Free Web NovelChapter 122: Chapter 122 Kaelen never gave up
_Author’s POV_
They kissed for a long time.
Not urgently, or like something that had been held back too long and was finally releasing all at once. More like something that had found its natural pace and was in no hurry to leave it.
Alaric’s hand stayed at her waist and her hands had found the front of his shirt at some point and neither of them were rushing it.
When he pulled back it was slow.
He looked at her straight on, their faces close, and he smiled in the simple way he smiled when something was exactly what it was and he had no interest in dressing it up.
“I love you,” he blurted out.
His voice was so calm. He wasn’t sounding silly, like those confessions on tv where a ceremony came before it. He sounded confident. He wasn’t confused.
Rowena looked at him, her expression remained careful, the one she used when something had reached her more deeply than she was ready to show. She looked at him for a long moment in the dark.
Although she didn’t say it back.
She didn’t pull away either. She just looked at him with those eyes that never gave everything away at once, and then she nodded, almost imperceptibly, and something in that small movement said more than a full sentence might have.
He didn’t press her for more.
He straightened up and offered her his arm for the walk back and she took it and they came back through the hotel’s rear entrance with damp shoes and leaves in their hair.
At the door to her room she turned her key card over in her hand.
“You could come in,” she suggested without looking at him.
Alaric turned to look at her.
“If you want to,” she added.
“I want to,” he smiled immediately and opened the door.
They lay on the same bed with the lights off and the curtains open enough to let the night sky in and nothing more happened than that.
No conversation after a while.
No reaching for something else. Just the natural arrangement of two people who were tired and had been carrying things for a long time and had found, without planning it, a place where those things felt lighter.
Alaric was on his back with one arm around her and she had her face turned toward the window and her hand rested against his chest and they both went to sleep. freёwebnovel.com
Neither of them dreamed like usual.
Alaric had carried certain dreams for years. The heaviness of the position, of decisions made, of things that had gone right and things that hadn’t, finding him in a good sleep was near impossible. He was used to waking at odd hours and lying in the dark until his mind finished whatever it needed to finish.
Not that night.
Rowena’s nights had their own content. The faces of people she had lost, the anxiety of problems unresolved, the replaying of moments she couldn’t undo. She had accepted this as the normal texture of sleep a long time ago.
Not that night either.
They slept clean and full and uninterrupted until morning came in through the open curtains.
Alaric woke first.
Reid’s voice came through the mindlink.
“There’s a situation,” Reid said. The “Ridgecroft Pack has filed a formal territorial complaint overnight. It’s citing procedural negligence from the regional office, which means it’s pointing at us directly. Three other packs have already responded to it.” He paused. “This situation needs your voice on it before it moves further. I’ve called a video conference for nine. That gives you forty minutes.
Alaric assessed the situation in about four seconds.
A territorial complaint with three packs already responding was the kind of thing that became a regional incident if the Alpha King wasn’t visibly engaged within the first twelve hours. He knew the Ridgecroft situation, it had been building for weeks, and whoever had chosen to file overnight had timed it deliberately.
He looked down at Rowena.
She was still asleep. Small against his side, one hand still resting against his chest, her face turned toward the window with a relaxed expression.
He didn’t want to move but he moved anyway.
He unlinked himself carefully, shifting his arm out from underneath her slowly.
He rushed back to his room and sat at the desk with his tablet and opened the conference line.
Rowena woke to an empty bed and light coming properly through the curtains.
She lay still for a moment, gathering herself, then she went out of her room to look for him.
A part of her knew something wasn’t right.
Alaric was at the desk in his room with his tablet propped up, his voice low and controlled, clearly mid-conference. She could see his profile from the bed. The slight forward lean. The frown that had settled between his brows that meant he was tracking something that required close attention.
He glanced at her once when she entered, briefly, acknowledging her presence without breaking the conference, and then looked back at his tablet.
The frown was deeper than it had been a minute ago.
She waited until the conference window closed.
“What happened?” she asked carefully.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he smiled. He said it without looking up from the screen, already moving to the next thing, which told her that nothing was actually something.
She crossed the room.
She looked over his shoulder at the tablet screen before he could redirect her.
The news article was open in the browser.
The headline was large enough to read without squinting.
*Alpha King abandons post for personal vacation with divorced Marchioness, where are our region’s priorities?*
The byline was a regional news outlet she recognized. Below the headline, the article quoted a source directly. A named source.
Kaelen Varkos.
She read the quoted section. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
He had given a full statement. Describing Alaric’s absence from the capital as irresponsible. Describing the trip as a personal indulgence. Describing Rowena, in language careful enough to avoid direct insult but pointed enough to land the way he intended, as a distraction from the Alpha King’s duties.
She reached out and scrolled down.
The comments had been running for hours.
She read three of them before she stopped reading them, because three was enough to understand the shape of the rest.
People lashed out in the comments, calling her shameless.
She straightened and made a small laugh sound.
Alaric was watching her face now, the tablet forgotten, tracking her expression.
“Rowena,” he called out softly.
“I’m fine,” she cut him short. Her voice was even, including her face.
But her hands had stilled.
“He filed this last night,” Alaric continued. “While his club accounts are frozen and his trademark suit is active and he has nothing else to throw.” He kept his voice level. “This is a desperate move. I refused to help him sort his problems, so he came for us.”
Rowena laughed. “As if this would save him from his own problems.”
