Chapter 8: Herb Garden Conversation
The final plate clattered into the drying rack. Luna wiped her hands on her apron, the worn fabric soft against her skin. The sound of Lucas’s voice, low and deliberate, cut through the kitchen’s quiet hum.
“Mom. We need to talk after you finish up here.”
She turned. He was leaning in the doorway to the backyard, a silhouette against the dusk. He nodded toward the wicker basket in the corner. “You were going to gather the washing, right? Meet me out back.”
It wasn’t a question. Her tail gave a faint, anxious twitch as she collected the basket of dirty clothes. She followed him outside, the cool evening air a relief after the steamy kitchen. He led her not to the clothesline, but to the small, thriving herb garden nestled against the fence.
Jake had spent a month planning this. He’d drawn diagrams on parchment, obsessed over soil acidity and solar alignment, his magic coaxing the seedlings to robust life. Now, basil and rosemary released their scent underfoot as Lucas stopped amidst them.
He turned and surprised her by pulling her into a brief, firm hug. “How are you feeling?” he asked, his voice softer now. “And the baby?”
The unexpected care made her throat tighten. She placed a hand on the gentle swell of her stomach. “I’m very healthy. The baby… has begun kicking.” A soft, involuntary smile touched her lips. “Just little flutters. But they’re there.”
Lucas hummed, a non-committal sound, and released her. He plucked a leaf of mint, rolling it between his fingers. “I’ve been concerned about you. You seem… lonely in this house.”
“Oh, no, I’m happy,” Luna said quickly, the practiced words leaving her mouth. “I have my work, and Jake is…”
“Mom.” Lucas frowned, the single word a pressure. “The truth.”
She looked away, towards the house. Through the living room window, she could see Jake sprawled on the couch, a manga held aloft, his feet wiggling. The familiar ache bloomed in her chest. “I… I feel a little jealous, watching you with him,” she admitted, the confession hauled up painfully. “But I can handle it. I just want to be close to him. To help. It would be good for the baby, too, to be close to its father when it’s born.”
Lucas’s expression tightened. The concern in his blue eyes hardened into something more possessive, more strategic. His voice dropped, but carried on the still air—just enough, he calculated, to be a murmur to the boy on the porch without being clear words.
“You need to think about moving on, Mom. For your own good. Establishing proper boundaries.” He saw her eyes flicker again, desperately, toward the window where Jake laughed at something on the page.
In one smooth motion, Lucas stepped sideways, his broad shoulders completely filling her view of the house, blocking Jake from sight as definitively as a locked door. The message was physical, absolute. “Jake sees you as a convenience now,” he continued, his tone almost gentle, which made the words cut deeper. “A warm meal and clean clothes. The part of him that wanted you that way is gone. It’s been rerouted. You’re relegating yourself to house chores for a boy who won’t even look at you.”
Luna flinched. “He’s kind to me. He thanks me.” She didn’t think she had done anything wrong by loving him, by carrying his child, by wanting to stay.
“He thanks the baker for bread, too.” Lucas’s voice was final. He let the silence stretch, watching her hope fracture. Then, he delivered the sentence. “I want you to find a potential husband. A real partner. By the end of the month.” He held up a hand to stall her weak protest. “If you don’t, I’ll find one for you. I’ll vet him myself. For your sake.”
From the porch, they heard Jake’s unmistakable giggle, bright and oblivious, followed by a muffled exclamation about some character’s ridiculous pose. Luna’s eyes, desperate and searching, tried to find him past the wall of her son, but found only grey fabric and muscle. The sound of Jake’s joy, utterly disconnected from her quiet annihilation, was the final weight that broke her resolve.
She looked at the ground, at the herbs Jake had planted with such earnest focus. “I… understand,” she whispered.
There was no way out but to agree.
The weeks that followed took on a strange, dual rhythm.
For Jake and Lucas, a new normal crystallized. Their days were a satisfying loop of physical indulgence and shared interests. They fucked at least three times a day—waking, afternoon, and night—a rhythm as natural to Jake now as breathing. They would talk about magic theory or the plots of manga, Lucas indulging Jake’s enthusiastic explanations only until the cadence of his voice or the movement of his hands sparked a different kind of interest. Then the conversation would end, replaced by the familiar, welcome press of Lucas against him, on the couch, in the workshop, against the reinforced dungeon wall they were repairing.
