THE MATE THE ROGUE ALPHA WAS MEANT TO KILL

Chapter 18—New Beginings

Elara's POV

I told them at breakfast.

I had not planned to make an announcement about it, I had planned to sit down, eat my food and let it come up naturally if it came up at all, but the second I sat across from Freya she looked at my face and said, "Something happened," and I lasted approximately three seconds before I said, "He asked me to be his girlfriend."

The table went silent for exactly one second.

Then Freya made a sound that was not quite a scream but was in the same family as one, and Leo pointed at me and said, "I knew it. I called it. From day one I called it," and Nyx looked at me with the warmest expression I had ever seen from her and said simply, "Good."

"When?" Freya demanded, leaning forward. "Last night? In the garden? Tell me everything."

"There is not that much to tell," I said.

"There is absolutely that much to tell," Freya said. "He kissed you in the lunch hall in front of everyone and then told you he had a surprise for you and then apparently asked you to be his girlfriend so there is a significant amount to tell, Elara, please."

"He said he liked me," I said. "Properly not casually and I said I liked him too and we agreed to make it official."

Freya stared at me. "That is the least romantic retelling of what sounds like a genuinely romantic moment."

"I am giving you the facts."

"I want the feelings, not the facts."

"The feelings are private," I said.

"We are your best friends," Leo said, in the tone of someone who felt this point had not been sufficiently appreciated.

"The feelings," I said firmly, "are private."

Freya looked at Nyx. Nyx looked back at her. Some silent communication passed between them that I had long since stopped trying to decode, and then Freya turned back to me with the expression of someone who had decided to accept an incomplete victory and move on.

"Fine," she said. "But I want to know one thing."

"What."

"Was the kiss good?"

I looked at my food.

"That is a yes," Leo said immediately.

"That is definitely a yes," Nyx agreed.

"I am not discussing this," I said, and ate my breakfast while the three of them collectively decided to be extremely pleased about my life choices, which was embarrassing and also, if I was being honest, exactly what I had needed.

***

The training field was at the far end of the school grounds, a wide stretch of open grass bordered by trees on two sides and the gymnasium wall on the third, and Kael was already there when I arrived, standing near the centre with two other pack members I recognised from senior year but had never spoken to directly.

He turned when he heard me coming and his expression did the thing it sometimes did when he was making an effort not to look too satisfied about something.

"You came," he said.

"I told you i would," I said, dropping my bag near the edge of the field.

"This is Maren and Dex," he said, gesturing to the two beside him, a girl with her hair pulled back tight and a boy who was built like a wall and had the easy stance of someone very comfortable with physical confrontation. Both of them nodded at me without the usual performance that came with meeting the pack Alpha's attention, which I appreciated.

"We are going to start simple," Kael said, turning back to me. "Just shifting instincts, reaction speed, basic positioning nothing you cannot handle."

"You have not seen me handle anything yet," I said.

"I have a sense," and there was something in the way he said it that was less like flattery and more like an actual observation, and I filed it away without responding.

We moved through the first part of the session at a pace that was challenging without being overwhelming, Kael guiding rather than commanding, making corrections with a straightforwardness that stripped away any awkwardness about the fact that we had a complicated history and replaced it with something more functional. He was good at this, I noticed, the teaching part, the way he read where someone was and adjusted without making them feel behind.

After about forty minutes he called a short rest and the four of us stood at the edge of the field and I drank from my water bottle and felt my wolf humming warmly under my skin the way it did when it had been properly used, which was a feeling I was still getting used to and liked considerably more each time.

"You are stronger than you think," Kael said, standing beside me, looking out at the field.

"You do not have to say that," I said.

"I know," he said. "I am saying it because it is true."

I looked at him for a moment, this version of him that was stripped of the usual performance, and thought that under different circumstances Kael might have been someone I could have genuinely liked without the complication of everything else that came with him.

He seemed to think of something and turned to me with a slight smile. "Come on, let me introduce you to the rest of the pack properly." He reached for my hand to guide me across the field toward where a few more pack members had gathered near the tree line.

His fingers had barely closed around mine when his expression changed.

I followed his gaze.

Ravin was standing at the far edge of the training field with his bag over one shoulder and his eyes on us, and the calm he usually carried everywhere had shifted into something considerably less calm, and Kael was looking at him with an expression that had gone from open to hard in the space of a single breath.

The field went very quiet.