Claimed by the Alpha Who Raised Me

Chapter 6

Elowen's POV

For the rest of my week in the clinic, Kael showed up every night with documents and sat beside my bed signing them until I fell asleep, every night his scent settled into the room with him, cedar and smoke and a sharp winter freshness that my body became accustomed to and the scratch of his pen put me under faster than any painkiller.

On the day I was discharged, Kael didn't come. Ronan walked in with his coat slung over one shoulder and that easy grin already in place.

"He's tied up in a council session," Ronan said before I could ask, picking up my bag before I could reach it. "Asked me to bring you home first."

In the car, his tone shifted into the casual warmth I was starting to recognise as his default. "Sere, I've got plans tonight. I'd love to bring you along, but if Kael found out he'd gut me. So I'm taking you straight to the cabin."

"Ronan, are you scared of him too?"

He gave a visible shudder that was only half joking. "Every one of us younger cousins is. But honestly there's more respect than fear. Wherever Kael is, that's solid ground."

"Did he say if he's coming back tonight?"

"Didn't mention it. New Alpha with a territory to run and a hundred problems on his desk. Probably won't make it."

I went quiet, then asked before I could think better of it. "Does he go to the same kind of gatherings you do?"

Ronan laughed. "Kid, stay out of grown-up business."

Ronan dropped me off with a few reminders about locking the door, then headed off to his evening. I stood in the doorway and watched his car disappear down the trail the same way I'd watched Kael's disappear weeks ago.

The moment the door closed, Sable meowed and bounded straight into my arms.

"How did you get so heavy?"

A glance at her food bowl answered the question. He'd been filling it to the brim, three days' worth piled into a dish meant for one meal.

I could picture Kael crouched over it, dumping in an entire sack of dried fish because measuring portions for a cat was beneath a man who ran a territory. The image made me laugh, and for a second the cabin felt warm.

The cabin smelled like dust and cold stone, no cedar, no smoke, no trace of him left behind. Sable purred against my lap but a cat's purr only fills so much of a room and the rest of it stayed hollow.

I tried cooking because I'd promised him I could. I found vegetables in the cold store, got as far as heating oil before the first thing burned, then the second. Smoke filled the kitchen so thick I had to throw open every window and fan the air with a cloth. By the time I gave up the pan was ruined. I cleaned the mess, mopped the floor, and told myself at least nothing had actually caught fire.

By the time the moon hung white above the pines and the lamp had burned low, I gave up waiting and called him.

Not only was I now used to sleeping in his presence with his soothing scent acting as a nasal lullaby, I could not sleep here by myself.

It pulsed warm in my palm three times before the connection opened.

"Hello?" I said softly, since he did not say anything. "Are you coming here tonight? I really can’t—”

“No,” he replied curtly.

I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at it, not because I was shocked but because it seemed like I had heard him twice.

I scoffed as realisation hit me and I felt a rush of warmth fill me as I rushed towards the door and opened it. He was outside.

Kael stood on the other side with his dark coat over one arm. Cedar and smoke reached me first, layered with a trace of alcohol that told me wherever he'd been had involved drinking.

He stepped inside and set a wrapped bundle on the table.

“Welcome,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

His eyes swept the kitchen and landed on the bin where the charred remains of my cooking sat in plain sight. I'd cleaned every surface and opened every window, but I'd forgotten about the bin.

"Did you cook?" he asked without turning around.

I lifted my cup of warm water and took a sip. "I just tried a few vegetables."

"More like you charred them," he frowned and turned his eyes away from the bin. “Open the windows.”

He unwrapped the bundle as I moved, a covered pot of clear soup and a stack of fresh bread rolls still warm from wherever he'd come from, and tapped the table once. I pulled out a chair and sat. The soup was light and sweet with root vegetables, and when I tore into the first roll the soft centre melted across my tongue and I realised how hungry I'd been without noticing.

"Elowen."

He said my name when I was finishing the last roll, his tone calm and even.

I looked up. He was leaning against the wall with an unlit cigarette between his fingers, rolling it the way he I’m beginning to notice he always does when in thought.

"What happened to your parents can't be changed. When wolves make the choices they made, consequences follow. You had no part in any of it." The cigarette stilled. "Whether you accept it or not, you have to keep moving forward. Understand?"

I nodded because he was right even though hearing it out loud made my chest ache.

"Before everything happened, your mother reached out through the bond and asked me to take you in. I refused."

"I understand. I'm a burden."

"That wasn't it." He shot me a look sharp enough to make me flinch. "If you were a boy I could have sent you to train with the border patrols. But you're not."

"Girls can train with the patrols too—"

"Coarse fabric gives you a rash that covers your entire chest. You'd last half a day in patrol leathers."

I closed my mouth because he had a point and I hated that he had a point.

"What I'm saying is that I don't know how to take care of a girl. And clearly I haven't done it well."

The alcohol must have loosened him because I couldn't imagine him saying anything that honest while sober. Beneath the cold voice and sharp tongue, he wasn't all bad.

"You do have a few redeeming qualities," I murmured.

He didn't call me on it. So I pushed while his guard was down. "Does this mean you're moving in?"

Kael flicked his lighter open, then snapped it shut before the flame touched the cigarette. "How are your studies?"

He changed the topic.

"They're fine." I indulged him.

"Did you have friends back in Moonhollow?"

The question hit a nerve I wasn't ready for. I'd had two friends once, Caelan and Mira, close enough that I thought nothing could break it. After my family fell their parents pulled them away so fast it was like I'd never existed.

“Not anymore,” I replied as I scooped sable up and hugged her for comfort, fighting back the tears pricking my eyes.

Kael frowned, lit the cigarette, took a slow drag, and let the smoke curl out through the open window while he watched me with narrowed eyes.

"So heartbroken," he said quietly. "I take it you had a little boyfriend back there."