Chapter 149 - 0149
Kaelen POV
Moments earlier...
I sat behind my desk, my hands clenched into tight fists as the scent of the woman standing across from me stirred my wolf into a restless agitation.
Maybe it was because I’d spent the last day surrounded by Ella’s sweet, intoxicating scent, but my wolf was in an unusually foul mood. Every instinct in me wanted this meeting to be over as quickly as possible.
The woman, however, looked completely unfazed.
Instead of the usual fear or hesitation most people showed in my presence, she simply met my gaze with a calm expression, almost as if she were daring me to challenge her.
"Raven Reed," I said slowly, studying her face for the slightest reaction.
Nothing.
"Yes," she answered simply.
I leaned back in my chair, steepling my fingers.
"Why keep your identity a secret when you requested this meeting? If I’d known you were the Raven Reed, I would’ve seen you much sooner."
"You flatter me, Alpha King," she replied, her voice calm and composed. "But I had my reasons for keeping my name to myself. Since we’re already here, I’d rather get straight to the reason I came."
That immediately caught my attention.
Someone like Raven Reed didn’t travel all the way to my estate just for a casual conversation. Whatever had brought her here had to be important.
"Go on."
Without another word, she reached into her bag, pulled out a thick folder, and slid it across the desk toward me.
"There have been several rogue attacks over the past few months," she began.
I glanced down at the folder but made no move to open it.
"Don’t tell me you came all this way because of your brother." I let out a quiet scoff. "For weeks now, he’s been blowing up my phone, trying to convince me to help him. I thought I’d made it painfully clear that I wasn’t interested, but apparently he doesn’t know when to quit."
"He’s not exactly known for making good decisions. He never has been," she replied without missing a beat.
Despite how casual she sounded, I didn’t miss the way her fingers tightened ever so slightly around the edge of the folder.
Interesting.
"Then how, exactly, did he become Alpha?" I asked, wanting to crack that calm, unreadable facade of hers. "Or is your father just as hopeless?"
This time, a quiet, bitter scoff escaped her lips.
"You could say that," she replied, and a chuckle slipped out before I could stop it.
"I like you," I admitted, and I meant it.
I’d heard the stories about Raven Reed. The woman who was supposed to become the first female Alpha in history, only to walk away from the title and vanish without a trace.
At the time, I couldn’t understand why.
But after digging into her family’s history, the answer became painfully obvious.
She and I had more in common than most people would think.
We had both been cursed with fathers who were utterly useless, except hers was still alive, unfortunately.
"Still," I said, leaning forward slightly, "I can’t help thinking your pack would’ve been far better off with you leading it instead of your brother."
"I walked away from that title because I wanted nothing to do with that pack anymore," she replied, her voice turning noticeably colder, though never crossing the line into disrespect. "And yes, there have been rogue attacks in our territory, but I’m not here because of my brother."
"Oh?"
That wasn’t the answer I’d been expecting.
"Then what exactly made you travel all the way into my territory over a few rogue attacks?"
Raven let out a slow breath before sliding the folder a little closer to me.
"That file contains information on multiple young women who’ve been abducted by rogues. Every man caught in those raids was killed on the spot..." She paused, locking eyes with me. "But the women were all taken alive."
She put deliberate emphasis on the last two words while I reached for the folder and flipped it open.
The first page contained a photograph of a young woman alongside her name, age, and background details from before her disappearance.
The moment my eyes landed on her face, my jaw instinctively tightened.
"Get to the point, Miss Raven," I said, my voice noticeably colder.
"My team and I have been investigating these disappearances for months," she replied. "We’ve tracked the attack patterns, the locations, and the movements of the rogue groups responsible. Now, Alpha, I know the public sees you as a tyrant, but I also understand how politics works. I know some things have to be done for the sake of maintaining order. That’s why I came to you personally, despite knowing this meeting could very well cost me my life. That’s how desperate this situation has become."
As she spoke, her grip around the folder tightened even more while my expression darkened.
"So what you’re saying is..." I said slowly, a low growl rumbling deep in my chest. "You believe I have something to do with this."
The air in the office instantly turned suffocating.
Although her shoulders visibly tensed beneath the weight of my aura, she didn’t back down.
"Based on the evidence we’ve gathered, some of the women abducted by the rogues have ended up here, on your estate. It wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s happened multiple times. I also know you have dozens of female staff working behind these walls, so..."
"Bullshit!"
My fist slammed into the desk as I shot to my feet.
The deafening crack echoed through the office.
"I may be cruel, woman, but the only people I punish are the ones who fucking deserve it!" I snarled, towering over her as my wolf roared with fury inside me. "And if you’d done your damn research properly, you’d know every woman serving on this estate is here because she’s serving a criminal sentence. They’re prisoners, not victims. If anything, I’m doing the world a favor by keeping them behind these walls."
My chest rose and fell with each heavy breath as rage burned through every vein in my body.
I couldn’t believe she had the nerve to accuse me of something like this.
Yes, I ruled with an iron fist.
Yes, people feared me.
But there were lines I would never cross.
Not because I lacked the power to.
Because they went against everything I stood for.
Everything I was willing to kill to protect.
And this...
This was one of those lines.