Chapter 137 THE AFTER EFFECT

Chapter 137 The after effect
CHAPTER 137

THE AFTER EFFECT

SELINA

Julian was already waiting at the compound gate when I stepped out.

She took one long look at my face and fell into step beside me without a single question. That was Julian’s particular talent… reading the air around a person and knowing exactly when silence was the only useful response.

We walked for nearly ten minutes before either of us spoke. The afternoon sun pressed warm against my arms and the back of my neck. The trees lining the path out of town stood thick and green, leaves shifting in a light breeze I barely registered.

My boots struck the dirt in a steady, hard rhythm. Every step felt heavier than the last. The humiliation from the corridor still sat in my chest like a stone that refused to dissolve.

Julian’s voice finally cut through the quiet, low and careful. “How bad was it?”

I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead. My jaw ached from how tightly I had been clenching it. Heat crawled up the back of my neck again just from the memory. “He called me disgusting. And spat near my feet.”

The words left a bitter taste in my mouth. I could still see the look on Dorian’s face… pure, undiluted contempt, as if the very sight of me produced nothing but irritation.

Julian stayed quiet for several steps. I felt her glance at me from the side. “Okay.”

Frustration flared hot under my skin. I turned my head just enough to catch her expression. “That’s all you have to say?”

She exhaled through her nose, the sound sharp and controlled. “I’m deciding what comes next.” Her gaze stayed on my profile. “What did you do right before he said it?”

My shoulders stiffened. I stared straight ahead again, fingers curling into fists at my sides. “I was standing in the corridor.”

“Selina.”

The way she said my name carried quiet insistence. “I may have been inside my own head for a moment.”

She made a soft sound of understanding mixed with exasperation. “How long of a moment?”

“Long enough for him to notice.”

The specifics of that moment rose unbidden: the way my body had moved on its own, the soft sounds I hadn’t even realised I was making, the pure disgust that had flooded Dorian’s eyes when he caught me. Shame burned hot across my cheeks.

I pushed the images down hard. Julian did not press for more detail, and the relief of that small mercy loosened something tight in my chest.

I drew a slow breath, the afternoon air tasting faintly of dust and warm leaves. “We need to see Maeve.”

“I know.” She said it like she had already known before I ever texted her. “I booked a ride. It’s waiting at the edge of the east road.”

The bridge felt shorter this time.

Not because the drop had changed or the planks had grown steadier underfoot. The frustration sitting heavy in my chest simply left less room for the usual fear.

Still, my palms grew damp the moment my boots touched the first worn board. The rope felt rough and slightly damp under my fingers. Julian gripped her side with both hands. I held mine tightly enough that the fibres bit into my skin.

We crossed without speaking. Every shift of the planks sent a low creak through the structure. The wind had picked up, tugging at my hair and clothes. I kept my eyes locked on the far end and refused to look down.

The hut waited exactly as it always did. Maeve opened the door before either of us could knock. She looked at my face once, expression unreadable, then stepped aside.

We went in.

I sat across from her and told her everything that happened in the corridor. Maeve listened without a single shift in expression. The only sound in the room was the quiet crackle of whatever burned in the corner.

When I finished, silence stretched between us.

Maeve’s voice came calm and certain. “The spell worked.”

Heat flashed through my chest. I stared at her, the words catching somewhere behind my teeth. “Did you hear what I just told you?”

“I heard you.” She remained completely unbothered, hands folded loosely on the table. “The spell worked, Selina. It did exactly what it was designed to do. His pull toward the girl is suppressed. He cannot feel the bond draw. He cannot feel the mate recognition.” Her gaze held mine steadily. “What the spell cannot do is manufacture something that was never there.”

The words settled slowly, heavy and cold. I sat with them, feeling each one land in a different place inside me. My throat tightened.

“You’re telling me he was always going to react to me that way,” I said, the sentence coming out flatter than I intended.

“I’m telling you that a suppression spell removes what exists.” Her voice stayed even, almost gentle. “It does not create what does not. His pull toward Charlotte existed. I removed it. His feelings toward you — whatever they are or are not — those are his own. They always were.”

Julian shifted slightly in the chair beside me. I felt the movement but did not look at her.