Sometimes they descended into the dungeon, less for income now and more for Jake to experiment with the resonant frequencies of monster cores, Lucas acting as a lethal guardian. Other days they worked on the house, Lucas’s strength making quick work of repairs while Jake enchanted the new hinges for smoother operation.
They wandered the village. Jake would chat animatedly with the baker’s daughter about thermal-distribution runes for even oven heat, completely missing the way she twirled her hair and leaned forward. Lucas would be nearby, selling cores and surplus loot, his watchful gaze always finding Jake. Jake accepted a vial of healing poultice from Eliza at the apothecary, the elf’s fingers brushing his with lingering hesitance, her belly just beginning to curve beneath her smock. He gave her the same grateful, sunny smile he gave Luna for a sliced apple. The part of him that had sought connection in the softness of women’s bodies had been permanently unplugged. The socket was now filled, exclusively, by Lucas.
Meanwhile, Luna kept her promise. She went to the market, unwilling but compelled to show initiative. She moved through the stalls, her eyes passing over the blacksmith (too loud), the miller’s son (too young), the weaver (whose eyes lingered too long on her chest). She measured each man in her mind and found them all lacking in the specific, unknowable way Jake was not. They didn’t have his quick, curious eyes or his easy laugh. They were just… men.
She would return home, her basket full of groceries, her heart hollow. She would make dinner, her spirits lifting fractionally when Jake exclaimed, “This stew is amazing, Luna!” She would wash his clothes, folding his tunics with care, feeling a silent, swollen pride when he grabbed one, already talking about something else.
At dinner, Lucas would steer the conversation. “How was the market, Mom? Meet anyone interesting?”
At first, Jake had blinked. “Meet who? For what?”
“We’re helping your mom find a husband,” Lucas explained casually, tearing into a roll. “She shouldn’t be alone.”
“Oh! Right, yeah!” Jake’s face lit up as if presented with a fascinating puzzle. “What about that guy who runs the lumber yard? He has a solid business!”
Luna would force a small smile. “He… chews with his mouth open.”
“Eugh, never mind. The tailor, then? Good with his hands!”
“He is married to his work, I think,” Luna would evade, her heart sinking as Jake nodded, already moving to the next candidate on his mental list. His cheerful participation was worse than Lucas’s pressure. It was a dismissal so complete it didn’t even recognize itself as cruel.
After three weeks, panic began a cold, tight coil in her stomach. The deadline was a week away. She had nothing to show but polite, deflected conversations. Lucas would intervene, and the thought of some stranger, selected by her son’s cold calculus, sharing this house, her bed, was a waking nightmare.
One afternoon, the dam broke. Lucas was in the backyard, the rhythmic thwack of his sword against the training post filtering through the walls. Jake was on the living room floor, a new manga volume open before him, chuckling to himself.
Luna stood in the doorway, watching him. The curve of his neck as he read, the way he bit his lip in concentration. A crazy, desperate thought solidified. She would remind him. She would show him what he was missing, what they had before Lucas came back and rewired him. She would reconnect that unplugged cord herself.
Her heart hammered against her ribs as she walked in, the sounds of Lucas’s practice a distant rhythm. She knelt beside Jake on the thick rug.
“Hey,” she said softly.
“Hm? Oh, hey Luna,” Jake said, glancing up with a distracted smile before looking back at his page. “This guy just tried to use a water spell in a desert, can you believe it? The mana inefficiency is—”
“Jake.” Her voice was firmer. She placed a hand on his knee.
He finally looked at her properly, his brow slightly furrowed in polite inquiry. “What’s up?”
She didn’t answer with words. Her hands, trembling slightly, went to the laces of his trousers. His expression shifted from curiosity to utter confusion.
“Whoa, hey, what are you—” he started, but she was already pulling them down, just enough. She bent her head before he could process a refusal.
Her mouth touched him. He was soft, unresponsive. She worked, trying to coax a reaction, her technique born of memory and desperation. One of her hands crept up his thigh.
