Free Web NovelChapter 93: Chapter 93 He was not thinking
_Alaric’s POV_
I had been sitting at my desk for the past hour achieving nothing useful.
The paperwork in front of me had been in the same configuration since I sat down. I had read the same paragraph of the regional infrastructure report four times and absorbed none of it. Reid had come in once, assessed the situation from the doorway, and left without saying anything, which was the correct response and which I appreciated. Because I didn’t want anyone saying a word to me in this state.
I was thinking about the competition.
More specifically I was thinking about Rowena in a racing suit in the Starlight compound pulling her helmet off and shaking her hair out with the specific composure of someone who had never considered that the alternative was possible. I had the urge to rip the eyes of those men who stared at her and commented about her healthy hair. But I knew I couldn’t do that because she wasn’t mine and I had no right to act on my thoughts. Left for me, they’ll all be gone before they knew it.
Again, I was thinking about watching her drive from the viewing position I had taken above the track, the way her car moved with a precision that went beyond training, the way she had managed Kaelen through both runs with the kind of patience that very few drivers in that compound had demonstrated all day.
I had underestimated her.
That was the honest thought underneath all the other thoughts. I had known she was remarkable. I had been watching her for long enough and closely enough to understand that she was not an ordinary person operating in ordinary ways. But I had held somewhere in the back of my thinking a quiet assumption about limits, about what was reasonable to expect even from someone exceptional.
She had removed that assumption this afternoon on a competition track in front of several thousand people and a great deal of cameras.
I was also thinking about her grandmother, Seraphine, and how to approach her. I’d heard of the house arrest and before I could help, Rowena handled it as usual.
But the house arrest was a problem. Not because I couldn’t override it, I could, the authority existed and Seraphine knew it existed, but using it would damage something that I didn’t want to damage. Rowena’s relationship with her grandmother was one of the few genuinely uncomplicated things in her life and I was not going to walk into it with institutional force and take it apart.
There had to be another way.
I was still working on what that way was when the knock at the door came and the maid mindlinked and told me that the Marchioness of Ashthorne was in the corridor.
I sat very still for a moment, shocked. Had Seraphine already lifted the ban? How did Rowena get here?
“Send her in,” I said. I kept my voice even. I was excited to see her.
The door opened and in walked Rowena.
She came in wearing a white loose shirt and fitted jeans, no jewelry in sight, just her hair loose, and she looked like someone who had escaped from home. Did she?
Rowen was a lot of things, reasons why I loved her.
“Sit down,” I said. “Please.”
She sat.
I looked at her for a moment.
“You drove well today,” I voiced my thoughts out before I could hold it. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
It came out more directly than I had planned. I had intended to ease into it through standard pleasantries but the standard pleasantries felt wrong and what I had said instead was just true.
She looked at me with the careful attention she used when she was deciding how to receive something.
“The corner sequence in the second run,” I said. “The three progressives. You went through that clean at a speed that the officials will be studying for a while.” I paused. “You were reading the race from the beginning. The whole thing was managed.”
Color moved into her face. Not dramatic, just a warmth across her cheekbones that she hadn’t intended and that she addressed by clearing her throat and looking at a point slightly to the left of my face. She blushed because I complimented her. Which meant, she had a thing for me too. Impressive.
“Thank you,” she said.
I wanted to say several other things. My wolf was considerably less restrained than I was and was making his opinion of the situation known in the specific way he made opinions known, a persistent low pressure at the back of everything that increased whenever she was in the room.
I stood to get the water from the side table and when I came back to give it to her I was closer than I had calculated and she was looking up and neither of us moved for a moment that lasted longer than it should have.
When she moved to grab it, her phone fell and the first thought was to help her pick the phone. But she also reached for it, leaving us in a very close proximity.
She was close enough that I could have closed the distance without extending my reach.
She didn’t move back.
She was looking at my face with an expression I hadn’t seen from her before, unguarded in a way she rarely was, the careful composure momentarily somewhere else.
Her gaze traveled to my lips and she averted her gaze immediately.
Then blinked.
“I came to ask you something,” she said. Her voice was steady but the color was still in her face. She straightened up again.
“Ask,” I said. I stayed where I was.
“My grandmother won’t let me leave the city,” she said. “I need to visit the place where my father and brothers died. I need to see it. I can’t close any of this properly without seeing it and she doesn’t understand that or she does understand it and she’s afraid of what it means for me to go.” She looked at me. “You have the kind of influence with her that I don’t have right now. I need your help to get her to allow it.”
I looked at her for a moment. That was a dangerous thing for her to visit the accident scene, but an idea struck me.
I forgot about my position and duties at that moment and blurted out,
“I’ll do more than help you get permission,” I said.
She waited for me to finish.
At this point, I wasn’t even thinking anymore. Reid could handle the pack in my absence.
“I’ll come with you,”
“Pardon?”
