Chapter 308 Did you remember the first time your stress response ever took hold?
Aria’s POV
A few moments later, he turned the pad around and held it out to us.
I stared at the drawing.
A simple sketch, but unmistakably us, the two of us sitting together on the facing sofa, fingers laced, warm and unbearably sweet.
I hadn’t expected that at all.
"You drew this for us?" I asked.
Dr. Everett smiled. "Consider it a little honeymoon gift."
I couldn’t help smiling as I looked down at the drawing again. For some reason, seeing us captured like that made something warm settle in my chest.
I glanced at Damian.
He was staring at the sketch too, his expression unreadable.
I held it up next to him, comparing. "The cartoon version of you is way too cute. Little Damian, how adorable were you as a kid?"
"You want to know?" He looked at me, at the light in my eyes, and before I could answer he dropped his voice low against my ear. "Let’s make one and find out."
Heat flooded my face instantly. I shoved his shoulder. We were in a therapy session, for heaven’s sake. He could at least pretend to be serious.
Dr. Everett laughed. "Alpha Blackwood, the honeymoon’s clearly not over yet. Any plans left? Humor a lonely bachelor and let him live vicariously."
This was my first time anywhere near therapy. I’d walked in sitting ramrod straight, nerves pulled tight, and so had Damian. But a few sentences from this man and it genuinely felt like nothing more than a conversation between friends.
I could feel Damian easing too.
This question he actually chose to answer himself. When it came to us, he didn’t dodge. If anything, he was startlingly open.
Under Dr. Everett’s gentle steering, we drifted into talk of dates, of small ordinary things married couples do, and Damian, once he got started on me, couldn’t seem to stop. His words turned tender, almost lush.
Half of it made me blush so hard I wanted to clamp a hand over his mouth.
When Dr. Everett asked, "Alpha Blackwood, could you tell me what you love most about your wife?"
"I can’t count her good qualities," Damian said. "And it doesn’t matter which one you name. I love every single one of them."
Exactly what I’d expected him to say.
It still left me flustered. I cleared my throat and turned to the doctor. "Dr. Everett, could the two of you please stop talking about me? Pick literally any other subject."
"Of course." He nodded, then turned back to Damian. "Alpha Blackwood, in your life lately, are there any moments when you feel especially safe? When your emotions feel particularly steady?"
"Yes," Damian said, without a second’s hesitation.
He turned his head, his gaze settling on me again. "A lot of them."
"Waking up at night and seeing my wife beside me, her breathing soft. Or like right now, when she’s just sitting next to me. Even if she never says a word. As long as I know she’s there, I feel steady. Calm."
Oh my gosh!Weren’t we supposed to be off the subject of me?
Was this session meant to soothe Damian, or me? Every thread of the conversation kept looping straight back to me.
Still. His words left me soft all the way through.
I knew he’d made me the whole of his emotional world. I just hadn’t understood I carried this much weight beside him.
"It sounds like Luna Aria is a profound source of strength for you," Dr. Everett said, his tone turning grave. "You’re a fortunate man. Some people search their entire lives and never find that."
Damian nodded, agreeing without reservation, and his grip on my hand tightened.
"I know."
Only then did Dr. Everett finally produce an assessment form, asking me to fill it out alongside Damian. He’d choose the answers, I’d mark them down.
I’d braced for him to bristle at a psych evaluation, but the moment I started reading the questions, he was completely absorbed, dead serious about every one. Like he wanted to hand himself over entirely, hold nothing back. Raw and earnest.
And as he chose his answers, I couldn’t help placing myself in each scenario too. So many of his instincts were nothing like mine.
When I hit an answer that struck me as absurd, or some coping mechanism that made no sense, I couldn’t stop myself from swatting his arm.
"Damian, you can’t think that way. Bottling something up doesn’t fix anything."
"And if it were you? If you thought you’d only drag someone down, would you actually say it out loud?"
"Depends. But I know the people who matter most to you deserve to know the truth. They have the right to worry about you, to want what’s best for you. Like, if you got hurt and didn’t tell me, and I found out later, that would break my heart."
I pointed at the next question, and then I read the reason behind Damian’s fear of calling anyone for help over and over. It traced all the way back to childhood.
Every time he’d reached out, hoping someone would answer, there’d been nothing. Silence.
A place with no answer. To him, that was the end of the world.
Something twisted hard in my chest. The pen shook in my hand.
Damian hadn’t thought much of it, but the second he saw my eyes go red, his face tightened too, that ache mirroring straight back at him.
"I’m a lot better now," he said quietly.
I didn’t answer. I just dropped my head and moved on to the next question.
But when I looked up again, my voice came out low and fierce. "From now on, if you ever can’t reach me, you’re allowed to be angry. I don’t care how many other people have made you feel like you’re shouting into the void. I will always answer your call first. Every single time."
I said it out of pure heartache, half impulse. I knew I could never actually hold myself to something that absolute.
Damian knew it too. He’d never demand that much of me.
But hearing it anyway wrecked him. His eyes went glassy, and for a moment I thought he might cradle my face and kiss me right there.
He held it in. His throat worked, and he managed a low, rough, "Okay."
I couldn’t help smiling at him.
For a moment, the rest of the room seemed to disappear. It was just Damian and me, caught in a quiet little moment that felt strangely intimate despite the doctor’s presence.
Then I suddenly remembered.
Dr. Everett was still sitting right there.
I straightened, a little embarrassed, and glanced toward him. He looked completely unbothered, waiting patiently for us to remember why we’d come in the first place.
"Sorry," I murmured.
Dr. Everett gave a small, knowing smile before turning his attention back to Damian.
"All right," he said calmly. "Let’s go back to the beginning."
Damian’s expression grew more serious.
"Do you remember the first time your stress response ever took hold?"