Sacrificed To The Triplet Alpha Kings

Chapter 215: Kael’s Frustration

"Your father’s name is in three threads now. People are connecting things. Someone found his Beta record and they’re putting it next to...." Wren stopped. "I think you need to know that whoever is doing this knows exactly what they’re doing. This isn’t gossip. This is deliberate."

Lilith said nothing.

Outside a group of pack members crossed the courtyard below. One of them looked up at her window, and then looked away again quickly.

They all did that now.

Looked and then looked away, like she was a plague they needed to avoid.

"Lilith." Wren’s voice was different now. Quieter. "What’s happening there. Really."

Lilith looked at her hand that’s her lap, which looks pretty normal to her.

"I can’t tell you everything yet," she said. "Not on the phone."

"Okay." Wren didn’t push. She never pushed. Just left doors open and waited. "Okay. But I need to know you’re safe. just tell me that you are safe"

"I’m safe, Wren" Lilith replied.

"Something in your voice is different," Wren said.

Lilith didn’t answer that.

"I’ll come Friday," Wren said. "Like we talked about. We’ll sit somewhere and you can tell me as much as you want and I won’t push for the rest."

"Wren...."

"I’m coming Lilith. Don’t argue with me."

"Okay i’ll be expecting your call on Friday," Lilith said.

"Okay that’s settled then, But then Lilith....whoever is pushing this post. They’re building something. I don’t know what yet but they’re building it deliberately and they want people to see it, you have to be very careful."

***

After the call ended.

Lilith sat there with the phone in her hand.

Looked at the courtyard below.

Then she looked at her throat in the window’s reflection.

The mark was there. Faint in the glass, still looking red with the bruised skin still raised.

She needed to tell Nicholas about the post immediately.

She pressed her palm flat against the cold window and looked at the grounds below and thought about her father’s name sitting in a forum thread where is shouldn’t be at all.

Someone was building a narrative.

And she was running out of time to find out who.

****

Nicholas’s Pov

Nicholas hadn’t slept, though he’d told himself for two days that the reports were reason enough to stay at his desk with the lights on and the rest of the estate going quiet around him. Territory disputes. Pack financials. Three requests for audience he’d been deferring all week. There was enough work to justify it. That was what he told himself, and Kael had spent those same two days sitting behind his eyes like a splinter lodged too deep to reach....not aggressive, not demanding, just present in the way that almost looked like sulking, an animal holding its breath and waiting.

She was avoiding him. He knew it. Kael knew it. Probably the whole estate knew it by now.

The first day he’d understood. What had happened wasn’t gentle.....Kael had taken over completely, and Nicholas had come back to shaking hands and a mate who’d gone unconscious on the bed, and he’d told himself she needed time and believed it.

The second day was harder. Kael had stopped being patient somewhere around noon....not destructively, not pushing for control....but the misery of it was particular and constant, a low sound Nicholas felt more than heard, and he hadn’t had a good answer for it.

The only thing that had kept it manageable was the promise he’d made that morning. A run. Tonight, he’d let Kael out for a run. It had bought him exactly two days of functional.

He picked up his pen. Set it down. Looked at the report in front of him without reading it.

She’d been in the east wing all day. He knew her movements without trying to.....the bond made that impossible to avoid....and every time she came closer his chest tightened, and every time she moved away Kael made a sound low in his throat that had nothing to do with patience.

He picked up his pen again and forced his eyes back to the page and told himself he’d give her tonight, that the run would settle Kael, that tomorrow he’d find a reason to....

He looked up.

She was standing outside his door.

He hadn’t heard footsteps, hadn’t heard anything at all...he’d simply looked up and there she was, a shape through the frosted glass panel, completely still, not knocking. Kael went silent. Not calm.....silent, the way an animal goes silent when it’s holding its breath, when one wrong move is all there is between stillness and something it can’t take back.

Nicholas set his pen down.

She still didn’t knock. He could see her outline through the glass, not moving, not leaving either, hand half raised and suspended somewhere short of the door, and he sat there for a moment watching her stand in that particular suspension before he pushed his chair back and stood and crossed the office in four steps and opened the door.

She was exactly as he’d seen her through the glass...hand half raised, almost knocking, her eyes coming up to his face and then dropping immediately to somewhere around his collarbone, and something moved through his chest that he didn’t really understand.

He’d been waiting two days for this. He didn’t trust himself to say anything complicated.

"Come in, Lilith," he said.

She nodded and entered the office.

She didn’t sit. She just stood in the middle of his office looking at the map on the wall, at the desk, at the window, anywhere that wasn’t him, and he went back to his desk and sat and watched her.

The way she was holding herself slightly too still. The way her hand came up once toward her throat and dropped before it reached there. She felt the bond....even without a wolf she felt it, and it was overwhelming her, and she didn’t know what to do with that. He knew exactly what it was because Kael was doing the same thing on his side of it, barely breathing, terrified that one wrong move would send her back down the corridor.

"Is there anything you need, Lilith," he asked.