TEMPORARY MATES PERMANENT CRAVINGS novel Chapter 164

One hundred and sixty four

Lisa POV

The festival grounds had grown louder by the time Luna Catherine walked away. My mother pressed her fingers into mine.

“Relax,” she said under her breath.

“I am.”

She shook her head and didn’t loosen her grip.

“I’m not giving her the satisfaction.”

That was the truth. I wasn’t pretending nothing happened or that I wasn’t rattled by Luna Catherine, especially knowing what she was capable of doing. I understood what she’d done. A quiet warning dressed in pleasantries, delivered in front of just enough people to make sure the image stuck without making a scene.

It was designed to make me feel small. But I wasn’t going to hand her the satisfaction of letting it follow me around the rest of the day.

We moved past food stalls and woven canopies, then past women in ceremonial white who nodded when they saw us. Most of the nods were too polite. The kind where a person smiles at you and their eyes are judging you.

Sasha fell into step beside me not long after, linking her arm through mine.

“So what exactly did she say to you?”

I kept my eyes ahead. “Who?”

“Don’t do that. Luna Catherine.” She lowered her voice. “She pulled you away from the line. People noticed.”

“She was being hospitable.”

“Lisa.”

“What, Sasha?” I turned to look at her and tried to make my face say everything my words wouldn’t. “It wasn’t a surprise. I’m not letting it ruin today.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I smiled. “Then you’re not getting an answer.”

Sasha studied me, then let it go.

Harry was waiting for us near the shade of the food corridor. He had a paper cup in each hand and held one out to Sasha without being asked. She took it.

“You look tired,” he said, which from Harry was the same as asking if something was wrong.

“I’m pregnant. I always look tired.”

He smiled, but only halfway. His eyes drifted past me toward the direction of the elders’ tent. I followed his gaze and saw one of the women who had been with Luna Catherine all morning, now in a low conversation with two men near the gate.

Then he shifted his attention to my mother. “Who was that woman dressed in coral beads?”

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“Luna Catherine,” my mother replied. “Cameron’s mate’s mother.”

His mouth formed an O.

“She introduced herself to me earlier. Said it was risky for me to allow Lisa to travel in her condition.” He paused and looked down at his cup.

“It wasn’t a random introduction,” he said. “She asked lots of questions. I don’t know exactly what it is, but it had a shape to it. It wasn’t random.”

Something in what he said matched the feeling I’d had all morning.

Sasha clapped her hands. “Enough of that. We’re not doing serious talk in the middle of a festival. Come on.”

We moved deeper into the crowd. The rhythm had shifted without me noticing when. By late afternoon, the older attendees had begun filtering back home, and the open grounds filled with younger people. The music changed, faster and less ceremonial, and the air had that particular quality that comes when formality drops.

Two girls were near the outer dance ring. It took me a moment to place them. They had both applied for the surrogacy contract and had made it to the final stage before the arrangement came to me. Brianna and Natasha. They weren’t looking at me with hostility exactly. It was something more restrained. They clocked me and I clocked them and we all moved on. But I felt it.

I held their gaze, then looked away and kept moving

The dance ring pulled me in. I hesitated. I was almost five months along, and my back had been aching since morning, and I was supposed to be taking things slowly. But the music was good, and Sasha was already being tugged in from the other side, and I thought: what is the point of being here if I don’t actually be here?

I stepped in and danced for longer than I should have. My feet hurt by the end. I didn’t care.

“That was not as terrible as I expected,” Harry said.

“You expected me to fall?” I asked.

“I expected you to sit down halfway through.”

“I’m offended.”

By the time the light began to dip, the energy shifted again. The night crowd was forming.

Sasha nudged me. “This is when it gets interesting. You’re staying, right?”

I looked ahead. Something about it didn’t sit the same way the afternoon had.

“I should go now. My mom is blasting my phone with calls.”

Sasha sighed. “Fine. But I hope you don’t get pregnant next year. It’s really slowing us down.”

Managing a smile, I hugged her and we started heading back.

Although I told Sasha it was because of the baby, and that was true, it wasn’t the whole truth. There was something about the night portion of the gathering that made me want to be indoors. I couldn’t explain it.

The house was quiet when we returned.

I sat on the bed, pulling off my shoes, letting out a loud yawn.

My phone sat beside me. I picked it up.

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No messages.

Strange.

I sent Cameron a text at around nine. Nothing dramatic. No reply came. I waited, scrolled through my phone for a while, and told myself he was probably in a meeting.

I called Franklin. The call connected, rang four times, then cut. I waited a few minutes and tried again. Nothing that time. I put the phone down and went back to my book. Then I checked again an hour later. Still nothing from either of them.

Two days left. I kept reminding myself of that. Two days and we would be home.

Somewhere around two in the morning, I woke up. My eyes just opened, and I lay there trying to understand why. The room was quiet. My mother was sleeping in the adjoining room. The window above the bed was dark.

/ Then I felt a strange kind of restlessness that sits behind your sternum and won’t explain itself. Like being in the middle of a sentence and forgetting the word. The urge to leave was so strong that I sat upright before I had consciously decided to.

I wanted to go home.

Silver Creek. Cameron’s pack. A place I had only lived in for a few months and had no real claim to. I wanted to be back inside those walls with a clarity that made no sense given the time and the distance.

I lay back down and told myself it was the pregnancy. It was the tiredness and too much time standing in the sun.

But the feeling didn’t leave.

I reached for my phone again.

Still no response from Cameron or Franklin.

“I need to go back.”

The words left my mouth before I could stop them.

Back to Cameron.

I didn’t understand it and knew I couldn’t ignore it. I lay awake and the feeling sat there, waiting.

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