Chapter 37

Amber's POV

Anna looked from the screen to my face.

Frowning, I blocked the call.

I just... don't want to talk to him. I don't want to hear his voice.

Julian’s POV

After everything that happened the night before, I had a lot on my mind this morning. I could barely sleep and gave up around 4 am. I changed and came to the office, where I’d been trying to work ever since.

Yet my thoughts were no less muddled here under the bright florescent lights than they’d been in the dark.

Alice was Roman’s daughter.

Amber had cheated on me when we’d been together.

I had thought she was a dutiful housewife. What else had I been so wrong about?

And why, even with that betrayal fresh on my heart, was I still drawn to her? Shouldn’t I want to cast her aside now for the lies and the pain?

Yet I found that I couldn’t. I still wanted her near me. Having her back after thinking her dead… I didn’t want to lose her again.

We could fix the mistakes of the past. I had been at least half-responsible for pushing her away back then. I hadn’t treated her like she had deserved. How could I be surprised that she found comfort in the arms of another?

I didn’t like it, at all. Even now I was growling, my wolf snarling inside of me at the thought of my mate with another. But I could accept my part in it, and I could move forward, I thought, despite what had happened.

She had told me she didn’t want to marry Roman.

Maybe they had a falling out? And Alice didn’t seem to particularly care for him. That could be telling too. Kids were sometimes intuitive.

I didn’t know Roman to be a bad guy, though if he had been her affair partner all those years ago, maybe there was a lot more to him that I didn’t understand. To Amber as well.

Where had they even met?

I’d met Roman a few times at political events, but I’d never taken Amber to those places. She was my wife, but only ever in secret.

The speculation and doubt was sure to drive me out of my mind.

To distract myself, I forced myself to focus on work, and that seemed effective for a time – at least until Beta came into the office and frowned.

“You’ve seen the news,” he said.

I glanced up from my paperwork. “What news?”

Beta paled a little. “Forgive me, Alpha. I spoke out of turn. I thought perhaps you were working early because you had seen what the newspapers said.”

“What did they say?” I pushed.

Beta had a newspaper under his arm. He always read at his desk first thing in the morning as he enjoyed his coffee.

He hesitated now, in sharing it, but after I gave him a pointed look, he relented. He walked the newspaper over to me, then flattened it on my desk.

When I read the headline, my stomach dropped.

Back from the Dead, Alpha Julian’s Ex to Marry Alpha Roman.

She told me she didn’t want to marry him…? Had they reconnected after I left her house?

I lifted the paper, skimming the article. With each new word and sentence, my anger and jealousy flared to life within me. There were even direct quotes from Roman in here.

Without realizing it, I was gripping the newspaper so tightly that I was starting to rip it apart. Only when it was ripped down the middle did I let it go.

“Sorry,” I told Beta. “I’ll buy you another one.”

“It’s fine,” Beta said, watching me warily. He had cause for concern. I felt like my whole world was flipping upside down.

Amber had lied to me in the past about having an affair, and she lied to me now about not wanting to marry Roman.

Betrayal sliced through me, though didn’t that make me the worst kind of hypocrite? I wanted to be mad at Amber for cheating, yet I was the one who had drunkenly gotten Olivia pregnant. I was the one who kept her at my side even when I did not love her.

How could I be made at Amber?

“Because she is ours…” My wolf whispered, his first words to me in a very long time. Yet, when I reached out to him for more, he stubbornly refused to answer.

For the rest of the day, I tried to push these thoughts to the back of my mind. Above everything else, I was a professional, and I could focus on my Alpha duties without getting distracted by thoughts of my personal life.

At least, in theory that was true. In practice, it proved to be much more difficult.

Still, I was proud at how well I was keeping things together – right up until I overheard a pair of Gammas talking about Healer Amanda.

“Yes, she has a big reputation, but is she truly doing enough to justify her standing at the hospital?”

“I’ve heard she rarely actually sees her patients, and that she can be moody, canceling appointments without much thought…”

Hadn’t Olivia complained to me about something like that recently…? Maybe there was some truth to it then.

It couldn’t be that I was just more willing to accept criticism about Amber because I was so furious with her. I would never be that petty.

My duty as Alpha was to ensure that all of my pack members were well-cared for. If Healer Amanda… Amber was shrinking on her responsibilities, then I needed to look into it.

This was how I ended up at the hospital later that day, walking straight into Amber’s office. She was sitting at her desk, not with a patient. This only gave more evidence to the rumors.

Amber looked at me. “Is there something I can help you with, Julian?” she asked, keeping her voice level and professional. It made sense, we were at her work place.

Or she was hiding something.

“I’ve heard rumors that you’ve been cancelling appointments without any cause or notice,” I said.

“There’s always cause,” she said.

She wasn’t denying the cancelations, just the reasoning. I frowned at her.

“I hardly see any reason that a patient should be put off when they are in their time of need,” I said. “It seems to me that you being fickle, using your power to play like a god, instead of respecting the vows you took to help all peoples.”

“You really believe that?” she asked. Her eyes narrowed. “Or are those Olivia’s words?”

Maybe they were Olivia’s words, but that hardly mattered right now, did it? Who cared who said them originally if they were true?

“Do you deny them?” I asked. “You just admitted to canceling on your patients, don’t forget.”

“I never cancel an emergency,” Amber said. “I only ever cancel on those who disrespect me right to my face. I have tremendous patience, Julian, but I refuse to be disrespected by anyone. Not anymore.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I pressed, sensing that was a slight against me. Not anymore, like I had been the one disrespecting her in the past.

I shouldn’t have had to remind her that while I might have had a drunken mistake with Olivia, she was the one who had been actively cheating with Roman.

Amber held my gaze, and the air felt charged between us.

“So Roman treats you right, does he?” I asked before I could stop myself.

Amber’s retort came just as quickly, just as barbed. “Why don’t you just stay with Olivia?”