Free Web NovelChapter 94: Chapter 94 She went over the barrier
_Rowena’s POV_
I looked at him.
I had prepared several responses to what he might say. Agreement to intercede with Nana Seraphine. Gentle redirection. A practical suggestion involving an official escort. I had not prepared a response to him saying he would come himself and there was a brief moment where my prepared responses were simply not available.
I didn’t tell him not to.
I sat with it properly, looked at the floor, thought through whether I had an objection that was more substantial than discomfort, and found that I didn’t. The discomfort was real but discomfort was not a reason. I had done harder things than travel somewhere difficult with someone whose presence affected me more than I wanted it to.
“Alright,” I said.
Something shifted in his expression. Not quite surprise. More like the specific recalibration of someone who had built in time for an argument and was now adjusting the plan because the argument hadn’t arrived.
“Alright?” he said.
“You can come,” I said. “If you want to.”
He had already gone back to his seat before, but now he looked at me for a moment with that steady unhurried attention of his and then he moved around the desk again to reach something on the side table, which closed the distance between us, and his hand found my waist.
It found it the way it always found it. Like it had made a private decision about where it belonged when he was near me and was simply acting on that decision without consulting anyone.
I had a policy about physical contact.
It was not a new policy. I had maintained it consistently for years across all kinds of situations and with all kinds of people. It was not a complicated policy. I was willing to let it go and just consummate my marriage if Kaelen wanted it, but he was stupid at the end.
People did not touch me without an invitation and when they did I moved away from the contact or removed the hand in question, politely but with complete clarity, and the situation was resolved.
Alaric’s hand was on my waist and I had not moved away.
He did that to make me stand up and honestly, I was impressed by the boldness. But he was a grown man who knew what he wanted.
And I found myself not removing his hand.
I was standing exactly where I had been seated before and his hand was where it was and I was trying to locate the part of me that was supposed to manage this situation and finding that part genuinely unavailable, not suppressed, not overridden, just not there in the way it was supposed to be.
Kyra was the reason and she was not apologetic about it.
She had been doing this for weeks now. Every time Alaric was in the same space, she became more present. Not in the urgent way she was present during a fight or a moment of real danger, but in a warm continuous way that was actually harder to manage because it didn’t have peaks or breaks. It was just steady and constant and it got louder when he was close.
She wanted to be near him. She had been telling me this in the consistent wordless way she communicated things, through feeling and warmth and a kind of pulling toward that I kept redirecting, and right now with his hand on my waist the redirection was not working.
The problem was that I didn’t know what it meant.
My ability to identify a mate bond had been damaged in the events surrounding the unsealing. The power surge, the extended injuries, the sustained pressure of everything that had followed. Kyra needed recovery. Full one.
That also meant that whatever she was responding to when Alaric was nearby, I couldn’t identify it cleanly. I couldn’t tell whether it was recognition of something real or the warmth of someone she trusted and felt safe around. I couldn’t tell whether the pulling toward was her finding something specific or just finding something good.
I didn’t know how long the recovery would take.
I didn’t know if it would fully restore.
And until it did, I was operating in a situation where I couldn’t trust my own wolf’s instincts to tell me what they were actually pointing at.
I stepped back.
He let me go. No resistance, no holding, just releasing the moment I moved, which I noticed and filed alongside everything else I had been noticing about him that I hadn’t decided what to do with yet.
“I’m sorry, my wolf acted on impulse.” He sighed and ran a hand through his fine hair. I knew it. Alaric wouldn’t just do that. So his wolf also wanted me?
Interesting.
“It’ll take two days,” he said. “I’ll have the travel arrangements in place.” His voice was entirely composed. If the past two minutes had produced anything in him that needed managing, the management was complete and invisible. “I’ll handle your Nana.”
“She won’t be easy,” I said.
“No,” he agreed. “But I’ll handle it.”
I believed him. Not because of his position, though the position was real, but because of the specific way he said it, he was certain he could handle my Nana and he was confident too. freёwebnoѵel.com
“Thank you,” I smiled thinly.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said, and the edge of his mouth moved as well. There goes the stone cold Alaric smiling again.
To avoid making everything even more complicated, I left.
The drive back to the Ashthorne mansion in Pierre’s car should have been straightforward. It was a direct route, with clear roads, and should take fifteen minutes at most.
But instead, I drove through the Starlight arena.
It was on the same route and I had a habit that I had never fully examined of checking things one final time before I closed them for the night. Some part of my thinking that didn’t switch off easily when there were things still active that I cared about.
The competition ground was empty now. The day’s events had finished hours ago and the compound had been cleared and locked, the vehicle bays secured, the track quiet under the perimeter lighting that ran all night for security purposes. I pulled through the service entrance using the pass Silas had given me and drove slowly around the outer road toward the bay where the Ferrari was stored. I wanted to make sure it was in good shape.
I got out and did a walk around out of habit.
The car was exactly as Kasper’s team had left it. I checked the body, the tyres, the bay security. Everything correct. I turned to go back to Pierre’s car.
That was when I saw something at the corner of my eyes.
It was a man and he was on the far side of the track, past the barrier that separated the racing surface from the maintenance infrastructure that ran alongside it. A channel for drainage and equipment access that sat about two feet below the level of the barrier edge.
I almost missed him completely.
He was still and the perimeter lighting didn’t reach that far with any quality and if I had been moving faster or looking at the ground in front of me rather than slightly ahead I would have walked back to the car and driven away and he would have stayed there.
I stopped.
I crossed the track and looked over the barrier and down into the channel.
A man on his back. Competition clothing, or what it had been before whatever had happened to it, torn across the left side and darkened with blood that had dried at the edges in a way that told me it wasn’t fresh. His chest was moving but the movement was uneven and had the working quality of breathing that was managing rather than resting.
I looked around the empty compound.
There was no one. No crew, no security walking the perimeter, no one who had checked this area at any point during the day despite the fact that this man had clearly been here since sometime before or during the competition’s operating hours.
I looked at him again.
He was young. That was what I registered first after the injury. Young and well-built and lying in a maintenance channel at the Starlight arena at night with nobody coming for him. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
“Don’t Rowena, just call the pack’s police.” Kyra almost yelled.
But I wasn’t listening. Without thinking, I went over the barrier.
