Alpha Dom and His Human Surrogate by Caroline Above Story

#Chapter 258–Answers at Last

Ella

“You’re not my mother?” I whisper, my voice positively tiny.

Looking at Reina, it makes sense. She’s tall and willowy, with black hair, olive skin and dark eyes – just about my polar opposite. I’m recalling Henry telling me that I don’t resemble her or Xavier, so I must take after the Goddess, but I didn’t truly understand how great the dissimilarity was until this moment. It seems a silly question now; of course she’s not my mother. How could she be?

The weight of my crushed hopes batter me from every direction, as if they aren’t simply falling from above, but closing in around me, suffocating and strangulating. They’re all watching me with the same sympathetic expression: Reina, the priests and Roger. Only Cora refuses to pity me, choosing instead to offer our hosts a death stare for upsetting me.

“Ella, please sit down.” Reina pleads, pulling me back over to the fire. “If you’ll listen, we’ll explain everything.”

“Okay. I manage to utter weakly, reclaiming my seat. “Explain.”

Reina clasps her hands in her lap, taking a deep breath. “When I married Xavier, I had my entire life planned out. I would finish school, wait a year or two before trying for pups, maybe work a little. All in all I expected to spend the first years of my union learning to be a queen and preparing to ascend to the throne in another decade or so. Then Xavier’s father died suddenly and unexpectedly, and all at once my plans fell apart. We were coronated when I was just 22.”

for an arranged marriage, and all for me. At the time it was romantic, I felt like I was living a fairytale. And then things changed… or perhaps the problem is that they weren’t changing.” Her eyes drop to my pregnant belly, and the muscle in her cheek twitches. “I had half a dozen miscarriages

brain and opened the dam. “I’m so sorry.”

wonder if she truly means it. “You wouldn’t be here if I’d been able to conceive,

sorry.” I repeat, wanting to hug her but not trusting my ability to get out of my chair without

queen and not after he’d made such a fuss about choosing me in the first place, though he probably should have.” An expression of torment crosses her pretty features. “More than once over the years I’ve thought

breath as she meets Silas’s gaze, nodding in appreciation. “Well, however it came about, that was the beginning of the end for me and Xavier. All the things that had seemed so romantic when we first fell

couple of times when he became very drunk, I caught him looking at me with such hatred in his eyes that I actually worried he might try to kill me just to get me out of the way. It was

Reina shrugs, “I prayed. I’d prayed to the Goddess for all my babies, but I’d never felt so utterly desperate. It was no longer simply a matter of wanting to be a mother, it was a matter

physically hurt to look at her, as if I knew I was gazing upon something I was never meant to see.” Reina’s attention turns back to me, and I’m surprised to see she’s smiling.

in the center of the room, checking the time. “So I told her that it was my duty, but more than that, that it was my greatest wish to be a mother. Then she asked why she should grant my wish over the thousands of other mothers in the world, and I

in her memories. “When she told me that she would give me a baby I thought I might faint, but my joy was only temporary. Because next the Goddess shared her own story with me, the details of our world’s creation, the peril

not wish to remember this at all, “And that’s when she explained that Xavier took me to bed that night, it would be her child in my womb, rather than my own.

I manage to hoist myself out of my chair and cross to her side. The idea of anyone asking a woman who cannot have children of her own to carry theirs is a cruelty beyond imagining. I can’t find any words to express the depth of my horror and sorrow for her, so I simply wrap my arms around reina and squeeze. She gasps in surprise, but gradually returns my embrace, leaning into

–

they aren’t bonded. I did have fun with you though, I loved being a living miracle, I held onto you as long as I possibly could. Then Silas and Pollux came to take you – I never knew where you went.” “And Xavier?” Roger interjects, “how much did he