Chapter 36 36
Logan's POV
I watched his fingers on the pieces, my heart hammering against my ribs. There was no easy way to say it. No way to soften the blow. I just had to get it out.
I took one more ragged breath, the words like shards of glass in my mouth.
“Arielle and I… we broke up, Father.”
He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He just looked at me from across the chessboard, his expression freezing over completely. The playful smile was gone, wiped away as if it had never been there. The room’s cold aura seemed to thicken, pressing down on me.
I shifted in the chair, the silence unbearable. “She called off our relationship,” I clarified, the words rushing out. “But… I’ll try to get things right with her. I’ll fix it. The plan can still go on like you want—”
I didn’t see his hand move. There was just a sudden, blinding explosion of pain across the left side of my face. The force of it snapped my head to the side and sent me tumbling out of the chair. I crashed into the arm of the heavy couch, the wood digging into my ribs, and sprawled onto the floor.
My ears rang. I pushed myself up on shaking arms, tasting blood where my teeth had cut the inside of my cheek.
He was already standing over me. “What,” he demanded, his voice a low, deadly hiss, “happened?”
“I…”
He leaned down, his face inches from mine. “You better not lie, Logan. Or I swear to every god that’s listening, I will make you a living corpse. You will breathe, but you will wish you didn’t. Now. Talk.”
I rubbed my aching jaw, the skin already swelling. I looked up into his furious amber eyes and told him the most humiliating truth. “She caught me. Being intimate with another girl.”
His face tightened, every muscle going rigid. For a second, I thought he might shift right there. Instead, his hand shot out and grabbed the front of my jacket, hauling me to my feet as if I weighed nothing.
“You asshole,” he spat, the words vibrating with pure rage. “That relationship does not end until I decide it ends!” With a violent shove, he tossed me away from him.
I flew backward, my shoulder and then my back slamming into the stone wall beside the fireplace. The impact knocked the air from my lungs in a painful whoosh. I heard, or felt, something in my shoulder crack. I slid down the wall to the floor, gasping.
“I ask you to do one thing!” he roared, stalking toward me. “One simple thing! You just had to gain her trust. Her full, blind, stupid trust! But you couldn’t even control your own dick! You let some little bitch distract you from the only task that gives you any value to me!”
I struggled to my feet, using the wall for support, my whole left side screaming in protest. I looked at him, meeting his fury with my own simmering shame and anger.
He pointed a finger at my face, his hand trembling with the effort to not strike me again. “If you prove you’re useless, then I will get rid of you. I don’t care if my blood flows in your veins. You fucking know that well.”
I nodded, the motion sending a fresh wave of pain through my skull. “I’m sorry, Father…”
A deep, guttural growl ripped from his throat, the sound more animal than man. His wolf was right there, just under the surface and it seemed like it might just jump out any second from now on his request and devour me.
I quickly corrected myself, the word tasting like ash. “Alpha. I’m sorry, Alpha.”
“Save your damn apology,” he snarled, turning away from me as if the sight of me disgusted him. He paced back to the chess table, his movements stiff with contained violence. “Find a way. Find a way to get things right with her.”
“Yes. I’ve been trying to reach her, but… it’s been futile. She’s blocked me everywhere. But I won’t give up. Regardless.”
He whirled back around. “You better find a better way. Maybe drop the ‘good boy’ act this time. If you have to be forceful, then be forceful. If you have to corner her, then corner her. The how doesn’t matter. The result does. She has to be madly in love with you, Logan. Completely dependent. Do you understand?”
I looked at him, at the cold calculation that had returned to his eyes now that the initial fury had passed. A question, one I’d never dared to ask, bubbled up from a place of sheer desperation. “Why, though?” My voice was quiet. “Why does it have to be her? What’s so important about Arielle Reynolds?”
He went very still. Then he crossed the room in two long strides, coming so close I could smell the expensive whiskey on his breath. He leaned in, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “It’s my scheme. Not yours to calculate. Your job is to follow orders, not ask questions. Do you want to be a tool, or do you want to be scrap metal?”
I nodded, swallowing hard. “A tool, Alpha.”
“Good. Get out. Now.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I turned, my body protesting with every movement, and pulled open the heavy study door.
My mother was standing right there in the hallway. She must have heard the crash, the yelling. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with fear. I couldn’t meet her gaze. The shame was a physical weight, heavier than the pain in my shoulder. I brushed past her without a word and kept walking.
But I only made it a few steps. I heard the door shut behind me, and then, a second later, her voice, louder and braver than I’d ever heard it, rang out from inside the study.
“What game are you using my son for, Caiden?!”
I froze. My blood ran cold. No, Mother. Don’t.
I took a step back toward the door, my hand reaching for the handle. I had to go in, pull her out, get her away from him before—
There was a sharp, sickening sound. A crack, followed by a cry. Not a yell of anger, but a pained, startled shrill.
My hand fell from the handle. I couldn’t move. Slowly, carefully, I pushed the door open just a crack, just enough to see.
My mother was on the floor by the couch, not the one I’d fallen over, but a smaller one. She was holding the side of her face, her body curled in on itself. He was standing over her, his back to me, his shoulders heaving.
He’d hit her. Again. For the umpteenth time. For daring to ask.
My fist clenched at my side so hard my nails dug into my palm. Every muscle in my body screamed to charge in, to put myself between them, to be the son who protected his mother.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. The fear was a chain, cold and heavy, locking my feet to the floor. The cracking pain in my own shoulder was a fresh reminder of the cost of defiance.
I closed the door softly, the click barely audible over the pounding of my own heart. I turned and walked away, each step feeling like a betrayal.
Father was beyond angry. He was in a rage. And if I didn’t fix this, if I didn’t find a way to get Arielle back under my thumb, I’d be the next one broken on that floor. Or worse. I couldn’t afford for him to see me as worthless. Not when the price of worthlessness was a living death.