Free Web NovelChapter 108: Chapter 108 Her plans
_Rowena’s POV_
I walked out of that club and the night air hit my face as I kept walking.
Alaric fell into step beside me without a word. He didn’t try to slow me down or redirect me. He just walked with me and let me move at my own pace until the noise from inside faded behind us and we were standing in the quieter section of the street away from the entrance.
I stopped.
I stood there for a moment with my bag in my hand and the cold air around me and I let myself actually feel what was sitting in my chest.
It wasn’t about Alaric.
That was what people would think when they replayed it. That I was upset because Kaelen had brought Alaric into it, because he had implied something about what was between us. That wasn’t what was burning in me right now.
What was burning was the other part.
The infidelity accusation.
I had spent three years in that house. Three years managing his pack while he was gone, keeping his family fed and housed and operational, covering debts that weren’t mine, sitting in his grandmother’s house while she treated me like staff and his family spent my dowry without once looking me in the eye and saying thank you. Three years of staying quiet and doing what needed to be done because that was who I was and that was what the situation required.
I had never once been unfaithful.
Not in action. Not in thought. I had stayed and I had worked and I had held everything together even when holding it together cost me things I didn’t get back. And he sat in his club tonight, in his chair, with his silly wife beside him, the wife he had brought home to replace me, and he looked at me and said I was shameless.
That I had thrown myself at someone.
That was why I left.
I breathed out.
“You’re angry,” Alaric pointed out. He wasn’t asking.
“Yes,” I nodded.
“Not because of what he said about us.”
I looked at him.
“Because he accused you of the one thing you never did,” he said quietly.
I looked away. “Yes.”
He didn’t say anything else about it. He didn’t try to reassure me or walk me through why Kaelen was wrong. He just let it be what it was and stood there and that was actually the right response so I let him have it.
We were quiet for a moment.
Then I said, “I want to tear them down.”
Alaric looked at me.
“The Moonreign Pack,” I said. “Everything Kaelen has built. Everything his family has managed to scrape together since I left. I want to take it apart piece by piece and leave them with nothing.” I wasn’t raising my voice. I wasn’t shaking. I was just saying it clearly the way I said things when I had fully decided them. “They have been cunning and ungrateful and cruel since the day I walked into that house and I have been patient and appropriate for long enough.” I paused. “I’m done being patient.”
Alaric was quiet for a second.
“I can help,” he said. “Say the word and it’s done by morning.”
I looked at him, then I smiled.
I knew what that smile looked like on my face. Kasper had told me once that it was the most unsettling expression I owned, which I had taken as a compliment. It wasn’t a warm smile. It wasn’t even a particularly happy one. It was the smile of someone who had already thought three steps further than the conversation and was comfortable there.
“No,” I said.
Alaric looked at me with that expression again. The one I had been cataloguing for weeks and still hadn’t fully named. His eyes had something in them that was warm and sharp at the same time and it moved across his face when he looked at me like this and I would have called it love if I had been sure enough of what I was seeing to use that word. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
I wasn’t sure enough yet.
“Why not?” he asked.
I looked at him properly. “Why would I accept your help with this?”
He opened his mouth.
“This is mine,” I said. “What they did was done to me. The settling of it should come from me. Not from your office, not from your authority, not from the Alpha King stepping in on my behalf.” I held his gaze. “I don’t want to win because you helped me. I want to win because I did it myself.”
He was quiet.
Then he smiled. Slow and genuine. He nodded once.
“Alright,” he finally agreed.
No argument or him trying to convince me that accepting help was reasonable or that I didn’t have to do everything alone. Just alright. Like he understood exactly what I meant and respected it completely.
I appreciated that more than I was going to say out loud.
“The trip is tomorrow,” I said, moving on.
He nodded. “Early. I’ll have the car at your gate by six.”
“I’ll be ready.” I paused. “When we come back, I’ll start moving on Moonreign. I want to be clean-headed when I do it. Not angry.”
“You’re not angry now?” he said.
“I’m controlled,” I said. “That’s different.”
He looked at me with that look again, it was so awkward that I cleared my throat.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “We could get dinner. There’s a place near here that’s quiet.”
I looked at him.
He was asking simply, no pressure behind it, just an offer put forward and waiting to be received however it was going to be received.
I wanted to say yes, really.
I noticed that I wanted to say yes, which was itself information I was going to have to sit with later.
“Not tonight,” I shook my head. “I’m going back inside for Kasper and the others. We came together.”
Something moved across his face, briefly. He managed it quickly and smiled instead.
“Alright,” he said again.
“Six o’clock,” I reminded him. freewebnøvel.com
“I’ll be there.”
I looked at him for a moment. Standing there in the street outside a club owned by my ex-husband with the city quiet around us and the light from the entrance reaching just far enough to show his face.
“Goodnight, Alaric,” I said.
“Goodnight, Rowena,” he said, and before I could turn, he reached forward to grab my hand, turning me to face him before he leaned in to place a soft kiss on my forehead.
That warm feeling settled in my chest again and I tried not to smile widely.
Alaric grinned and mouthed “Goodbye.” Before entering the awaiting car I hadn’t even noticed was there.
