Two

CHAPTER TWO

Kiara’S POV

I woke up slowly, my eyes opening to the soft light coming through the curtains as I stared at the unfamiliar ceiling above me, trying to understand where I was and why my body felt so weak.

For a few moments, my mind was completely blank.

Then the memories of the previous night began coming back.

It was our fifth wedding anniversary.

I remembered preparing dinner for Maelor, waiting for him with a heart full of hope, only for him to return with Elyra and humiliate me before walking away with her.

I remembered taking the fertility seed, I remembered the strange heat that had spread through my body.

Then I remembered someone taking me to his room.

Maelor, he had come back to me, I finally was with him last night! The fertility seed would work, now! Expecting a baby.

A small smile slowly appeared on my lips as I remembered what happened afterward.

Maybe our marriage was not completely over.

I slowly sat up and pulled the blanket around myself, looking toward the empty side of the bed.

“Maelor?”

There was no answer.

I frowned as I looked around the room.

He was not there. I could barely remember when he had left, but I remembered his presence, his voice, and the feeling of his arms around me, I climbed out of the bed and adjusted my clothes before leaving the room.

I needed to find him.

Perhaps he had gone downstairs.

As I walked through the hallway, I heard voices coming from outside the house.

One of them was unmistakably Maelor’s.

My heart immediately lifted.

I hurried toward the entrance, but the moment I stepped outside, I stopped.

Maelor was standing near the front of the estate with several security guards around him.

Elyra was beside him, he  was giving the guards instructions, telling them where to stand and ordering them to increase security around the estate.

I stared at him, he looked completely normal.

There was no sign that he had spent the night with me.

I walked toward him slowly. “Maelor.”

He turned and looked at me. His expression remained cold. “What do you want?”

I hesitated. There was something I needed to know.

I looked at him carefully before asking, “Did you come to my room last night?”

His face immediately changed. “I did not come to your room.”

The answer was so quick and certain that I felt my heart sink.

For a moment, I almost told him that I remembered him coming to me.

But I stopped. It had been almost a year since Maelor had last come to my room.

He had stopped visiting me long ago, and he had made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with me beyond the marriage that still connected us.

If I insisted that he had come to my room, he would start asking questions.

He might wonder why I was saying such a thing when he knew he had not been there.

Worse, he might begin to suspect that someone else had entered my room.

I quickly lowered my eyes. “I’m sorry. I must have been mistaken.”

Maelor stared at me for a moment before giving a cold laugh. “Mistaken? You should stop imagining things, Kiara. I’ll never want you, do not scheme anything”

My face burned with embarrassment. “I know.”

He shook his head.

“I don’t understand why you still behave this way. After everything I have told you, you are still hoping that I will suddenly come back to you.”

Elyra gave a soft laugh. “Maybe she thought the anniversary would make you forget how unhappy you are with her.”

I clenched my hands.

Maelor looked at me with cold eyes. “You should stop creating stories in your head and accept reality. Our marriage has never been what you wanted it to be.”

I forced myself to nod. “I understand.”

I did not tell him anything else, I could not, I had already accepted his answer, even though something inside me was screaming that the man from last night had been real, I remembered his voice, I remembered his arms, I remembered the way he had carried me.

And then I remembered something else.

The scar, a  small scar. I had noticed it last night, but I had been too affected by the fertility seed to care.

Maelor did not have that sca, I knew because I had been married to him for five years.

My heart began beating faster.

If Maelor had not come to my room, then who had?

I was still trying to understand when hurried footsteps came from the entrance.

One of the security guards rushed toward us and immediately bowed.

“Alpha, forgive me for interrupting, but we have just received urgent news.”

Maelor’s expression became serious. “What happened?”

The guard took a deep breath. “Your brother has returned.”

Maelor went completely still.

Elyra’s face changed as well, the  other guards looked at one another.

Maelor stepped closer to the guard. “Who are you talking about?”

The guard lowered his head. “Your stepbrother , Alpha Cassian.”

My heart stopped. Cassian, the rightful Alpha.

Maelor’s stepbrother.

Years ago, Cassian had left the pack with the warriors to fight a war at the northern borders.

He had never returned.

At first, everyone waited.

Then months became years.

Eventually, the elders accepted that Cassian was probably dead, and because the pack needed an Alpha, Maelor had been given his position.

But now Cassian was alive.

He had returned. I stared toward the entrance, unable to move.m, the  memory of the previous night came rushing back.

The unfamiliar voice, the  different scent.m, the  strong arms around me.

The small scar and  the words he had spoken when I called him Maelor.

I am not Maelor.

My breath caught.

I had thought the fertility seed had confused my mind.

I had thought I had simply imagined the differences.

But Maelor had just confirmed that he had never come to my room.

So who had entered it?

My eyes widened as I looked toward the gate.

Could it really be him?

Could the man I had spent the night with have been Cassian?

The rightful Alpha had just returned to the pack after years of being presumed dead.

And for the first time, I wondered if the stranger who had held me that night had not been a stranger at all.

He might have been Alpha Cassian.