Chapter 46

Nicholas’s POV

The contract lay across my desk like a battle map. Kevin’s signature stared at me from the bottom margin, a neat flourish meant to look effortless. It almost fooled me.

“Stall it,” I said.

Dan blinked from the other side of the desk. “Sir?”

“The Blue Lake development project,” I clarified, tapping the page with one blunt fingertip. “Our legal department needs to ‘review’ the land title, then the environmental impact, then the shipping routes. Pull every lever. Slow it down.”

Dan hesitated. “He’s already sent crews to the site. He’ll be furious.”

“I’m counting on it.”

Norman shifted inside me, a low ripple of fur and teeth. You’re playing games again.

I leaned back, staring at the paper. “I’m drawing lines.”

She isn’t a contract, Norman growled. She’s our mate.

“She’s Kevin’s guest,” I said aloud. “And Kevin thinks he can treat my pack like a revolving door. No.”

Dan cleared his throat. “Do you want me to inform the board?”

“No.” I swiveled my chair to face the window, dismissing him with a flick of my fingers. “This stays quiet.”

He left without another word.

The moment the door clicked shut, Norman surged harder, prowling the edges of my mind.

She stood between you and him. She said ‘three months.’

“I’m aware.”

Then why keep her here by force?

I gripped the armrest until the wood creaked. “Because she’s lying. She’s here to use me, use the mate bond, to wake Sharon and then leave. And Kevin—” My lip curled. “Kevin wants her like he always has. He’ll come for her again unless I make sure he can’t.”

You don’t know that.

“I do.”

Norman’s growl vibrated my bones. You’re becoming what you hated.

I shoved him down, pulling the phone toward me. “Get me PR.”

By noon my team had planted the seed.

“Unconfirmed reports” of a rogue attack at Blue Lake’s southern border. A “disturbance” near the dam construction. A “supply shortage” at the clinic. Nothing overt, but just enough to whisper disaster in Kevin’s ear until he couldn’t ignore it.

“Anonymous sources,” the first post read on the pack forum. “Blue Lake Pack in crisis—Alpha stretched thin.”

Norman snorted. Childish.

I skimmed the headlines without a flicker of guilt. “Childish works.”

You’re lying to her, to yourself.

I shut the screen and strode to the training yard. Outside, winter sunlight carved the stones into hard geometry. My wolves sparred in pairs, claws sheathing and unsheathing, steel glinting in their hands.

For a moment I let the rhythm of combat steady me. Strike, parry, pivot. Clean lines. Control.

But then I saw her across the courtyard, Esther in a navy coat, head bent over a clipboard, hair falling like ink across her cheek. She was speaking with a healer about some supply list. She looked tired, brittle around the eyes, but she still radiated that stubborn core of light that had always infuriated me.

Norman went quiet.

She didn’t look at me. She didn’t even seem to notice my presence.

I found my fists tightening anyway. Kevin had put that wary set in her shoulders. Kevin had taught her to flinch.

I turned away before my temper could show.

That evening I sat with my advisers pretending to review trade policy. In reality, my mind was on the phone tucked under the folder. One tap and I could watch the feed from our spies stationed along Blue Lake’s borders.

“Still nothing,” Dan reported quietly when the others had left. “No real attack. Just the chatter we planted.”

“He’ll smell smoke and assume fire,” I murmured.

Dan looked at me carefully. “Sir…this is risky. If Kevin finds out we falsified the reports—”

“He won’t.”

Norman muttered, Too many lies.

“Dismissed,” I told Dan.

Hours later, the message arrived.

Kevin’s Beta had been sighted riding hard toward their border. Orders were being barked. Crews pulled off the construction project.

I smiled without meaning to. “He’s going home.”

Norman shifted. And what does that make you feel?

“Safe.”

Not proud. Not satisfied. Just ‘safe.’

I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. My temples throbbed.

Safe. That was the word. With Kevin gone, the palace felt quieter. The air around Esther no longer bristled with rival scents.

But underneath, a sour taste lingered.

I found myself walking the upper halls where the moonlight cut through the tall windows. Below, the courtyard slept under frost. Beyond the gates, the forest stretched black and endless.

Norman padded at my heels inside my mind. You want her. But not like this.

“She won’t stay unless she has to.”

Then let her choose.

