Free Web NovelChapter 74: Chapter 74 Raw with her words
_Author’s POV_
Kaelen stood in the receiving room after Celeste finished talking and said nothing for a full minute.
Then he straightened his jacket and said, with remarkable composure, that Rowena was clearly going through something and that he intended to be patient about it. He said it to the room in general, to his grandmother who was still sitting in her chair looking diminished, to his mother who was staring at the floor. He said it like a man restating a position he had already committed to and was not going to revisit.
Then he turned to see Virella storm out in anger. He went to find her.
She was in the back garden, which was where she went when she needed to be somewhere the rest of the household wasn’t. She heard him coming and didn’t turn around.
He stood beside her for a moment.
"She’s going to go through with this banquet," he said. "But it doesn’t change anything."
Virella said nothing.
"You and I are solid," he said. "Nothing about what Rowena does changes what we are. You’re carrying my child.”
Virella turned to look at him then. Her face was very still in the specific way faces go still when something has just been confirmed that a person had been trying very hard not to confirm.
"Why do you want her back?" she asked.
"I don’t want her back," he said. "I want her to stop making decisions out of anger. There’s a difference."
"You said it doesn’t change anything," Virella said. "What doesn’t change anything? What were you hoping was going to change?"
He paused.
It was a small pause. Brief. Most people would have missed it entirely. Virella did not miss it.
"Kaelen," she said. "Answer me."
"I just meant that our marriage is stable regardless of what she....”
"You were going to say that if she came back you would treat us equally," Virella said. Her voice was flat and quiet. "That’s what you were building up to. That you would find a way to make it work with both of us and that it would be fair and nobody would be treated differently." She looked at him. "That’s what you were going to say."
"Virella—"
"Were you?"
The pause this time was longer.
"I would never make you feel like you were less," he said finally, trying to sound genuine.
Virella laughed. It was a short, hollow sound that had nothing happy in it. "You just told me exactly how you feel without meaning to," she said. "Less. You used the word less. Which means you’ve already thought about what the arrangement would look like and you’ve already decided I would be the secondary one." She turned away from him and looked at the garden. "I’ve known it for a long time. I just kept telling myself I was wrong."
"You are wrong," he said. "You’re my wife. You’re—"
"I’m the one you came home to," she said. "I’m not the one you came home for."
He was quiet.
The garden was very still around them.
"She never wanted you back," Virella said softly.
"She dissolved the marriage. She went to the Alpha King’s office and she dissolved it and she moved on. She’s selecting a husband right now, today, while you stand here talking about treating us equally."
She shook her head. "You’re not even a
consideration to her anymore, Kaelen. But she is still a consideration to you. After everything." Her voice didn’t break. It just went very thin. "After all of it." freeωebnovēl.c૦m
He reached for her arm.
She stepped away from the reach without looking at him.
What neither of them knew was that Celeste had not left when she appeared to leave.
She had been shown out of the front of the house and had walked precisely as far as the garden wall, where she had stopped, because Celeste had exceptionally good hearing just like Rowena and had learned a long time ago that the most useful conversations happened after people believed you were gone.
She had heard everything.
She walked back into the garden now from the side entrance, and both of them turned at the sound of her footsteps.
Kaelen’s expression moved through surprise and then attempted composure.
Celeste didn’t let him reach composure.
"You stood in that room twenty minutes ago," she said, "and told me you knew Rowena. That she would come back to what she knows." She looked at him with a steadiness that was more cutting than raised voice could have been. "And then you came out here and told your wife that if Rowena returned you would find a way to manage them both and nobody would feel like less." She paused. "You have a wife standing in front of you, carrying your unborn child and you are still, right now, in this moment, calculating how to hold onto a woman who has already let you go."
Kaelen said nothing.
"Rowena left nothing behind when she left your family," Celeste said. "Nothing she wants back. Not her dowry, not the years she gave, not you." She looked at him carefully. "She brought a fortune into your family when she married you. It maintained your pack, your household, your grandmother’s medical care, your daily operations for three years while you were gone. She has never asked for a single coin of it returned. Not because she doesn’t know her rights but because she decided it wasn’t worth her time to fight over." She paused. "Your family used everything she had and called it her duty. And you stood in that receiving room just now and spoke about her like she was a Chapter you hadn’t finished yet."
Virella was looking at the ground.
"She is finished," Celeste said. "She finished it. The only person in this story who hasn’t accepted that is you."
She looked at Virella briefly, and her voice when she addressed her was less sharp.
"I’m sorry," she said simply. "You deserve this for going after someone’s mate and husband. I’m sure you knew he was mates and married, but you still went ahead to spread your legs for him.” She smiled, feeling fulfilled for telling them these words.
Virella’s face burned in shame. How could Celeste be so raw with her words?
