The Luna You Betrayed Is No Longer Yours

Chapter 123: Chapter 123 It was hard to help her

_Alaric’s POV_

I watched her leave the room and then I looked at the tablet.

I picked it up and read Kaelen’s statement in full again.

I had skimmed it before Rowena came to look over my shoulder. Now I read every word of it carefully.

Kaelen had given the statement to three outlets simultaneously. All regional, all with decent reach, all with comment sections that had been running hot since the early hours of the morning. He had framed it carefully, staying just inside the lines of what could be called political commentary rather than personal attack, but the intention was clear enough that the lines didn’t matter much.

He was trying to make me look irresponsible.

And he was trying to make Rowena look like the reason for the irresponsibility.

I put the tablet face down on the desk.

Reid came through on the mindlink again. “Conference line 2 is ready. Ridgecroft’s Alpha is already on.”

“Give me two minutes,” I said.

I stood up and went to the window and looked at the morning city for a moment.

The Ridgecroft situation was real and it needed my attention and I was going to give it my full attention in approximately two minutes. But I needed the two minutes first.

What Kaelen had done was calculated in the way that desperate people calculated things. He had no legal recourse on the trademark suit, no operational access to the club accounts, no operational manager, no path through the frozen situation on his own. He had reached out to my office and been declined. He had no leverage and no audience except the press.

So he had gone to the press.

The statement was designed to do two things. First, make my absence from the capital look like negligence, which would generate enough noise to force me back and end the trip early. Second, attach Rowena’s name to that narrative in a way that would follow her regardless of how the story resolved.

He couldn’t reach her directly anymore. He couldn’t reach me through official channels. So he was trying to reach both of us through public pressure and the cruelty of comment.

I thought about Rowena’s face when she read those comments.

Just like I said before, she was the strongest woman I knew. She handled the situation so well that I praised her for it again.

“Alpha,” Reid said again.

“Opening now,” I responded.

I sat back down at the desk and opened the conference line.

The Ridgecroft Alpha was a man named Brennan who had been managing a border dispute with his eastern neighbor for two years and had been doing it badly. The territorial complaint he had filed overnight cited procedural negligence from the regional coordination office, which was technically accurate in a narrow sense and strategically misleading in every other sense. He had filed it overnight specifically because he knew I was out of the capital and he thought a filing at two in the morning would sit unaddressed long enough to generate its own momentum.

He had miscalculated how quickly Reid moved.

The conference had six people on it. Brennan, two of his senior advisors, Reid, my regional coordinator, and myself. I let Brennan make his opening statement in full without interrupting, which took four minutes and covered the same ground the filing had covered with additional emphasis on the word negligence.

When he finished I said, “The procedural delay your filing references occurred because your pack submitted the boundary documentation in the wrong format three times across six weeks. The regional office sent correction guidance after each submission. The delay is documented and attributable.” I kept my voice even. “I’ve reviewed the full record this morning.”

Brennan’s expression shifted. “The Alpha King’s office should have—”

“The Alpha King’s office processed your correctly formatted submission within the required window once you submitted it correctly,” I said. “Which was last Tuesday.” I looked at him directly. “The filing you submitted last night is based on a delay that no longer exists. The complaint is moot.”

One of his advisors said something to him off-camera that I couldn’t hear.

Brennan looked at the camera and then at his advisor and then back.

“There are still outstanding boundary markers that haven’t been physically confirmed,” he said.

“That team goes out Thursday,” Reid said, from his position on the call. “It was scheduled before the complaint was filed. You received the scheduling confirmation four days ago.”

Another off-camera conversation. ƒrēewebnovel.com

I waited.

“We’ll withdraw the formal complaint,” Brennan said finally. “Pending the Thursday confirmation.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Reid will follow up with the documentation.”

I closed the conference, sat back and looked at the ceiling for a moment.

The Ridgecroft situation was not what I was thinking about.

I was thinking about the things said about my superwoman, Rowena.

She might not show it, but it was painful. She was hurt.

I picked up my phone.

I called a number I used for a specific kind of work, a communications coordinator who had managed regional press situations for my office for six years and who was discreet and fast.

She answered on the second ring.

“I need a response prepared,” I said. “To the Varkos statement from last night. I want it out within the hour.”

“What tone?” she said.

“Factual,” I said. “No aggression. Just facts.” I thought for a moment. “The Alpha King’s regional travel is a standard part of operational governance. This particular trip involves an active investigation into historical incidents affecting a prominent regional family. Characterizing it as a personal vacation reflects either a misunderstanding of how governance works or a deliberate attempt to mislead.”

I bet she was typing. “Do we reference Varkos by name?”

“No,” I said. “The statement stands on its own. His name doesn’t need to be in it.”

“And the comments about the Marchioness?”

I was quiet for a second.

“Add one line,” I said. “The Marchioness of Ashthorne has assisted this office’s investigation in a professional capacity. Suggestions to the contrary are inaccurate.”

“Got it,” she said. “Give me an hour.”

Then she hung up.

I set the phone down.

I thought about what I had said to Rowena before she left the room. This doesn’t touch what’s true. I had meant it. But meaning it and making sure it didn’t touch her in the ways that mattered were different things, and the second one required more than words.

I stood up.

I needed to eat something and then I needed to find her, because she had gone off to do things on her own and I knew what those things were and I also knew that whatever Kaelen had put online this morning was going to follow her through the day if someone didn’t get ahead of it.

The statement would help.

But I also knew Rowena well enough to know that she was not sitting somewhere waiting for me to fix it for her. She was already three steps into whatever she was doing next and the Kaelen situation was filed somewhere in the back of her mind, under things that would be addressed on her timeline.

That was one of the things I loved about her.

It was also, occasionally, the thing that made it hardest to help her.