Free Web NovelChapter 87: Chapter 87 Bitten more than he could chew
_Author’s POV_
Kaelen held it together for four minutes.
Rowena had given him approximately three in her internal estimate so she was willing to call it a marginal improvement.
She had been watching him from her vision the entire time, tracking the jaw, the eyes, the way his hands kept adjusting on his helmet. She knew his tells. He was going to do something stupid.
Pierre had not moved from his position beside Rowena. He was not being aggressive about it. He was simply present, standing where he was standing with his helmet at his side, which in itself communicated something that Kaelen’s pride was finding completely intolerable. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
Kaelen turned toward the nearest cluster of competitors and officials.
"There’s a woman in this competition," he finally did the stupid thing Rowena expected.
He said it loudly and he said it clearly and the compound heard it.
The noise in the immediate area dropped in the way noise dropped when something unexpected had just been introduced into a space. Eyes moved toward Kaelen. Then followed the direction of his gaze.
Rowena stood exactly where she was.
She didn’t move. She didn’t reach for the helmet. She looked at Kaelen with the expression she kept for moments when someone had done something she had both predicted and found completely exhausting, a kind of tiredness that was more cutting than anger would have been.
"She registered under a false name," Kaelen continued, with the confidence of a man who believed he was doing the compound a service. "The Marchioness of Ashthorne. She’s standing right there in a racing suit pretending to be a competitor."
Someone near the registration desk said something to the person beside them.
Someone else near bay two craned their neck.
"I’m not pretending," Rowena said, conversationally, to the compound in general. "I am a competitor. I have documentation, a registered vehicle, and a draw number. All of it is in order." She paused. "He’s just upset."
A sound moved through the nearby group. Not quite a laugh. Something adjacent to it. frёeωebɳovel.com
She reached up and pulled the cap off her head.
Her hair came with it in one clean motion, all of it, falling down her back to her waist, dark and uncoiled. She shook it out once, not for effect but because it needed untangling after the cap, and then she stood in the middle of the Starlight compound in her racing suit with her number on her chest and her draw slip in her pocket. A few of the men swooned at how beautiful she looked. They couldn’t help admiring her healthy hair too. Some even remembered she was once married to Kaelen. They cursed him for fumbling someone that good looking.
Also, Rowena was small. Everyone near her registered that, the contrast between her physical presence and the complete absence of any uncertainty in how she held herself. She looked like someone who had decided something and had not left any room in the decision for it to be reversed.
"Were you expecting me to leave?" she asked Kaelen. Her voice was light. "Now that I’m exposed, as you put it, were you expecting me to be embarrassed and go home?" She looked at him with something that was almost fond in its exasperation. "Kaelen. I drove here at five in the morning and registered and prepared and I have a car in that bay. I’m not going home."
From the group near bay three, a voice.
"She needs to be removed." A man, confident, the kind of confident that came from having been agreed with in rooms for a long time, he was proud too. "This is a serious competition. It’s not appropriate."
Another voice joined it. "The rules are there for a reason."
Pierre had already started walking toward them before the second voice finished.
He crossed the space with an unhurried pace that was somehow more pointed than if he had moved quickly, and he stopped in front of the two men with his helmet still at his side and the expression of someone who had identified a problem and was about to address it methodically.
"Which rule?” he asked.
The first man looked at him. "Excuse me?"
"I’m asking which specific written rule prohibits her participation," Pierre said. "Not the tradition. Not the general understanding of the room. The written rule in the official competition documentation." He waited. "I’ve read the documentation. It contains an advisory statement noting that the competition carries significant physical risk and recommending that female participants carefully consider that risk before entering." He paused. "An advisory is a recommendation. It is not a prohibition. They are legally distinct categories and I want to be precise about which one we’re discussing." He looked at the man steadily. "Do you have the documentation in front of you? Because I’m happy to review it together if that would help."
The man did not have the documentation in front of him.
"She is registered," Pierre continued, turning slightly so the wider group could hear him clearly. "She has a vehicle and a draw number and she has met every written requirement for participation in this competition. If anyone in this compound has a specific legal basis for her removal, state it now and we can address it properly." He looked around. "If not, we have a draw to complete."
The compound was quiet.
Then from the main entrance the quality of silence that preceded Alaric’s presence moved through the gathered crowd the way it always did, a ripple of awareness working outward from the point of arrival.
His presence was felt even before he was seen.
Alaric walked in.
He wasn’t in competition clothes. He was participating.
He had on a dark coat, just regular clothes. He moved through the compound at his natural pace and the crowd adjusted around him automatically, opening a path that no one consciously decided to open.
He stopped near the center of the gathered group.
He looked around the compound. At the competitors, at the officials, at Kaelen standing to the side with an expression that had cycled through several stages and arrived somewhere complicated, at Pierre standing near the two men and his composure, at Rowena in the middle of all of it with her hair down instead of tied and her racing suit on and draw number visible.
He looked at Rowena for a moment. His wolf wanted to reach out badly to her. She looked so beautiful and confident that he just wanted to hold her in his arms. But of course he couldn’t do that or he might as well shoot himself.
Rowena looked back at him. Her chin was level and her expression was prepared for whatever he was going to say and was not going to adjust based on what it was.
He looked at the compound.
"If the Marchioness of Ashthorne wants to compete," he said, "she competes. That’s the end of this conversation."
Nobody argued.
Alaric looked at Pierre once, briefly, with an expression that held several things in it simultaneously, assessment being the most visible one. Then his eyes moved back to Rowena and stayed there for a moment longer than was strictly necessary before he stepped back.
Kaelen looked at Pierre, anger filling his heart. He remembered Alpha Pierre had a degree in law. Also, he was once friends with the man. How did they fall out so much that he never sided him anymore?
He made a mental note to deal with Pierre when the race started. The man had bitten more than he could chew.
