Chapter 174 Press Conference
_Author’s POV_
Reid had already been captured and put in a cell before Alaric and the others arrived at the capital.
Reid had turned himself in the day after everything in the other city wrapped up, and Gabriel had sent a message that was almost funny in how straightforward it was.
Reid knocked on his door, asked to be processed, then knocked himself unconscious somehow and requested to be in a cell when he woke up. Alaric had read that message three times trying to decide if it made him feel better or worse about the whole thing.
It didn’t make him feel either, It just made him tired.
The cell was plain and Reid was sitting on the narrow bench inside it with his elbows on his knees and his head down when Alaric walked in. He didn’t look up immediately.
The guard unlocked the door and Alaric stepped inside and the door clicked shut behind him but Reid still hadn’t moved.
Alaric pulled the single chair in the room to face him and sat down.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
Reid looked up slowly, he looked terrible, not physically horrible. He was uninjured, clean enough with no visible damage from whatever he had done to knock himself out.
He had dark eye bags, looked slightly pale, but looked relieved. As if something heavy finally lifted off his shoulder.
“Alpha,” he called out, his voice was low and rough.
“Talk,” Alaric motioned.
Reid nodded slowly, looking back down at his hands. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Start with Virella,” Alaric said. “Start with how long.”
Reid was quiet for a moment then he said, “She’s my cousin. We grew up together. Same grandmother, different fathers.” He paused. “I know you didn’t know that.”
Phillip went very still inside Alaric’s head.
“Cousin?” Phillip asked quietly. “All those years. Sitting right next to us?”
Alaric kept his face completely even, he had learned a long time ago that showing people how much something affected them only gave them information he didn’t want them to have. “How long have you been feeding her information?” he asked instead.
“Since before you became Alpha King,” Reid said. “She came to me when she found out I was working for you and cried.” He let out a short sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “She was always good at crying when she needed something. I told myself I was just keeping an eye on things. That I wasn’t really helping her, just making sure she didn’t do anything too stupid.” He shook his head slowly. “I kept telling myself that for years.”
“And that facility?” Alaric asked again.
Reid flinched slightly. “I didn’t know what it was going to become. When she first told me about it I thought it was just a place. Somewhere she could operate from without being traced. By the time I understood what was happening there—” He stopped. “I had already done too much to walk back from it.”
“Rowena was in that facility,” Alaric said, and his voice came out quieter than before, which Phillip knew meant it was more dangerous than before.
Reid closed his eyes. “I know.”
“She was in a gym for three days,” Alaric continued coldly. “Without her wolf.”
“I know,” Reid said again bitterly. He couldn’t bring himself to also tell Alaric he knew the room where she was kept before the facility.
Phillip stirred. “He knew the whole time,” he said. “He sat in our meetings and looked us in the eye and he knew.”
Alaric sighed and clenched his fist to calm himself.
“Are you angry?” Phillip asked.
“Of course,” Alaric said. “But anger isn’t useful right now.”
Phillip went quiet.
Alaric looked at Reid for a long moment. At the man he had trusted completely for years, who had known everything about how he operated, every plan, every contact, every move, and had been carrying a completely separate life underneath all of it the entire time.
“You turned yourself in?” Alaric asked fimally.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Reid looked up at him. “Because Virella was going to keep going,” he said. “Even after everything. Even after the island. She would have kept going until someone got killed, and I—” He stopped. “I couldn’t keep being the reason she stayed ahead of you.”
Alaric stood up from the chair. “The legal team will handle everything from here,” he said. “Your cooperation will be noted. What happens next is not my decision to make.”
“I know,” Reid sighed. “I’m sorry, Alpha.”
Alaric ignored his words and moved to the door, he knocked once for the guard. He waited for it to open and then stopped without turning around.
“You were good at your job,” he said. “For a long time, you were the best person I had. That’s what makes it what it is.” After saying that, he walked out without waiting for a response from Reid.
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The press conference was held two days after they returned to the capital.
Alaric had done press conferences before, they were a regular part of being Alpha King and he had learned early how to stand in front of cameras and answer questions without giving people more than he intended to give them.
He was good at it the same way he was good at most things that required control and patience with a very steady face.
But this one was worse than before. It was different from the moment he walked up to the podium.
The room was full, more full than usual, which told him that whatever had happened in the other city had reached people in the capital too fast.
There were journalists, representatives from other packs, people whose job it was to watch what the Alpha King did and report on it to whoever was paying them to do that.
He answered the first few questions carefully. The situation had been resolved. Virella, Theodore, and Reid were in custody and would face appropriate proceedings.
The safety of the capital and its people had been maintained throughout.
Then someone near the middle of the room stood up.
“Alpha King,” the journalist said. “There have been reports that your extended absence from the capital was connected not just to pack business but to a personal matter. Specifically, to Marchioness Rowena Ashthorne. Can you confirm or deny your personal involvement with her?”
The question made silence reign in the room.
Alaric gave the journalist a pointed lookfor a moment as he decided his next words. “I can confirm it.”
You could hear a pin drop with how silent the room became the moment he said that. Now one had been expecting that.
“Rowena Ashthorne is the woman I love,” he said, simply and without any decoration around it. “That is not separate from my responsibilities as Alpha King, It is part of who I am. I don’t intend to treat it as something to manage or minimize for anyone’s comfort.”
The next second, the room exploded.
Questions came from every direction, overlapping each other, journalists were on their feet, cameras adjusting, and the organized press conference coming apart at the information.
Both excitements and jealousy filled the air.
Alaric stood at the podium and waited for it to settle for a while, which it eventually did, and answered the follow up questions with the same calmness he had answered the first ones with.
In a sitting room at the Ashthorne residence, Nana Seraphine watched the press conference on the television with both hands pressed together in front of her mouth like she was praying, which she possibly was.
The Alpha King? In love with her Rowen?. Saying it in front of cameras, journalists and the entire watching world without flinching even slightly?
She made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob and reached for her tea with an unstable hand.
That was double miracle from the goddess. The Alpha King found love in her home?
Rowena too watched from a screen in Celeste’s office.
She actually had not known he was going to say it like that.
When the words came out of his mouth she went completely still and stayed that way for a long moment. There was something that happened in her chest that she didn’t immediately have a word for.
It felt like something that had been wound very tight for a very long time quietly coming loose. She felt very light.
She didn’t say anything to Celeste, who was sitting beside her and very carefully looking at her documents instead of at Rowena’s face.
She held back a small smile and pretended not to focus on what was happening.
Kaelen too watched from his office with a heavy heart. He immediately turned the television off after Alaric said it and sat in silence for a while.
He didn’t feel angry, but he wasn’t sure what he felt exactly, it just wasn’t wasn’t anger. He sat with it for a while and then stood up and went back to work.
Somwhere in the city, in a massive living room, Ezekiel’s father watched the press conference with an expression that started neutral and moved toward something that was not neutral at all.
The Alpha King had just announced his feelings for a woman publicly and without hesitation? The same woman he wanted for his family?
“Gracious.” He said annoyingly. His son, meanwhile, had been in the same city as Rowen for several weeks and had apparently done absolutely nothing useful about it despite all the encouragement he gave the fool to do so.
He picked up his phone immediately, Ezekiel was going to receive a very direct phone call the moment this press conference ended.