Claimed by the Alpha Who Raised Me

Chapter 3

Kael's POV

Two weeks had passed since I brought her to the cabin, and I had not gone back once. There was no need to. She had everything she needed.

A housekeeper to tend to her, enough money with the liberty to request for more and whatever else she needed.

I took a moment to straighten my coat before stepping into the evening gala. Tonight was politics disguised as celebration, every guest carrying an agenda beneath their polished smiles.

The moment I walked in, I spotted Ronan, my cousin. He greeted me with an easy smile and I exchanged a few polite words before moving through the room. After dealing with a few more guests, Ronan appeared at my side.

"I have to ask," he said, in the particular low voice he used when he wanted to sound casual but wasn't. "Catherine's daughter. You put her in that cabin on the western edge. Why not the main house?"

"Catherine's terms. She didn't want Elowen in the main house."

Ronan wasn’t the type to pry but on this occasion I understood why. Catherine was one of us.

His expression shifted, a hint of displeasure in it.

"She asked you to take the girl in but not to let the family near her?"

I shrugged.

"My birds tell me you haven’t gone back there since."

His birds, meaning his network of spies with which he knows where even the mice of Thornveil have their burrows.

"I've been busy."

"Kael." His voice lost its casual edge. "She's seventeen. She watched her parents die in the way no child should ever and you left her in a cabin with a housekeeper she doesn't know?"

"Forgive me if I suck at babysit—"

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I was glad to use it as an escape from this conversation but when I stared at the screen, it was Maren calling.

“Alpha, come quickly— the girl— she collapsed. We’re on our way to the clin—”

I ended the call and dashed out before she could get the last words out.

By the time I reached the clinic, my lungs burned from the run.

Elowen lay motionless in the narrow hospital bed, looking as though she'd been there for days instead of hours.

Thin. Too thin. A mere shadow from the girl I had left in the cabin a fortnight ago.

The hospital gown hung loosely from her shoulders, her eyes deep in their sockets and her skin lacked life.

My chest tightened at the sight of her and as rare as it was, I felt a sliver of guilt.

I had told myself the arrangement was sufficient to keep her going but it seems I was terribly wrong.

None of my inner turmoil reached my face as I went back out to face Maren.

"Explain."

She flinched and fear oozed of her as she backed away.

"She doesn't eat much. Her blood sugar dropped, that's all."

"That's not what it looks like."

Her voice came apart at the seams. "She might be ill. She sits up all night staring at nothing. If I turn off the lights she screams. She can't stand the smell of meat, the first day I made broth and she threw everything up. She's barely eaten since then, just plain porridge, no real nourishment. Of course her blood sugar would drop."

Her voice went thin and desperate. "She's just too fragile, Alpha Kael."

"Leave.”

Removing her from my presence was the only way to spare her from the wrath her incompetence so deserved. She should have informed me of this, rather than let the girl practically starve.

"But I—"

One hard look and she gulped, bowed her head and practically ran off.

I pushed the door open and went back in.

Elowen was awake now, her face turned toward the window the moment I walked in, shoulders pulling slightly inward. I could see the knobs of her spine through the thin gown and hated how it easily made my heart ache.

I had handled her the way I handled any responsibility I did not want to personally take care of— delegate.

“I thought we agreed to survive or thrive,” I asked as I walked up to her.

“You’re supposed to be like family to me right?” She turned to face me, her eyes swollen and her face drawn and the look in her eyes almost gutted me.

A sheer look of betrayal even if I did not understand why she would look at me like that.

“Technically, yes.”

"Then why leave me with strangers knowing fully well I just lost my—" she sniffed, hard and looked away from me, shaking her head, “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I can’t possibly live with you there. I’m a busy man with a lot of things to do. I can’t tend to you as much as I understand your tragedy,” I give it to her as straight as I can.

I have never been they type to hold hands. I only know how to put weapons in them and teach them to wield it.

This whole territory is new to me.

"I don’t need tending," her lashes trembled as she looked back at me, “just someone to—”

She groaned, reached up and scratched at her chest through the gown frantically.

I lurched forward and grabbed her hands, “stop that.”

She turned her head and our eyes met, our faces close enough that I could feel her warm breath on my face, a pitiful look adorned her face and her voice became even softer.

“Can I live where you live instead?”