CHAPTER FIVE: THE DINNER
1091 Words
The invitation to dinner at the Silvercrest Alpha's main estate was not optional. It was not framed as optional, but the phrasing was so smooth and the presentation so formal that refusing without cause would have cost me political ground I could not yet afford to lose.
I left the children with Adira, whom I had brought from the Free Lands along with Bruno and my own guards, because I would not trust this territory's staffing for my children's care. Not yet.
"We will be fine," Adira told me, very firmly, the way she told me everything. She was holding Mira, who was attempting to tell her a story that had approximately nine separate opening scenes and no clear protagonist.
I put on the black dress. The one that came to my knee and had a structured collar and communicated, very clearly, that I was at dinner because it was tactically necessary and not because I was delighted to be here.
The estate was exactly as I remembered and completely different. Polished and cold and enormous, full of the kind of deliberate grandeur that said we are not trying to impress you while trying very hard to impress you.
Caden's father sat at the head of the table. Older now. His hair had gone almost entirely white at the temples and his eyes were the same and they moved to me the moment I entered the room with the particular expression of a man sorting through a memory.
"I know you," he said.
I sat where Mr. Robinson indicated and placed my napkin across my lap.
"You were that omega girl," he said, "Graham's little friend."
"Caden," I said, correcting the name without emphasis. "And yes."
"Sawyer now," he said, drawing out the name. "Married."
I smiled. I said nothing.
The woman next to him was young. New wife, according to Bruno's notes. She watched me the way people watch something they cannot quite identify.
On Caden's other side sat a woman in a dark blue dress with precise posture and the kind of controlled beauty that requires maintenance. She had not looked at me since I sat down.
Bruno had confirmed it in the car on the way over.
Kaylie Robinson. Caden's mate. Royal Beta's daughter.
Mr. Robinson himself sat across from her, his expression professionally neutral.
The food was impeccable. It always had been. The gap between what the Alpha's table ate and what the omega district ate had apparently not changed in five years.
Caden's father leaned back in his chair with the ease of a man who believed he was the most interesting person in any room he entered. "So tell me. How did you go from nothing to all of this? You left the pack with what? A bag?"
"And a plan," I said.
He liked that. He made a small sound of amusement. "A plan. And here you are, with conditions and a ship full of luggage."
"Here I am," I said.
"With children," he added, watching my face.
"Three of them," I said.
Kaylie's fork moved very slightly on her plate.
"Our table is honored," he said, and he was already moving on, the way men like him move on, using words and setting them aside. He turned to Kaylie. "At least someone managed to produce more than one, hmm? Some of us are still waiting."
The table went quiet. The very specific quiet that surrounds a comment so precisely aimed it lands before anyone can deflect it.
Kaylie lifted her water glass.
Caden reached across and covered her hand with his. It was a small movement, quick and deliberate, and it shut the table down more completely than anything he could have said. He looked at his father with a calm that had iron underneath it.
"We're not discussing that at dinner," he said.
His father spread his hands with a shrug that said fine, fine, and returned to his food.
I looked down at my plate and cut a piece of steak.
So Kaylie could not conceive. And Caden was covering for her in front of his own father. There was loyalty in that. Whatever else he was, whatever he had done, there was something in him that protected the people he had decided to protect.
I had seen that quality in him when we were young. It had made me trust him.
The thought had a quiet ache attached to it that I did not examine.
Kaylie looked at me directly for the first time all evening. Her voice was very composed.
"The scent from the Free Lands is quite strong," she said. "I do apologize, but my wolf doesn't settle well with it. I hope you'll excuse me."
She set down her napkin and stood.
She left the table with exactly the right amount of dignity, which told me she had planned the exit and the comment was deliberate and the I do apologize meant something very different from an apology.
I watched her go. I looked at Caden.
He was watching me watch her.
I folded my napkin and pushed back my chair.
"The dinner was excellent," I said to the table. "Thank you for the welcome. I should get back to my children."
I picked up my purse. I was three steps from the door when my phone rang.
The number on the screen was the one I had saved under Adira - emergency only.
My stomach dropped before she said a word.
"Ms. Sera." Her voice was wrong. Too careful. "I've looked everywhere in the house. I've checked every room. I've looked in the garden." She paused. "I cannot find Mira."
The floor held. The walls held. My face held.
Behind me, I heard a chair push back.
I turned. Caden was standing.
He had heard. Alpha hearing. He had heard every word.
His face was doing something I had not seen on it since the day I left this pack. Something unguarded and immediate, as if the control had been punctured by a sound, a small voice on a phone, a name he had no right to feel anything about.
"My car," he said to Mr. Robinson, already moving. "Now."
I did not argue. I did not have time to argue.
I walked out of the estate beside him into the dark, my heart slamming against my ribs, Mira's name running through my head like a current.
And I thought, with cold clarity, that I had prepared for many things.
I had not prepared for this.
- Writer
