Chapter five

Kelan

"Pick up. God damn it!"

I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at the screen as the voicemail recording clicked on for the ninth time.

Mellisa’s name sat there on the screen like an accusation I could not shake. I ended the call and typed another message, watching the blue ticks refuse to appear, and I knew she was not just ignoring me, she was burying me.

I had called her a friend. I had called her my person. I had stood on that stage and chosen Cindy believing Melissa would understand eventually, believing she would come around the way she always did, but that was three days ago and the silence from her end was the loudest thing I had ever heard.

My phone buzzed and I snatched it up thinking it was her, but it was just Cindy sending me a picture of herself holding up two different wedding gown sketches with a caption that read "which one makes me look like your queen?"

I locked the screen and dropped the phone face down on the desk as I paced continuously around my chambers.

Suddenly, the door to my study pushed open and Cindy walked in wearing a silk robe, carrying a bridal magazine tucked under her arm and a smile wide enough to fill the whole room, and I felt the familiar tightening in my chest that told me I needed air immediately.

"Kelan, I need you to look at these," she announced as she spread the magazine open on my desk and pointed at two gown options. "I am thinking of the one with the cathedral train because it photographs better from behind, but my friend says the fitted silhouette makes more of a statement at the altar."

"Both are fine," I told her as I stood and moved toward the door.

"Both are fine?" she repeated, and I could hear the shift in her tone. "Kelan, this is our wedding."

"I know what it is," I said without turning back. "I just need a minute."

I stepped into the corridor and moved quickly, already pulling up my head of cybersecurity Damien's number, and as I turned the corner I caught a maid walking toward me with a wide tray of wine glasses and I stepped aside too slowly, clipping the edge of the tray with my elbow and watching the whole thing tip sideways.

The glasses went over Cindy's magazine and the front of her robe in a cascade of red, she let out a shriek that brought two other staff members rushing from the adjoining hallway.

"Are you serious right now?" Cindy screamed at the maid who was already on her knees apologizing. "This robe is imported silk, do you understand what that means?"

I left them to it.

Damien answered on the second ring.

“Your Majesty, Madam Leyla and her family have relocated. From my findings, they bought a house in the prestigious part of the pack.”

“What the hell do you mean by ‘relocated’?”

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” Damien replied.

“Send the address now,” I ordered.

Within seconds, my phone beeped with a text message showing the new address.

I drove to Melissa's old house first because I needed to see it with my own eyes.

By the time I arrived, a strange woman answered the door.

“Your majesty” she asked, looking at me with mild confusion.

“I’m looking for the previous occupants of this house,” I said firmly.

She shook her head. “They sold the property. My family bought it about two days ago.”

“When did they leave?” I pressed.

“I don’t know them,” she replied. “I never met the previous owners, and I don’t have any forwarding information.”

I walked back to my car slowly and sat inside, staring at the peeling gate I had stood outside a hundred times, the same gate Melissa used to lean against when she was waiting for me, and something inside me felt like it had been scraped hollow.

Aunt Leyla's new address was forty minutes away in a neighborhood that told me immediately that someone had paid very well for her silence.

She answered the door in an expensive dress and new jewelry. Her smile when she saw me had too much satisfaction in it to be genuine.

"Kelan," she greeted warmly. "What a surprise."

"Where is Melissa?" I asked her directly.

She tilted her head and kept smiling. "Melissa is on her honeymoon, she is married now, she is doing wonderfully well."

The word honeymoon landed somewhere behind my sternum and detonated slowly.

"Who did she marry?" I demanded.

Aunt Leyla just smiled wider. “It’s not my place to say,”

“Tell me where she is, please. ” I insisted.

She shook her head slightly. “Melissa is happy now. You should focus on your own upcoming wedding.”

“What does that even mean?” I demanded.

But she didn’t answer. Instead, she slowly closed the door.

I had no choice but to return home. I never intended to lose Melissa… to lose my best friend. I know I chose Cindy, but…Mellisa was still supposed to be here.

By evening, Cindy had already dragged me to one of her favorite restaurants.

I sat there staring at the table while she talked about centerpiece arrangements and guest list drama, and she noticed eventually because Cindy always noticed when attention left her orbit.

"You have been somewhere else all evening," she stated, putting her fork down. "What happened?"

"Melissa got married," I told her.

Cindy was quiet for exactly three seconds. "Married to who?"

"I do not know, her aunt would not tell me."

She picked her fork back up. "Kelan, Melissa married some random man to make you feel guilty, that is what this is, she is performing, she wants you chasing her and you are giving her exactly what she wants by sitting here looking like someone died."

"She did not even take my calls," I muttered.

"Because that is the performance," Cindy said firmly. "We have a coronation in three weeks and a wedding to plan and I need you present, not grieving a girl who was never your mate."

She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers.

When we got back home, she pulled me close with the practiced ease of someone who knew exactly how to make a man stop thinking, and for a while it worked, her hands and her warmth and her voice pulled me back into the room, but even then with my eyes closed I kept seeing Melissa's face the moment she understood what I had done to her on that stage, the way her mouth opened and nothing came out.

I fell asleep with that image still sitting behind my eyes.

By 2 a.m. my phone on the nightstand started buzzing. I grabbed it immediately, as my whole body became alert before I was even fully awake.

Damien's voice came through tight and clipped.

"Sir, there is an emergency, the council leaders demand your presence immediately.”