Jake jerked as if burned. “Luna, stop! What are you doing?” He scrambled back, yanking his trousers up, his face a mask of pure, uncomprehending bewilderment. It wasn’t disgust. It was the shocked look of someone being offered a food they’d long since lost a taste for. “Lucas is right outside!”
“I know,” she whispered, tears brimming in her eyes. “I just thought… before, we…”
The back door slammed open.
Lucas stood in the frame, sword in hand, chest heaving from exertion. His eyes swept the scene: Jake, disheveled and baffled on the floor; his mother, on her knees, her face streaked with shame. The air curdled.
“Mom.” The word was ice. “Up. Now.”
Luna stood, her body trembling. Jake got to his feet, lacing his trousers with frantic fingers. “She just started… I didn’t know what was happening…”
Lucas strode forward, putting himself between them. He didn’t look at Jake. His focus was entirely on Luna, a predator focusing on a threat to its den. “What is wrong with you?”
“I just wanted—” she began, her voice breaking.
“I know what you wanted.” Lucas’s voice was low, lethal. “You wanted to confuse him. To sink your hooks back in. To undermine what he has with me. With me.” He leaned closer, and the maternal fear she’d sometimes felt for him as a dangerous boy resurfaced, magnified. “He is not yours. That child in you is a biological footnote. He. Mine. Do you understand the difference now?”
Luna sobbed, a shattered sound.
Jake, from behind Lucas, finally found his voice. It wasn’t angry. It was clarifying, like he was explaining a basic magical principle she’d failed to grasp. “Luna, I don’t… do that anymore. With women. It doesn’t work for me. Lucas makes me feel… everything. Why would you even try? It’s just awkward.”
The clinical dispassion in his tone was the final blow. Her love was an awkward malfunction. A glitch.
Lucas finally glanced back at Jake, his expression softening a fraction. “Go wait in our room. I’ll handle this.”
Jake nodded, relief washing over his face. He skirted around them, giving Luna a last, profoundly puzzled look, and disappeared down the hall.
When the bedroom door clicked shut, Lucas turned back to his mother. All the forced gentleness was gone. “You have three days. Pack what’s yours. I’ve spoken to Widower Gellan. He has a small, clean cottage on the north edge of town. He needs help managing it since his arthritis worsened. You will live there. You will have the baby there. You will tell anyone who asks that you wanted space to prepare for motherhood. You will not come here unless invited.”
Luna stared at him, all fight extinguished. “You’re throwing me out.”
“I’m giving you a life separate from him,” Lucas corrected. “It’s more than you were trying to give yourself, or me. Three days.”
He left her standing there, amidst the herbs and her own ruin. She heard him walk down the hall, open the bedroom door, and the murmur of Jake’s voice, slightly anxious. She heard Lucas’s deeper rumble, soothing, possessive. Then silence.
In their room, Jake sat on the edge of the bed. “That was so weird,” he said, frowning.
“Forget it,” Lucas said, sitting beside him and pulling him close. He kissed Jake’s temple. “She got confused. It won’t happen again.”
“Okay.” Jake leaned into him, the tension already leaving his body. He glanced toward the door. “Is she… gonna be alright?”
“She’ll be taken care of,” Lucas promised, his hand stroking Jake’s back. “I’ll make sure of it. You don’t need to worry about anything.”
And Jake didn’t. The confusing, uncomfortable incident was already being overwritten by Lucas’s solid presence, the familiar heat of him, the promise of a distraction that always worked. He tipped his head back for a kiss, and the world outside the room dissolved into irrelevance.
Three days later, Luna left with a single trunk. Jake helped load it onto the small cart, his expression one of friendly concern. “The cottage is nice! Gellan says the window herbs get great sun. You can plant more!”
Luna looked at him, at the sincere, utterly detached kindness in his eyes. She managed a faint smile. “Thank you, Jake. For everything.”
“Sure! Come visit when the baby comes, okay?”
As the cart pulled away, Jake waved, then turned and went back inside where Lucas was waiting. The house felt different. Quieter. But also simpler, like a corrected equation.
That night, in their bed, there was no distant sound of washing-up, no soft footfalls in the hall. There was only the sound of their own breathing, and the deep, settled peace of a space that now contained exactly what they both wanted.