Free Web NovelChapter 76: Chapter 76 Ashthorne University Of Royals
_Author’s POV_
Celeste was at the gate when she stopped one final time.
She turned around and looked back at the garden where everyone was still standing in the particular stunned silence of people who had just watched something happen that they hadn’t believed was possible until it did.
Her eyes found Elvira.
Elvira was still staring at the ground, one hand pressed to her cheek, her earlier confidence completely gone. She looked smaller than she had an hour ago. That happened sometimes when the architecture a person had built their personality on got knocked down quickly.
"Elvira," Celeste said.
Elvira looked up slowly.
"You’re enrolling in the Ashthorne Royal School," Celeste said. "I’ll have the paperwork sent to this address within the week."
Elvira blinked. "The university?"
"It’s not only a university," Celeste said. "It offers degrees, yes. It also teaches comportment, etiquette, diplomatic conduct, and how to exist in a room without making everyone in it uncomfortable." She looked at her steadily. "You need all of those things. The school is owned by the Ashthorne family and I will personally ensure your enrollment is processed."
"I’m not a student, I’ve graduated years ago," Elvira said weakly. "I’m a grown woman now.”
"You’re a grown woman who just suggested her brother’s former wife should kneel in her family’s garden," Celeste said. "The school accepts students of all ages. You’ll fit in somewhere." She paused. "It’s not optional, Elvira. Consider it part of the same conversation we just finished."
She didn’t wait for a response.
She walked out through the gate and got into her car as the guards opened the door for her and left the Varkos mansion behind her without looking back a third time.
The garden took several minutes to come back to life after she was gone.
Maelis was the first to speak, she couldn’t believe what just happened. The type of embarrassment her family went through. How dare Celeste?
"Well," she said, and left it at that.
Elira helped her back inside without making eye contact with anyone.
Elvira went to her room and didn’t come out for the rest of the afternoon.
Virella stayed in the garden alone for a while after everyone else had gone in. She stood where she had been standing throughout the whole scene and looked at the space where Celeste had been and felt the exhaustion just from the entire drama.
She had known. That was the worst of it. She had known for a long time that this would happen. She had known Kaelen liked her. She had told herself it was just Kaelen’s pride, his stubbornness, his inability to accept that something he’d decided he wanted was no longer available to him.
But pride didn’t explain the way his face changed when Rowena’s name came up. Pride didn’t explain the calculating patience he had when everyone else in the room was reacting. Pride didn’t explain the nod.
She went inside eventually because the garden had nothing new to show her.
Kaelen was in his study.
Virella passed the open door and heard him talking to someone. She stopped without meaning to, she would never eavesdrop but the figures inside were whispering, which pulled her attention further on them.
He was talking to one of his pack members. A man named Fenn who handled logistics and arrangements and who had, over the years, become the person Kaelen went to when he needed something done without it being widely discussed.
"The banquet is in two days," Kaelen was saying. "I want a position inside. Not the front entrance, something less visible. I want to be in the room before the guests arrive."
Virella stood very still in the corridor. Kaelen wanted to attend the banquet even after Celeste’s warning?
"She’s not actually going to choose anyone," he continued, and his voice had the settled with a certainty that stated he knew it was a fact. "This whole thing is a move. She’s making noise because that’s what she does when she wants to be noticed. She wants to see if I’ll come." A pause while Fenn said something. "I know what Celeste did today. I know how it looked. But Celeste doesn’t know Rowena the way I do. Rowena doesn’t want any of those men. She never wanted anyone except—" He stopped. "Just get me into the room."
Virella almost laughed at the stupid Kaelen. Celeste didn’t know Rowena as much as he did? He hasn’t even stayed upto a month with Rowena, what exactly did he know about her.
With anger in her heart, she walked away from the door before she heard the rest.
She went to her bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her hands and tried to locate somewhere inside herself the anger that should have been the natural response to what she had just heard.
She found it eventually. It was there. But underneath it was something quieter and more tired that had been there for much longer.
She thought about the woman she had been three years ago. Before Kaelen. Before the marriage. Before she had allowed herself to believe that choosing someone who was choosing her back was enough of a foundation to build on.
She had seen the way he looked at Rowena’s portrait in the study. She had told herself it was history. Residual. The normal tendency to hold onto images of people you had once been close to.
She had been wrong about that. She had been wrong about several things and she had known she was wrong and had chosen not to know it.
He was going to go to that banquet. She understood that now with complete clarity. He was going to go and he was going to try to take Rowena away from her own family’s event and he was going to tell himself it was love and tell Rowena it was love and tell Virella afterward that it didn’t change anything between them.
He actually believed all of it simultaneously.
She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
The ceiling had nothing useful to offer her. freēwēbnovel.com
She thought about what Celeste had said in the garden. She had indeed be stupid enough to open her legs for an alpha with a declining pack. All she ever wanted was to become Luna. To marry an Alpha. But the Alpha she found was totally useless. She thought he was the one because he had the looks and money, not knowing it was a woman running the pack all along.
What a shame.... frёeωebɳovel.com
She thought about it for a long time.
Now she has no one else to blame but herself. Kaelen, without realizing it, loved Rowena, or else, he wouldn’t go extra mile for her the way he was doing.
Virella felt tears in her eyes and bit her lips to swallow it before it spilled.
