Chapter 197: So pissed off

"Should I come in?", I heard Mira's voice outside my office. "Yes", I retorted.

“Let’s talk about you showing up at my home uninvited.” I went straight to the point, the moment she entered inside.

Her mouth twitched not fear, but defiance. “Your home?” she echoed. “You mean the house where you keep your human?”

My wolf growled, low and deep. “Watch your mouth.”

“I’m too old to be cowed by your temper, Alpha,” she said. "You just like your father", She added.

“You crossed a line. I told you to stay out of my personal life. Visiting Elena was not your right, not your duty.”

“No,” she said quietly, “I understand too well. You’re trying to be both man and beast, and it’s tearing you apart. The elders are restless, Andrey. They’re already questioning your leadership. They won’t tolerate a human Luna. Not when there are alliances waiting to be made.”

“I didn’t ask for their tolerance.”

“That’s the problem,” she hissed back. “You’ve forgotten what it means to lead, to represent your kind. You parade around with that fragile girl while the unmated Lunas of half the Northern territories wait for your decision. And what do you do? You bind yourself to a human dancer who doesn’t even know what you are.”

My wolf growled inside me, a low warning rumble. “Careful, Mira.”

But she didn’t stop. “She is soft. Mortal. She bleeds easily, breaks easily. She will never understand what it means to live among us. The elders question your judgment, and frankly, so do I.”

I stood up from my chair and paced the length of my office, claws threatening to pierce through my fingertips. “Then why visit her?” I demanded again. “Why pretend? You went there today smiling, touching her, acting like she belonged to our world when we both know you think she’s beneath it.”

There was a beat of silence, then her voice softened. "She didn’t deserve to be pushed by Harriet, as a mother it hurt me that’s why I walked out of the pack without your permission then visited her".

“And when I did, I saw pain,” she said quietly. “I saw fear in her eyes, Andrey. She doesn’t deserve what you’ve dragged her into. Whatever you think you’re protecting her from, this life , our life  will consume her. She’s too gentle for it.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, exhaling slowly. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t see it every day? But she’s stronger than you realize. She survived the fall. She’s healing. She’s mine, Mira. And I’ll protect her until my last breath.”

“You can’t protect her from what she doesn’t understand,” she said. “Does she even know who you are? What you are? , humans don’t belong in our world. They never last.”

I pressed my palm against the desk, breathing hard. “She’s different.”

“Yes,” Mira said after a moment, her voice quieter now. “She is different. Sweet, even. Too trusting for someone in your orbit.”

The faintest smile tugged at her lips not mockery this time. “I like her too, I have visited her only three times but I really like her” she admitted.

I stared at her for a long second, reading the shift in her scent, truth wrapped in caution, not malice.

“That’s enough for today,” I said finally, my voice low and final. "Okay Alpha", She said respectfully then walked out. The moment the door closed behind her, the silence pressed in thick and heavy.

I dragged a hand through my hair, pacing once more. My wolf paced with me, restless, snarling, impatient. The walls of the office felt too small, too full of duty, politics, and the ghosts of every decision I’d made wrong.

Elena’s face flashed in my mind , the way her eyes widened when she laughed, the tremor in her hands when she was afraid but tried not to show it, the soft way she said my name like it was something worth trusting.

I couldn’t stay here. Not another night with those voices echoing through the pack halls , elders whispering about alliances, Lunas waiting to be marked as my mates.

I grabbed my coat and strode to the door.

“Antonio,” I said, my voice sharp as I pressed the comm link. His voice came through at once, wary but alert. “Yes, Alpha?”

“I want you ready in ten minutes,” I said. “We’re going back to the city.”

There was a brief pause, then: “Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

“As you command.”

A few sprinkles rained down from the sky when I stepped out of the office. Antonio was already waiting out front in the car, so I braced myself and jaunted out to beat the start of the storm. Thankfully he had windshield wipers going and the heat blasting for me when I settled into the back seat.

My head was pounding, fuming with anger and I wished I could melt in the backseats of the car. Rubbing my forehead, I forced myself to tune into Antonio talking to me.

"Nice seeing you leave the pack early today, Alpha. That's a good start to the weekend," he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as we stopped at the crowded intersection. The sounds of the rain pattering on the car broke up the following silence.

