediately. "We need to get you checked out. Come on." He guided her toward an examination room, but his eyes kept darting back to me, filled with questions I had no intention of answering.

I turned to leave, but his voice stopped me.

"Wait."

I looked back. Ethan had left Faye with the nurse and was striding toward me, his expression a mixture of confusion and something that looked dangerously close to hope.

"Are you pregnant?" he demanded, his voice low and urgent.

I considered lying. It would be so easy to deny it, to walk away and let him wonder. But something in his face—that flicker of desperate hope—made me cruel.

"Yes."

The word hung in the air between us. Ethan's face went through a series of emotions: shock, disbelief, and then something that looked like anguish.

"How long?"

"Eleven weeks."

He did the math quickly, his jaw working. "That means... when we were still..." He trailed off, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "Why didn't you tell me? Before we broke the bond? Bella, if I'd known you were pregnant, Grandmother never would have forced us to—"

"This is exactly the outcome I wanted," I interrupted, my voice cold and clear. "I don't need your family's interference. I don't need your grandmother's manipulation. I don't need any of it."

"But the baby—"

"Is none of your concern."

His face twisted with pain. "Bella, please. If you're carrying my child—"

"I never said it was yours."

The words came out before I could stop them, sharp and cutting. I watched the color drain from Ethan's face, watched his eyes go wide with shock and hurt. Behind him, through the examination room's open door, I could see Faye watching us, her expression filled with fear despite her supposed illness. Fear that I might come back. Fear that Ethan, now knowing about the baby, would find it even harder to let me go.

"What?" Ethan's voice was barely a whisper.

I forced myself to hold his gaze, to let him see nothing but cold indifference. "I said, I never claimed the baby was yours. We broke the mate bond, Ethan. Whatever happens in my life now is my business alone."

"You're lying." But he didn't sound certain. "You wouldn't—"

"Wouldn't what? Move on? Find someone who actually respects me?" I took a step closer, lowering my voice. "You made your choice when you chose to protect Brianna instead of seeking justice for my mother. You made your choice when you let your family manipulate you into breaking our bond. So don't stand here now and act like you have any right to ask me questions about my life."

"Bella—"

"Goodbye, Ethan."

I walked away, my spine straight, my head high. I didn't let myself look back, even when I heard him call my name one more time. The automatic doors slid open, and I stepped out into the bright morning sunlight, my hands trembling as I fumbled for my car keys.

Only when I was safely inside my car, the doors locked and the windows up, did I allow myself to shake. Not with fear or regret, but with a strange mixture of satisfaction and sorrow. I'd seen the look on Ethan's face when I'd implied the baby wasn't his. I'd seen him break just a little bit more.

Good. He deserved to feel even a fraction of the pain he'd caused me.

I started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, leaving Ethan and Faye and all their drama behind. I had work to do.

---

Hunt Group's headquarters was a sleek glass tower in downtown Emberhold, and by the time I arrived, my team was already assembled in the conference room. Skylar looked up from her laptop as I entered, her expression brightening.

"Hey! How was the appointment?"

"Everything's fine," I said, setting down my bag and pulling out my own laptop. "Baby's healthy, I'm healthy. Dr. Stevens said I just need to manage my stress levels."

"Well, that should be easy," Victor said dryly from his position at the head of the table. "It's not like you're leading a major AI project while pregnant and dealing with family drama."

I shot him a look, but couldn't quite suppress my smile. "I'm fine, Victor. Really."

The rest of my team—five brilliant engineers I'd recruited from Grave Industries, all of whom had jumped at the chance to work on cutting-edge AI without Ethan's interference—nodded their agreement. Marcus, the senior systems architect, pulled up a holographic display.

"We've made significant progress on the competition entry," he said. "The autonomous navigation algorithms are performing 40% better than our initial projections."

For the next two hours, I lost myself in work. We were entering the International AI Robotics Competition, and our project—a fully autonomous disaster response robot—was ambitious enough to put Hunt Group on the map as a serious player in the AI field. It was exactly the kind of challenge I thrived on, complex enough to demand all my attention.

"I think we should reinforce the machine learning protocols," I said, zooming in on a section of code. "If we're going to have this thing operating in unpredictable environments, it needs to be able to adapt faster."

"Agreed," Skylar said. "I can work on that this afternoon."

My phone buzzed with a lunch reminder. I glanced at the time and blinked in surprise. It was already 12:30.

"Alright, everyone take an hour for lunch," I said, saving my work. "We'll reconvene at 1:30 to go over the sensor integration."

Skylar fell into step beside me as we left the building. "There's a good Thai place two blocks away," she suggested. "Want to try it?"

"Sure." I was about to say more when my phone buzzed again. This time it was a text from Victor: "Ran into someone at lunch. Might want to avoid the Italian place on Fifth Street."

I frowned at the cryptic message, but Skylar had already started walking in the opposite direction. "Thai food it is."

The restaurant was small and bustling, filled with the spicy-sweet aroma of pad Thai and curry. We found a table near the window and ordered quickly. I was halfway through my spring rolls when Skylar suddenly stiffened, her gaze fixed on something outside the window.

"Don't look now," she murmured, "but guess who's having a cozy lunch across the street?"

I looked anyway. Through the window of the upscale Italian restaurant Victor had warned me about, I could see Ethan seated at a corner table. Across from him sat a woman with long dark hair and elegant features—Lorelei, if I remembered correctly. The mysterious woman he'd been seen with multiple times.

As I watched, Lorelei reached across the table and placed her hand over Ethan's. He didn't pull away.

"Well, well," Skylar said, pulling out her phone. "Looks like someone moved on fast."

She angled her phone and snapped several photos, making sure to capture Ethan and Lorelei's intimate positioning while carefully keeping Lorelei's face just out of frame.

"What are you doing?" I asked, though I had a pretty good idea.

"Sending these to Faye, obviously." Skylar's smile was wicked. "She deserves to know what her precious Ethan is up to, don't you think?"

I should have stopped her. Should have told her it wasn't worth it, that we should stay out of their mess. But I didn't.

"Make sure the angle shows him clearly," I said instead. "Wouldn't want there to be any doubt about who it is."

Skylar's grin widened. "That's my girl."

She tapped away at her phone, and I felt a small, dark satisfaction settle in my chest. Let Faye see what kind of man she'd fought so hard to claim. Let her experience the same doubts and insecurities I'd lived with for three years. If she chose to forgive him after seeing proof of his wandering attention, that was her choice—and she could live with the consequences.

We finished our lunch in companionable silence, and I deliberately didn't look at the Italian restaurant again. Whatever Ethan did with his life now was none of my concern. I had my own future to build.

As we walked back to Hunt Group, my phone buzzed with a text from Victor: "Dinner tonight? Flora's finally arriving in Emberhold. Thought you and Skylar might want to meet her. Liam will be there too."

I showed the message to Skylar, who raised an eyebrow. "Victor's mysterious fiancée?"