“She already chose.”

Norman’s growl was almost mournful. You’re lying to yourself again.

I paused by the window overlooking the wing where she slept. Light glowed under her door—midnight and she was still awake.

I imagined her at the desk, hunched over medical charts for Carl, the crease between her brows deepening. All of it for a boy she claimed wasn’t mine.

“I’m keeping them alive,” I whispered. “They don’t even see it.”

You’re keeping yourself from losing them, Norman countered.

The next morning, Dan entered with a report.

“Blue Lake Pack’s council has requested Alpha Kevin return immediately to handle the crisis,” he said. “He left before dawn.”

I signed the last page of the fake inspection request and pushed it aside. “Good.”

Dan hesitated. “Sir, with all respect…do you think she’ll thank you for this?”

I let out a short laugh, no humor in it. “I don’t need her thanks.”

“She’ll find out eventually.”

“She won’t.”

Dan left, the door clicking softly behind him.

Norman rose again, pressing at my skin. What now?

“Now,” I said, “we see what happens when she has no one left to run to.”

And if she hates you for it?

“She already does.”

Then what’s the point?

I stared at my hands. Big, scarred, steady. These were the hands of a king who’d killed to keep his throne. Yet last night they’d itched not to kill, but to pull her closer.

The thought scraped my throat raw.

I rose and crossed to the window again. Below, in the courtyard, she walked alone, shoulders hunched against the cold. No Kevin beside her. No Beta flanking her. Just her and that stubborn stride.

She paused by the fountain, tipping her face up to the weak sunlight. For an instant her guard slipped, and I saw exhaustion etched deep, the way she pressed a palm over her heart like it hurt.

Norman murmured, She’s hurting.

“I know.”

And you’re pushing.

“I know.”

I turned from the window, unable to watch anymore.

By late afternoon a message arrived from Kevin himself, curt and full of fury: Had to leave. Handle our business in my absence. This isn’t over.

I set the phone down slowly. My reflection in the black screen stared back at me, eyes like a stranger’s.

Norman’s voice came soft now, almost a sigh. You got what you wanted.

I walked to the bar, poured whiskey, and stared at the amber liquid.

“Did I?” I asked the empty room.

I drank it down, the burn running like guilt through my chest.

That night I dreamt of her.

Not as she had been between me and Kevin, but as she’d been years ago: dark eyes fierce, hair whipping in the wind, wolflight haloing her. She had been all fire then, all promise. My mate.

In the dream she turned from me, carrying two small children in her arms, disappearing into a fog I couldn’t breach.

I woke clawing at the sheets, breath ragged.

Norman lay silent in my mind.

Morning again. The palace corridors whispered with the news of Kevin’s departure. Some guards smirked; others looked worried. I walked among them, mask firmly in place.

In the council chamber I handled routine decrees, but my mind never left her. Alone now, cut off from Kevin, she would either run or bend. I told myself I didn’t care which.

Yet when evening fell, I found myself pacing my office rather than summoning her.

You want to see if she’ll come to you on her own, Norman observed.

“Maybe.”

Or you’re afraid to see what you’ve done.

“Maybe.”

I ended up at the window again, the courtyard awash in silver light.

She crossed below, heading toward the infirmary wing. Even at a distance I saw the slump in her shoulders, the exhaustion dragging at her steps.

I pressed my forehead to the cool glass.

“I need her,” I whispered.

Norman’s voice was almost gentle. Then stop playing war games.

I closed my eyes. “I don’t know how.”

When the clock struck midnight, I finally sat, staring at the money transfer receipt still lying on my desk. It had been meant as leverage, as proof that I controlled the board.

Instead it looked like a confession.

I rubbed my thumb over the ink until it smeared.

“She’ll hate me for this,” I said aloud.

Norman answered only with a low, tired growl.

I leaned back, letting the chair creak.

Across the compound, a light flicked off—her room going dark at last.

For a heartbeat, I saw us from the outside: a king smirking over a forged crisis, manipulating borders, clawing at a woman who wanted only to save her child.

I hated the picture.

And yet a bitter, crooked smile tugged at my mouth anyway, because the ploy had worked.

Kevin was gone.

Esther was here.

I dropped my head into my hands.

“I hate myself,” I whispered.

Norman curled silent in my chest, offering no argument, because it was true.