"It would have been if I didn't have to work through the weekend," I muttered. So badly did I want to roll down the back window and have a cigarette, and I internally cursed the rain. I was so pissed off and needed a cigarette.

"Ohh! That's bad, Alpha. Taking pack's stress in the human world again?"

"Unfortunately. my new club is opening tomorrow night though. Did you get those tickets I sent you?" I caught his eyes in the rearview mirror.

"I sure did! Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it. My mate is going to love it." Antonio spoke.

"I'm glad to hear it. You deserve the break." Looking away from him, I opened my emails on my phone to keep deleting all the useless ones.

"Well, I don't mind driving. The city isn't bad as people think, if you just know how to match the flow. Plus Elena is sweet. It's not bad driving her around to her appointments."

"You’re right," I mused. "She had an appointment at the clinic today, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, we went there after the hospital." That caught my attention.

"Hospital?" I snapped quickly and cleared my throat. My voice came out sharper than I intended, low and edged with something primal I had to keep in check.

"Yeah, she had some scans to follow up on?" Antonio questioned in response. He sounded as if he was now doubting what he had said.

"Ah! That would make sense." I loosened up my tie, then rubbed the well-trimmed stubble on my jaw. "What else did she do today?"

Antonio knew not to ask too many questions, which was good for anyone driving the alpha. That included divulging information when they had it. It was understood that Antonio would monitor Elena for me while he was driving her around.

"Let's see," he muttered, turning the wheel with a hum as the car changed lanes. "Hospital for scans, clinic for the doctor, and then she met someone for lunch before I took her back to the house."

Rain poured down harder, and it somehow darkened my mood more. When I heard that Elena met someone for lunch, that took every ounce of my attention. The dancer didn't talk a lot about her personal life. She seemed to enjoy learning about mine.

"Who did she meet for lunch?"

"Oh! I don't know who it was. We didn't want to talk about him," Antonio shrugged his shoulder.

"Him?" My brows furrowed, and my hand curled up into a fist around my phone. Something sharp hit me to think that Elena was out with another man today.

"Some skinny little guy. Must be close with the way they were hugging and laughing. She must have had a good time. She was smiling huge when she got back in the car." The information alone was innocent enough, and I appreciated Antonio for being so open about what he saw today.

However, I was fuming more. I felt hot under the tight collar of my shirt, and it felt as if a boulder was pushing down on my chest. My knuckles turned bone white as my grip on my phone tightened up. A cigarette was needed more now.

Elena was with another man today?

My mate was with another man?

Realistically, I knew that there was a chance she'd had a life outside of me. Before me and our contract. But the thought that there had been another man was enough to send my rage boiling over.

I thought I was mad when I witnessed Harriet push Elena down those stairs. That had terrified me almost more than it had infuriated me. However, it was the thought of another man in Elena's life that provoked the red at the edge of my vision now.

Was there a man waiting for her after the end of our contract? Some poor fuck waiting to get his girlfriend back.

It didn’t make sense to think that. Some part of my conscious mind knew that realistically, there was no one else. Elena’s life revolved around ballet, and she hated the meetings she went to before our contract. My logical mind knew all of that.

There couldn’t be anyone else. As secretive as Elena was about her life, there was still a lot she let slip. I would know if there was a man in her life she wasn’t talking about.

Elena Hayes was mine. But… I couldn’t shake off the bad vibes coming.

Our relationship notwithstanding, she had seen another man today. Some stranger that I knew nothing about. He had touched her, hugged her, and laughed with her.

Something primal stirred low in my chest, a dangerous growl that never reached my throat. My pulse quickened, but not entirely from jealousy, something else, older and instinctive, that warned me when something precious of mine might be threatened. The scent of rain and city smoke suddenly seemed sharper, wilder, like my senses were trying to track a trail that wasn’t there.

"Seems like she had a good day," I forced through my clenched teeth.

"Absolutely," Antonio agreed. "It's good that she is recovering quickly, I bet she is ready to dance again."

I was too pissed off to listen to Antonio's next words.

Outside, the storm deepened, drumming against the car roof like a heartbeat gone wild. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled, deep, guttural, and strangely familiar.