Chapter 151 - 0151
Kaelen POV
"What?!"
Raven and I shouted at the exact same time.
My eyes flew wide as the word kidnap echoed through my head over and over again, blaring like an alarm I couldn’t shut off.
Raven immediately turned back to Ella, her expression softening with frantic concern.
"Lorelei, you don’t need to lie to protect him. I know you’re terrified, but I’m here now. I promise I’ll protect you no matter..."
"You should be extremely careful with your next words," I interrupted, my voice dropping into something dangerously quiet as I fixed Raven with a hard glare. Every word coming out of her mouth was filling Ella’s head with absolute garbage, and my patience had already run out. "I am not a patient man, and right now, you’re standing on very thin ice."
The warning was as clear as it could possibly be.
Think very carefully before you speak, because your next sentence might be your last.
"I’m telling the truth!" Ella blurted, her eyes flickering toward mine for the briefest second before she looked away just as quickly.
That tiny, nervous glance made my heart pound against my ribs.
I didn’t understand a single fucking thing that was happening. Nothing made sense anymore, and yet an ugly knot of anxiety had already settled deep in my stomach.
"The Alpha isn’t responsible for what happened to me," Ella continued, reaching over to grip Raven’s hand tightly. "Whatever you think he did... he didn’t do it."
But Raven only stared at her in complete disbelief.
"How can you be so sure?" she asked. "The fact that you’re here, inside his estate, is already enough proof that he’s involved."
She threw the accusation at me without the slightest hesitation, completely disregarding the fact that she was standing in front of the very man she was accusing.
But Ella shook her head so hard that strands of her hair slipped across her face.
"I have proof," she whispered.
"You have proof?" Raven repeated, her voice filled with confusion.
Ella nodded quickly before slowly opening her hand, revealing the small earpiece resting in the center of her palm.
Carefully, Raven picked it up, turning it over between her fingers as a deep frown settled on her face.
I watched the exchange silently for a moment until my patience finally snapped.
That’s it...
I couldn’t take another second of this.
Everyone else seemed to know what was going on while I stood there in my own damn office, completely in the dark like an idiot.
"Ella..." I ground out through gritted teeth, my fists clenching so tightly that my claws pierced my own palms. A slow drop of blood slipped from the wound and splattered onto the floor. "Explain yourself right now. What the fuck is going on, and why the fuck does she keep calling you Lorelei?"
Finally, Ella looked up at me.
Her chest rose and fell with uneven breaths as she swallowed hard, her eyes searching mine.
"Because I am," she said quietly. "My real name... my actual name is Lorelei. Not Ella."
The confession settled over the room like a suffocating weight.
Instead of making anything clearer, it only threw my mind into even greater chaos.
"That doesn’t make any damn sense," I snapped, barely sparing Raven a glance as she placed the earpiece into her ear, listening to whatever recording was stored on it. "You are Ella. Your criminal file says you..."
"The file is wrong!" she interrupted, taking a desperate step toward me.
She barely made it a foot before Raven shot out an arm and caught her by the wrist, stopping her in place, causing a low, guttural growl to tear from my chest before I could stop it.
For some reason, the sight of another person holding her back scraped against every instinct I had. What made it even worse was that Ella actually stopped, allowing Raven to keep her from coming any closer to me.
"And maybe everything you think you know about me is wrong too," she continued, her voice shaking beneath the weight of the truth she was forcing herself to say. "I’m not a criminal. My real name is Lorelei. I was abducted from my pack by rogues and sold directly to Mr. Hawke. He forced me to use the fake name Ella and made me work as a maid on your estate."
"No."
The word escaped me before I even realized I had spoken, forcing me to take an unsteady step backward as my mind violently rejected everything she had just said.
No.
No, no, no.
That couldn’t be true.
She was a criminal.
She was a rogue.
She was a thief.
That was the truth I had accepted from the very moment she was brought into my estate. It was the reason I had treated her so ruthlessly in the beginning without feeling even the slightest hint of guilt.
She wasn’t supposed to be innocent.
She was supposed to be paying a debt to society.
She was supposed to be someone who deserved every ounce of suspicion, every harsh order, every punishment I had given her.
That was the story I had believed.
That was the only version of the truth that made sense.
That I had gotten attached to a petty rogue thief and made the decision to give her a better life. A safe life. A protected life at my side.
So what the hell was all of this?
And Hawke...
Was he really guilty of everything she was accusing him of?
Had he really managed to deceive me for all these years?
She said she had proof.
The thought settled in my stomach like a block of ice.
If she had proof...
Then it had to be true.
"Why didn’t you tell me?"
My voice came out rough, almost strangled, as my chest rose and fell with violent, uneven breaths.
"You should have fucking told me!"
The roar exploded out of me, echoing through the office hard enough to make her visibly flinch. She instinctively shrank back, her shoulders curling inward as if trying to make herself smaller.
"I... I..." she stammered, her entire body trembling as she desperately searched for the right words.
"How scary am I really?" I demanded, my mind spiraling further out of control with every passing second. "You keep saying you’re not afraid of me, but you were terrified enough that you couldn’t even trust me with the truth? Answer me!"
"I’m... I’m sorry..."