A bitter laugh tried to rise in my throat and died there. “So the spell removed the only obstacle. And he still does not want me?”

“That is one way to look at it.”

I leaned forward slightly, the wooden chair creaking under me. “Is there another?”

Maeve tilted her head a fraction. The low light caught the lines around her eyes. “The obstacle being gone means the situation is now exactly what it is.” She looked at me with quiet finality. “What you are seeing now is Dorian without interference.”

I dropped my gaze to the table. The empty clay bowl she used for readings sat near the edge. A small jar of something dark waited beside it. My fingers tightened until the skin over my knuckles turned white.

Dorian without interference.

For four years I had told myself the same story. If the mate bond was not in the way… if Charlotte was not there, if the pull was not dragging him somewhere else…he would finally see me. He would recognise what stood in front of him. He would choose it.

Now the bond was suppressed. Charlotte was back in the pack. Dorian was arranging a meeting with Alpha Caleb’s daughter. And in the corridor he had looked at me like something he had stepped in and wanted off the bottom of his boot.

My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. “What do I do?”

Maeve studied me for a long moment. The silence between us felt thick.

“That is not a question I can answer.” She offered the words without apology. “I can work with what exists between people. I cannot work with what does not.”

Hope I had not even realised I still carried flickered and tried to rise. “Can you give him something—”

“No.” The word landed quiet but absolute. “I do not do that kind of work. What you are describing would be a compulsion. That is a different thing entirely from what I agreed to when you first came to me. I will not do it.”

I met her eyes. She did not look away. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had expected this answer. I had still hoped she would offer something else.

My chest felt tight. “Is there anything else I can do? Anything at all.”

Maeve folded her hands more carefully on the table. “Selina. What do you want me to tell you?”

I did not answer. The question sat between us like something sharp.

She spoke anyway, quietly and without cruelty. “The man does not want you. The spell confirmed it by removing the only thing that stood between you and that truth. I am sorry for that. But I cannot fix what was never broken. It was never there.”

I stood. The chair scraped softly against the floor. Julian rose with me.

I nodded once at Maeve, the motion stiff, and walked out into the late afternoon air. The cooler breeze touched my face but did nothing to ease the heat still sitting behind my eyes.

The bridge was worse on the return.

The wind had strengthened. The planks shifted more under our boots. Julian gripped the rope with both hands, knuckles pale. I kept my eyes fixed on the far end and refused to look down even once. Every creak of the wood travelled straight up my spine.

We reached solid ground and kept walking.

Julian waited until we were back on the road and the trees had closed around us before she spoke. Her voice came quieter than before. “I’m sorry.”

Not the kind of apology that meant I told you so. The kind that actually meant it.

I looked at the road ahead. My throat felt raw. “Four years.”

The words left my mouth directed at no one in particular.

Julian stayed silent beside me.

I kept walking, boots striking the dirt harder now. “Four years of being present, useful, exactly what a pack needed and exactly what he needed.” Each sentence felt like something I was tearing out of myself. “And it was never going to be enough, because it was never about enough.”

Julian matched my pace without trying to fill the silence.

After a while her voice came again, careful. “What are you going to do?”

I thought of Dorian in the corridor. The specific contempt on his face. The way he had spat near my feet as if the gesture said everything words were too generous to bother with.

I thought of Charlotte returning from Italy and the way the bond had apparently surged the moment she walked through the gate. Harkin had mentioned it in passing — Dorian crossing the compound in three long strides, the entire pack noticing the change in him.

I thought of the careful plan I had sewn together over years, coming apart at every seam.

And underneath all of it, quieter and colder, I thought of the one thing I had not told Maeve.

The thing I had discovered three days ago.

The thing I had been turning over in my mind ever since, examining it from every angle, understanding what it could mean and what it could be made to mean.

Julian looked at me from the side. She had the expression of someone who had just felt the temperature drop and was waiting to learn why.

I stopped walking.

My boots settled into the dirt. I turned to face her fully. The afternoon light sat low and golden between the trees. Everything around us had gone very quiet. My heart beat once, hard, against my ribs.

“Julian,” I said slowly, the words tasting strange and heavy on my tongue. “I think I’m pregnant.”