Free Web NovelChapter 107: Chapter 107 The humiliation
_Author’s POV_
Alaric walked in like he owned the place.
He did own the land next to the club, but nobody in the club knew that from looking at him.
The crowd near the entrance parted without being asked to. The staff closest to the door stood a little straighter. The general noise of the room didn’t stop exactly, but it shifted, the way a room shifted when something changed in it that everyone felt before they understood what it was. Someone of importance had walked in.
He turned towards the left and saw the table immediately. Reid had informed him of the newly opened club owned by Kaelen which he had applied for registration, didn’t get approval before running the place. Alaric came himself to examine the place and know what gave Kaelen the audacity to proceed with the grand opening.
But he didn’t expect to see Kaelen with Rowena, Kasper, was that Prince Ezekiel?
Without thinking, he crossed the room at his own pace. Unhurried, with his eyes on Rowena the entire way.
Rowena looked up when the table went quiet and saw him coming and something moved across her face that she didn’t fully manage in time. Pierre saw it, including Ezekiel and Kasper, who had just returned from the dance floor, saw it and very quietly set his drink down.
Alaric stopped at the table.
He looked at Rowena only.
“I heard you were here,” he lied but who would know?
“Word travels fast,” she smiled.
“It does when Reid is monitoring the city,” he said simply.
He reached down and took her hand.
Not a request or a hesitation. He just took it, fingers wrapping around hers, and drew her up from her chair in one smooth motion and she stood up.
She didn’t resist.
She could have. Anyone who knew Rowena understood she was not a woman who went along with things she didn’t want to go along with. But she stood up and she let him keep her hand and she looked up at him with an expression that was doing its best to stay neutral and wasn’t entirely succeeding.
The music stopped.
Not because anyone turned it off deliberately. The DJ had been watching the room. frёewebηovel.cѳm
And the entire club went quiet.
Every eye in the place found them.
Alaric didn’t look at the room. He looked at Rowena. His thumb moved once across the back of her hand, slow and deliberate, and she felt her shoulders drop slightly in the way they dropped when something that had been held tense finally released.
He brought her hand up and pressed his lips to her knuckles.
Held them there for a moment.
Then he lowered her hand and kept hold of it and finally looked at the table with the calm expression of a man who had done exactly what he intended to do and had no questions about it.
The club stayed silent for another full second.
Then the music came back and the room breathed again and about forty people went back to their evenings with something to talk about.
Kaelen had gone very still in his chair.
His face had moved through several colors and had landed on something dark and tight. He was gripping the edge of the table. His jaw was locked. He was looking at Alaric’s hand holding Rowena’s hand and something in him was unraveling in a way he couldn’t stop and couldn’t hide.
“Shameless,” he spat.
It came out loud.
Rowena turned to look at him.
“You’re shameless,” he said, louder. His voice had changed to that of someone who had lost the filter between what they were feeling and what they were saying. “Was this why you divorced me? Because of him? You rushed to leave me so you could throw yourself at the Alpha King?”
The table went completely still.
Ezekiel set his glass down slowly.
Pierre’s expression had gone flat in the dangerous way it went flat when something had crossed a line.
Kasper didn’t move but his eyes said everything.
Rowena let go of Alaric’s hand.
She turned to Kaelen and slapped him.
Clean and sharp and without any hesitation whatsoever. His head turned with it and the sound of it was loud enough to carry over the music.
The club noticed. Of course it was noticed
.
Rowena stood in front of him and her voice was very quiet and very clear. “Get your head straight,” she said. “I divorced you because you left me on our wedding night and didn’t come back for three years. I divorced you because you brought another woman into our home. I divorced you because you gave me no other choice.” She looked at him steadily. “Alaric has nothing to do with what you did. Don’t insult both of us by pretending otherwise.”
Kaelen touched his face and looked at her. Then he bursted out laughing.
It was not a good laugh. It was the laugh of someone who had been humiliated in public and had decided that more humiliation in the same direction was the answer to the problem.
He reached over and snatched Virella’s cheque book from her bag before she could react.
Virella said, “Kaelen—”
He ignored her. He flipped it open and wrote something and tore the cheque out and threw it at Rowena.
It hit her chest and fell to the floor.
Nobody at the table moved for a moment.
Rowena looked down at it. Then she looked at Kaelen with the quietest expression she had worn all evening. She didn’t pick it up. She didn’t look at the amount.
“Forty thousand,” Kaelen said. He was smiling now, the bad smile, the one that didn’t have anything good underneath it. “For whatever you think I owe you. Consider it done.”
Rowena looked at him for a long moment.
Then she said, very calmly, “One more thing out of your mouth tonight and I will make sure this club is gone by Monday.”
Kaelen’s smile stayed but something behind his eyes flickered.
“You don’t have that power,” he said. But his voice had dropped slightly.
“Try me,” she said. She said it the way she said everything, without performance, without volume, just with the complete certainty of someone who was not making a threat but stating a fact.
Alaric had not moved during any of this.
He stood beside her and watched Kaelen with the specific expression he wore when he had assessed a situation and found it beneath direct engagement but was tracking it carefully regardless.
He bent down now and picked up the cheque from the floor.
He looked at it.
Then he placed it on the table in front of Kaelen, face up, and pressed two fingers against it for just a moment before removing them.
