Sold to the Alpha King

Chapter 9 — Kael's Questions

The library smelled like old paper and cedar, with something sharper underneath—leather polish, maybe, or the chemical tang of preservative sprayed across ancient spines. I ran my fingers along a row of books I couldn't read, titles in scripts I didn't recognize, and tried to remember the last time I'd been somewhere that felt this quiet.

Three days since Gareth had held me against his chest in the aftermath of the full moon. Three days since I'd seen his tears.

I hadn't touched my cover story since arriving.

That was dangerous. Sloppy. The kind of leak that gets humans killed.

"You're not a nursing student."

I turned. Kael stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, head tilted like he was examining a specimen under glass. He looked like Gareth—same sharp cheekbones, same silver-shot black hair—but where Gareth was all restrained violence and coiled tension, Kael wore his wolf loose, easy, like a coat he'd grown into decades ago. His smile was warm. His eyes were not.

"Excuse me?"

"Nursing student." He pushed off the frame and walked toward me, boots soundless on the Persian rug. "That's your story. You were finishing your clinical rotations when the rogues attacked your caravan. You volunteered because you knew triage. Gareth believed it because he wants to believe something soft about you." He stopped three feet away. "But I read your file. Twenty-two years old, top of your class at Northwood University, three semesters of clinical experience. Know what you did in the third semester? Pediatric trauma rotation."

"I did. That's what I—"

"You dropped out four weeks in." His voice was still warm. Still pleasant. Like he was discussing the weather. "After your sister died. Your grades cratered. You stopped showing up. They gave you two more semesters to finish but you never went back. So you're not a nursing student. You're a *former* nursing student, which is a very different thing, and I want to know why you're still telling people you're in school when you haven't attended a class in six months."

I held his gaze. Let my face do the thing—chin trembling slightly, eyes going glassy, the mask of the fragile human sliding into place. "It's easier than explaining that I dropped out because I couldn't stop crying long enough to study."

*He thought: She's good. Almost too good. The tremor's in the right place but the timing's off.*

Kael's expression softened, but not his eyes. "I'm not your enemy, Lyra."

"Then why does it feel like you're trying to find cracks in me?"

"I already found them." He stepped closer, close enough that I could smell him—sandalwood and something metallic, like old blood. "I want to know how deep they go."

The library hummed with silence. A clock ticked somewhere above us. I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears and I hated that he could probably hear it too, that he was cataloging every flutter as evidence.

"You're more interesting than you look, human." His smile widened. "That's dangerous."

I smiled back, small and brittle and nothing. "I'm not dangerous."

He laughed—a real laugh, surprised out of him, and for a second I saw something like approval flicker across his face. "No. Of course you're not."

He turned and walked toward the door. Paused with his hand on the frame.

"One more thing." He didn't look back. "Gareth bought you. You're his property, officially, which means you have his protection. But property can be stolen. Broken. Misplaced." His voice dropped. "If I find out you're here to hurt him, I'll make sure you're misplaced somewhere no one ever finds you."

He left.

I stood alone in the library with my heart hammering and my hands steady and a cold clarity settling into my bones like the first drop of winter.

*He knows something. Not everything, but enough.*

I looked down at my fingers where they gripped the edge of the bookshelf. White-knuckled. Trembling.

Good. That was the right response. That was the human response.

I let them shake. Let them shake until the door clicked shut behind him. Then I turned back to the books, pulled one off the shelf at random, and opened it to a page I couldn't read.

I wasn't reading.

I was thinking about Viktor. About the eastern tower. About the arrow that had nearly taken my head.

And about the single sentence Kael hadn't said but his eyes had screamed: *I know you're not here to stay. I just don't know who you're working for yet.*

I turned the page. The paper was so old it crackled.

I needed a new place to hide my notes.