Claimed by the Alpha Who Raised Me

Chapter 3: Never Trust an Alpha's Word

Elowen's POV

I lowered my gaze. "It's easy to get tired driving at night. I thought I could talk to you so you'd stay awake."

His hand stilled on the wheel and his eyes flicked to the mirror again, and I could tell he hadn't expected me to speak at all, let alone out of concern for him.

"I want to smoke," he said, rolling the unlit cigarette between his fingers. "Find my lighter. It's in the compartment."

That restless habit didn't match the iron discipline everyone said defined him, and watching him fidget with it in the dark made him seem almost human.

"No," I said, surprising myself with how steady my voice came out. "You shouldn't smoke while driving."

His brow lifted and the corner of his mouth twitched in what might have been amusement instead of irritation. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen. I'll turn eighteen at the end of the year." The last time we'd met I'd been eight, so ten years had passed since I'd sobbed in his bed while he threatened me with hounds. "And you?"

"Twenty-eight," he said flatly.

Ten years between us, a decade of war and classified missions and whatever else had put that coldness in his face, and now this man was the only person standing between me and nothing.

That brief exchange eased the air between us, not much, just enough for me to try smiling at him, but my lips wouldn't hold the shape so I ended up pressing them together and looking away.

Kael noticed, and instead of a cutting remark he spoke in a voice quieter than I'd ever heard from him, stripped of that commanding edge and almost careful.

"The dead are gone, Elowen. The living have to keep going." He paused. "Stay with me. I'll make sure you're taken care of."

I didn't cry, I just sat there in the dark with the road rushing beneath us and the pine forest pressing close on both sides and those words settling into my chest like the first real warmth I'd felt in weeks, and I believed him because I had no one else left to believe.

He took me to a cabin on the far edge of Thornveil territory, not the estate, not anywhere near him, just a small stone house ringed by pines so tall they blocked out the sky. He walked me to the door, set my bag inside, and introduced the woman waiting in the kitchen as Maren, my housekeeper. She looked me over once with flat uninterested eyes and turned back to the counter.

Kael pressed a leather pouch of coins into her hand and told her it should cover everything through the end of my schooling. "If you need anything, send word through Maren."

I opened my mouth to ask if he was staying, but he was already walking back toward the carriage and I just stood in the doorway watching until the trees closed behind him and the sound of hooves faded and there was nothing left but wind in the pines.

On the second day I heard hooves on the trail and went straight to the window, but it was only a patrol rider. On the third day I pressed my face to the glass, but it was a merchant's cart. By the fourth morning I stopped going to the window.

I sat across from Maren at breakfast and asked. "When is he coming back?"

She didn't look up from the bread she was slicing. "He's not. Moved back to the main estate."

"Did he say when he'd visit?"

"He didn't say anything about you."

I nodded and picked up my spoon and stared at the porridge until it went cold.

That night Maren blew out the lanterns at sundown and went to her room, and the cabin went dark. I pulled the blanket to my chin and told myself to breathe, that it was just an empty room, just quiet, but it didn't work.

The darkness pressed in and my chest locked up and suddenly I wasn't in the cabin anymore. I was back in my parents' chamber with my hand on the latch because I'd heard the sound and come running, and the copper smell filled my nose so thick I could taste it and my mother was on the stone floor with red spreading beneath her, still twitching, still making that wet gurgling noise that would never leave my ears.

I screamed until my throat tore and then I kept screaming over the echo because the silence underneath was worse, the silence was where my parents were and I couldn't go there, I couldn't be in that room again, I couldn't.

I don't know how long it lasted. All I know is that when the screaming finally stopped and the room started coming back to me in pieces I wasn't in the bed anymore. I was on the floor in the corner with my back against the stone wall and my knees pulled tight to my chest and my fingernails bloody from clawing at the sheets or the floor or myself, I couldn't tell which.

There was a light on the table by the door, a small glow, warm and steady. I didn't know when it had gotten there or who had brought it, but I was alone and Maren's door down the hall was shut and no one was coming.

I sat there watching that glow until my breathing slowed and my hands stopped shaking enough to pull the blanket off the bed and wrap it around myself. Whatever that light was, I never let it go out again.

The next morning Maren set a bowl of bone broth in front of me and the rich heavy smell hit before I even picked up the spoon. My stomach clenched so hard I doubled forward and the rough fabric of my shirt dragged across the raw skin on my chest where the cheap weave had already rubbed me bloody.

The sting on top of the nausea sent me stumbling to the basin and everything came up. Behind me Maren said, "You need to eat," and I couldn't answer because another wave hit and I was bent over the basin with tears running down my face from the effort alone.

When it finally stopped I stayed there with my forehead against the cool rim and my arms shaking, and I remember thinking this was what it felt like to have no one, to be seventeen and sick in a stranger's kitchen with not a single person who cared enough to ask if I was okay.

She switched to plain porridge after that, thin and barely salted, and I ate it because it was the only thing that stayed down.

About a week in I tried to cook for myself. I found root vegetables in the pantry and a pot over the cold hearth and thought if I could just make a simple stew I'd be doing one thing on my own. But my hands shook so badly I couldn't strike the flint, and on the fifth try my arm gave out and I dropped it on the stone floor where it cracked in half.

Maren appeared in the doorway. "What are you doing?"

"Cooking."

She looked at the cracked flint and the untouched vegetables and lit the hearth herself and made the same thin porridge while I sat at the table and watched.

That night I tried to write Kael a letter. I dipped the quill and the ink bled into a shapeless dot because I didn't know what to say. Come back, maybe. Or, You promised. Or just, I'm scared. None of it seemed like the kind of thing you could say to a man like Kael, so I folded the blank parchment and put it away.

I went to bed that night and closed my eyes and my father's face flashed so bright my body jerked, and then my mother reaching for me and missing, and the sound, and the silence. I woke up screaming and no one came. The next night was the same and the night after that and eventually I stopped lying down and just sat against the wall watching the flame until dawn.

By the end of the second week I could feel what no sleep and no real food had done to me.

That morning I stood in the kitchen reaching for a cup on the shelf because Maren was out back and I was thirsty and I was not going to wait for a woman who didn't care about me to pour me water. My hand shook so badly the cup rattled against the shelf before I even got a grip on it, and the rash on my chest pulled and stung where the rough fabric had cracked the skin open.

My fingers closed around the handle and the room tilted sideways without warning, and the cup slipped and shattered somewhere far below me and my knees buckled and the stone floor rushed up and the last thing I thought before everything went dark was that nobody even knew I was falling.