CHAPTER THREE:LOOSE ENDS

KAEL'S POV

Nothing has felt more important to me than the event four months ago. 

The elder was still talking.

I stopped listening approximately six minutes ago.

Twelve seats. Twelve men. Eleven of them were sweating through expensive suits trying to convince me that their proposal was worth my time.

If only they knew it wasn't. 

Elder Dorian had adjusted his collar three times in the last two minutes. Elder Voss hadn't looked up from the table once. Elder Crane kept glancing at the door like he was calculating an exit.

Greedy, spineless, and collectively worth less than the chairs they're sitting in, I thought pleasantly. ‘But smart.’ 

"Alpha Mooncrest." Dorian again. The man had the persistence of a bad smell. "The eastern border expansion would double your….."

"Yes."

He blinked. "Yes, you agree or…."

"Continue."

He continued. I went back to not listening.

My mind did what it had been doing for four months without my permission. Dropped straight back to that night, the moment still lived rent free in my fuckkng head.

Far-end territories. A bar that smelled like whiskey and women. She had walked into me and looked up like I was the inconvenience.

Hazel eyes. That scent. Warm and completely unclassifiable, something my wolf had never encountered and immediately decided it couldn't live without it.

I barely did for the past four months.

‘I don't respect women.’ I had said, thick and sharp. I expected her to flinch like the rest and leave. 

‘I don't want to be respected. Not tonight.’

Four months and I still heard it word for word. Her sharp tongue made my heart flip for the first time in a while.

Irritating.

"Alpha." Elder Reeves this time. Old. Thick-necked. The specific kind of stupid.

 He stood up slowly, "Perhaps the difficulty closing this deal reflects something broader."

I paused and turned straight to him. "A pack needs legacy. Lineage. Things that become uncertain when an Alpha cannot seem to secure even a…."

I was out of my chair before he finished.

My claws came out clean.

Two seconds. That was all it took to cross the table, grip his collar, and watch his face go through every stage of regret simultaneously.

I looked at him.

"Your lineage," I said quietly, "will never smell the scent of a territory again. Not yours. Not your children's. Not whatever crawls after them."

"Alpha I…."

My claws went through his throat…deeper than the last.

I pulled back and listened to his body hit the floor without turning around.

I noticed everyone stopped breathing. 

I straightened my jacket.

"Meetings over,” I said and walked out. 

Drowning my body deeper into the cold shower. Shutting my eyes hasn't been an idea to relax for the last four months.

Letting the coldness hit me.

I haven't had that moment of pleasure in the two hundred and twenty eight years I have lived and ruled this empire.

The knock came exactly two minutes later. Jace. My head of security. I could tell by the knock, three precise hits, no hesitation. The man understood that wasting my time was a form of self-destruction.

"Report."

"No information, your Alpha." 

"Four months across the far territories, border towns, and districts. No trace. Nothing.”

I said nothing.

"We expanded the radius as you ordered. Two more teams deployed east and…"

"That's all, you can go.”

I stood at the window out of the shower and wrapped myself in robes.

Four months of nothing.

Her face was still behind my eyes like it had been burned there permanently. 

The way she hadn't flinched. That scent my wolf had been chasing through four months of empty reports and dead ends.

I didn't chase women.

The irony was not lost on me.

She was just different and that hurt me the most.

The door suddenly opened without a knock.

I didn't turn around.

Only one person in this entire compound entered without knocking. Because only one person had decided somewhere along the line that the rules applied to everyone except her.

"You ended the meeting early." Celeste. That voice, warm, smooth, maintained.

 The sound of her heels moved across the floor toward me. Slow. "Elder Dorian is going to complain for weeks."

"Elder Reeves won't be complaining at all."

She recovered fast. She always did.

"Kael." She called almost smoothly.

Her hand landed on my shoulder. Light. Such an audacious act.

 Her fingers moved toward my neck. "You've been distracted for months. The pack is…"

One hand. Her throat. 

Wrapped it so well that it almost filled the whole of my palm.

And smashed her to the wall .. could hear her spine rattle.

“Again Celeste ... .you are my prize to the territory I bought ... .the next time you push your luck, your windpipe will be the next.”

“Then use alpha, I want to be used. You haven't looked at my body since you sneaked out that night.”

“Get out.” 

“She's a witch, and I know her.”