BEYOND THE ALPHA'S DESK

CHAPTER SEVEN: HIS SIDE OF SILENCE

Kael didn’t speak about her, not to his Beta, not even to himself.

But she haunted everything.

Every scent he picked from a crowd, every dream he couldn’t remember, every woman he couldn’t touch the same way twice. There was always the echo of Elena…the fire, the defiance, the way her lips trembled when she told him she couldn’t be his. That she didn’t want to be “bound.”

He never believed her. Not really. But she ran anyway.

When she left, something cold settled in his bones. He drowned it in business, expanding Arden Corp across regions, investing in tech mergers, training warriors in the new combat wing. He climbed higher, faster. He became untouchable. Ruthless. The man no one dared cross.

But no matter how far he went, her absence curled under his skin like frostbite.

He’d lie to himself and say she was dead.

Dead girls didn’t leave letters behind in handwriting only he could recognize.

Dead girls didn’t show up in every song he skipped on the radio.

She left him.

And the most dangerous part was…

He’d still take her back if she knocked once.

His pack thought he was fine.

But no one saw the way his hands clenched when a girl with Elena’s scent walked by.

No one knew the night he broke his whiskey glass because a girl whispered his name too gently.

Kael wasn’t healed.

He was controlled.

And control wasn’t the same thing as peace.

….

Elena didn’t mean to come back to Velmora.

She had sworn never to set foot near the city again, much less within ten miles of him.

But desperation has a voice louder than pride.

The rent was due. Her fake ID was about to expire. The savings she scraped together doing night shifts at a bar in Eravyn had barely kept her afloat. And when the job opening at Arden Corp popped up, Secretary, confidential posting, urgent hiring…her fingers had typed the application before her brain could stop her.

She didn’t even know it was his company until the final interview.

And by then, it was too late.

He was there.

Sitting behind a desk too wide for one man, back straight, fingers steepled. Cold. Commanding. Older than before, harder too. The boy she ran from was gone.

In his place stood the Alpha she’d feared he’d become.

Kael Arden didn’t even blink when he saw her.

Just said, “You’re hired.”

No recognition. No anger. No explosion.

Just two words that felt like a trap snapping shut.

Elena had to remind herself to breathe.

Every day after that was war.

Typing up documents while his scent stirred memories she’d buried.

Scheduling meetings while he ignored her like a stranger.

Passing papers across desks when what she really wanted was to ask him why…why he never came for her, why he looked at her like she was invisible now.

She tried to stay sane.

Tried not to remember the nights they spent under the stars, whispering futures that never came true.

But the hotel retreat broke her.

A shared lodge. A heated look. A moment in the hallway too close, too charged.

She let herself fall, just once. Into the pull. Into him.

….

The bus jerked softly, and Elena’s head snapped up.

For a second, she was disoriented…her breath shallow, her fingers clenched around the leather strap of her worn bag. Her cheeks were damp. Had she been crying in her sleep? Or in the dream she’d fallen into?

No… not a dream. A memory. Her past.

The kind that clung to your skin long after you’d lived it.

She blinked, trying to push the haze from her eyes, the image of Kael’s tired, betrayed face still etched in her mind. It hurt in places she didn’t know had nerve endings.

"Miss?" a voice called gently from the front.

She looked up. The bus was nearly empty now, sunlight spilling in through dusty windows, casting quiet shadows. The driver, a balding man in his late fifties with kind eyes and a slightly bent posture, turned halfway in his seat.

"We’re at the last stop. The station," he said.

Elena’s eyes darted to the side. The small, grey sign read: Velmora Central Transit. Her escape point.

"Oh," she whispered, her voice cracked from sleep, or grief. Maybe both.

“You okay?” he asked, not unkindly.

She hesitated. Then nodded, too quickly.

"Yes. I just…" She bit her bottom lip, glanced outside the window again. “Just tired.”

He studied her for a beat longer. “I see a lot of people come through here. Some are running to things. Most are running from.”

Her chest tightened.

She didn’t respond, but her silence said enough.

The man softened his voice. “Whatever it is, I hope it stops chasing you.”

Elena blinked again. Her lips trembled slightly. “Thank you,” she whispered.

She stood slowly, shoulders heavy. She wasn’t sure if she was running to something anymore. Or if this was just another goodbye she hadn’t prepared for.

As she stepped off the bus, she felt the weight of it all pressing into her spine, the heartbreak, the fear, the lie that had forced her to disappear in the first place.

But more than anything, she felt the hole Kael left behind… the one that no train or town could outrun.

The driver called after her one last time, “Take care of that heart of yours.”

She clutched her chest unconsciously and nodded, her face tilting away so he wouldn’t see the tear that finally fell.

And then she walked toward the station.

Into the unknown.

Into freedom…or something that looked enough like it.