Chapter 56

Alpha Kelvin’s POV

I knew the exact moment she arrived on the premises. I had been looking out the window, unable to stop myself from being impatient to see her.

“This is madness,” I had murmured the minute my heart began pounding a crazy rhythm at her appearance.

“She’s our mate. It's quite normal to have this kind of reaction,” my wolf commented but I chose to ignore him.

As far as I was concerned, I wasn't supposed to feel this way for a woman who I still wasn't sure had no intention to kill me.

Immediately, I had asked one of the guards to go tell her to bring my lunch up to my room.

At first, my only intention was to draw an explanation out of her but I experienced my first moment of insanity when her irresistible scent filled the room.

When she had taken too long to come in, doing Goddess knows what, I had called out to her in frustration.

The brief flicker of hatred in her features when she had first laid eyes on me bothered me not a tiny bit. It was something I had never seen in her eyes before.

Yearning, yes, anger, yes, but never hate. I wondered what had changed.

Her eagerness to leave my bedroom once she had dropped my food only served to increase my irritation. Just a couple of weeks ago, her yearning for me was obvious, and now, she acted as though being in the same room with me caused her great discomfort.

Claire’s act of not wanting to breathe the same air as me would have been believable but her body gave her away every single time.

The way her breath hitched when I got too close to her, the way her body surrendered to my touch and the way her nipples strained against the fabric of her dress, confirmed that my desire for her had not suddenly become one-sided.

When I confronted her about the mystery behind her transformation into an Alpha, she claimed to be as confused about it as I was.

I found it difficult to believe that. I still didn't trust that Gavin had nothing to do with this.

But then again, an Alpha would never submit to be used as a pawn to someone else except if they were being blackmailed.

My Beta had run a check on Claire’s background and had found nothing that actually connected her to Gavin. In fact, it seemed she didn't know of the latter’s existence before she set foot into the Castle.

But still, I had doubts about her and kept on questioning her and stating that she was working with Gavin.

I wasn't ready to admit to myself just yet that the mistake I had made a couple of years back made me trust the elders blindly when they gave their verdict about Claire.

When I was about eighteen years old and still a rebellious teenager, I had gotten into trouble so great that it had taken the appeal of the elders for my father to keep from disowning me.

Foolishly, I had slept with my father’s wife, my stepmother, and my father had caught us in the act.

His outrage was so scary it was rumoured that the servants who had to serve him that day, prayed to the Moon Goddess for protection before presenting themselves before him.

In retrospect, I realized that my father had been totally unfair.

While he had really wanted to disown me and went as far as locking me up for days inside the dungeon, not a hair on his young wife’s head was touched.

In fact, he had apologized to her, believing that she would do no such thing in her right senses. In his mind, I had manipulated and seduced his twenty-four-year-old wife.

The elders had pleaded with my father on my behalf and he rescinded his decision to disown me.

I felt that I owed the elders my total trust and loyalty because if not for them, my birthright would have been given to my now eight-year-old stepbrother.

So yes, a part of me knew that Claire was innocent but I desperately wanted her not to be because that would mean that the ones whom I felt I owed loyalty to and trusted with my life had knowingly lied to me.

It was also going to hurt really bad to come to terms with the fact that I had been cruel to an innocent woman. A woman who was my mate.

Aside from all of that, I really wanted to unravel the mystery of her sudden transformation.

It was kind of suspicious that she claimed to know nothing about it.

When I was done with my lunch, Claire’s lips curled into a triumphant smile and I inwardly rolled my eyes.

If she thought I was going to let her take the plates back to the kitchen, thus giving her the opportunity to escape, then she was being delusional.

She got to her feet and made to take the tray but I stopped her.

“I’ll ring another servant to deal with this.”

The disappointment that clouded her eyes was enough to make me howl with laughter but I allowed myself only a small smile.

“Do you intend to keep me here until your Luna shows up and thinks I'm trying to seduce you?” she queried.

“Haven’t you heard?” I began innocently, “That's what the whole Castle thinks. A slave trying to seduce the Alpha is sometimes compared to someone who has committed treason. I have to keep you here for your protection.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “You are joking, right?”

“It's the rumour that has been flying around since when you collapsed on the field. They claim you only faked it to appeal to my sympathetic nature.”

At that, she scoffed. “Sympathetic indeed.”

I frowned. “You do not think I am sympathetic?”

For a moment, her eyes burned with a rage so potent that I felt a chill run down my spine.

I blinked and it was gone.

“You can be sympathetic at times,” she replied with a small smile on her face.

Confusion bit into me and I regarded her like she was some kind of rare specimen.

On closing my eyes and paying proper attention, I realised that I could sense some hate coming from her.

“Are you alright?” she asked and I opened my eyes.

“Do you hate me for some reason?” I queried, looking straight into her eyes.

Puzzlement settled across her features as she shook her head.

“You’ve not done anything bad enough for me to hate you.”

“Then why do I sense this hatred from you?” I wondered.

“Perhaps, it's because you feel guilty,” she replied with a smile. “Don’t you think it's time to release me from that agreement we signed?”

“Don’t even dream of it. It's not going to happen,” I answered, thinking about just how easy it would be for her to leave if she wanted to.

It was a good thing she knew nothing about being an Alpha.

At that moment, an idea came to my mind and I smiled. Sophie wasn't going to like it one bit.

“How would you feel if I gave you some sort of promotion?”