Alpha's Regret: The Luna He Betrayed

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

KIERAN

I stormed out of my room, my wolf was literally clawing at the edge of my consciousness with the kind of desperation I hadn't felt since the night Seraphina ran.

Something was wrong and I knew it. Every instinct I possessed was screaming danger, and the mate bond, that I shared with Seraphina, who had been actively blocking it for years and it has gone dormant for five years was suddenly alive with distress signals I couldn't ignore.

The hotel corridor seemed like a blur to me as I made my way towards Lucas's room that were three doors down.

I had come to Millbrook with Seraphina's older brother as a favor to him, though the favor had been disguised as one to me.

Lucas had been convinced that seeing his sister happy with another man would finally allow me to move on, to accept a different mate and secure the succession of my kingdom.

He'd been wrong about a lot of things.

I didn't bother knocking at all. The door gave way under my fist, breaking from its hinges as I burst into the room.

The scene that greeted me would have been amusing under different circumstances, after it was Lucas naked and tangled with two equally naked women, his face filled with both shock at being walked in and embarrassment at me seeing him in his birthday suit.

"What the hell, Kieran?" he demanded, scrambling to cover himself with a sheet. "We had a deal. You were supposed to give me until morning to—"

"Get dressed," I cut him off, my voice carrying the authority that made Alpha wolves twice his age submit without question. "Now."

One of the women, who was a brunette with artificial curves, clearly having done a boob job and an ass job looked up at me with recognition dawning in her eyes. She seemed vaguely familiar to me as I knew I had seen her just recently.

It was the blonde from my room, Jessica or Jennifer, whatever her name was. She must have come here after I kicked her out, probably looking for consolation or revenge or both.

"Oh," she breathed, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "It's the king who can't satisfy a woman. Did you change your mind about needing company?"

I ignored her completely, my attention focused on Lucas, who was finally realizing that I was being serious about this and not just trying to pull one on him.

He'd known me long enough to recognize when I was operating in crisis mode.

"What happened?" he asked, already reaching for his clothes to wear, his mind ready to deal with any new unwanted problems that I might have come across.

"Seraphina called," I said, and watched his face go pale.

"Something's wrong. We need to get to her house immediately."

Lucas paused in pulling on his pants, his expression shifting from concern to frustration. "Kieran, that's exactly what we're here to avoid. The whole point of this trip was for you to see that she's moved on, that she's happy with her mate. We agreed that after you saw her settled life, you'd finally let her go.

"And we agreed that you'd sleep with someone tonight to prove you could move on from whatever pathetic torch you're carrying for my sister," one of the women added spitefully. "Instead, you threw me out the moment your phone rang."

I turned to look at her properly for the first time, and she shrank back under the weight of my stare. "Get out," I said quietly, and something in my tone made both women scramble for their clothes without another word.

"That wasn't part of our deal," Lucas protested as the door slammed behind them.

"The deal's off," I snapped, my patience finally snapping, at his words. He was still insistent on making me abandon Seraphina, convinced that I was only hurting myself by waiting.

"She's in danger, Lucas. I can feel it."

He stared at me for a long moment, looking both conflicted and worried. As Seraphina's brother, he loved her fiercely, but he'd also spent years convinced that her staying with me would only bring her pain and was all in for her leaving. Their father, Vincent Blackwood, had shared that conviction—had been relieved when she'd run rather than go through with our wedding. But as my best friend, he knew that I was seriously in love with her for years even before we were forced in an arranged marriage so he knew what hell I was going through suffering from an unrequited love.

"Feel it how?" he asked finally. "You haven't spoken to her in five years. The mate bond should be dormant by now, especially since she's marked by another male."

"She isn't marked," I said sounding absolutely certain about that. "If she were, I'd know. The bond would be severed completely."

Lucas finished dressing in silence, not saying anything else to me , but I could see him processing this information. He'd assumed, as everyone had, that Seraphina's marriage to Marcus Sullivan, meant that she had gotten marked by Sullivan and had also marked him in return. The fact that it hadn't raised questions he clearly didn't want to examine.

"Even if she's not marked," he said carefully, "that doesn't mean she's in danger. Maybe she just—"

"Her husband answered her phone," I interrupted him, trying to remain patient. I understood what he was doing and I loved him for that but the only reason why I hadn't punched him was because he just cared about me being hurt again. "He had no idea who I was until I identified myself. Then there was whispering, an argument, and when she finally got on the line..." I ran a hand through my hair, trying to organize my thoughts, taking a deep breath as I stared at his eyes.

"She sounded wrong, Lucas. Scared. And there was something else, another woman's voice in the background."

Lucas went very still, hearing this, his eyebrows raised in confusion. "Another woman?"

"Her husband has a mistress," I said, and watched my friend's face darken with protective fury. "I could hear her in the background, and Seraphina... she didn't sound like herself. She sounded like someone who'd been pushed too far."

"Son of a b***h," Lucas muttered, grabbing his jacket. "If that bastard is cheating on her—"

"It's worse than cheating," I said, heading for the door. "Something's wrong, Lucas. Really wrong. We need to go now."

We made our way through the hotel corridor at a pace just short of running. The elevator took forever, each second stretching like an eternity while my wolf paced anxiously inside my chest. By the time we reached the parking garage, I was ready to shift and run the distance to her house.

"I'll drive," Lucas said, but I was already climbing behind the wheel of the rental car.

"No," I said, starting the engine before he'd even closed his door. "You navigate."

What followed was a drive that would have made professional racers nervous. Lucas gripped the dashboard with white knuckles but didn't tell me to slow down. It was almost like he could sense the urgency and could see something was wrong as well.

"Turn left here," he directed, his voice tight, with a feeling that I didn't want to examine yet. "It's the blue house with the white trim, three blocks down."

I could smell it before I saw it. The scent of fear and violence and something else that made my wolf snarl with rage. Silver. Someone had used silver in that house, and recently.

The car hadn't even stopped moving when I threw it into pack and bolted for the front door. It was locked, of course, but that wasn't a challenge for me. The door exploded inward under my shoulder, hanging on tight to the hinges.

"Seraphina!" I roared, my voice echoing through the house.

Nothing.

We took the stairs three at a time, and that's when I heard it—the soft sound of movement from behind a closed door at the end of the hall. The master bedroom.

I didn't bother with the handle. The door splintered under my fist, and the scene that greeted me on the other side made everything inside me turn to ice and fire simultaneously.