Chapter 250 250

Chapter 250 250
Caden's POV

The look on Nova's face when I shut her down should have made me back off. I knew that look. Knew the way her chin lifted and her eyes went flat, the way she held herself perfectly still like she was one wrong word away from detonating.
"You don't get to make that decision for me," she said, and her voice had gone dangerously calm. "It's my name on the challenge. My fight."
"There will be no fight." I kept my voice level even though Shadow was clawing at the inside of my skull, wanting out, wanting blood. "The only blood going to be spilled will be Steele's for having the fucking audacity to come at you a third time."
"And I didn't get a say in that, did I?" She stood up from the bed with Hudson still against her shoulder, careful not to wake him. "You heard the challenge and you decided the outcome. All without asking me first."
Somewhere in the back of my mind, alarm bells were blaring, warning me to choose my answer carefully because this could blow up in my face. I should have bloody listened.
Instead, I crossed my arms and gave her an inscrutable look. "Yes. Because the answer was fucking obvious from the beginning."
Her eyebrows rose to the top of her head and her eyes narrowed into slits. "Is that so?”
We stared at each other across the bed and for a second I saw something flicker behind the anger. Fear. Not of me, never of me, but of everything this could become if we handled it wrong. I wanted to cross the room and pull her against me, tell her I'd fix it, that I'd burn Lucas Steele's entire world to the ground before I let anyone lay a hand on her.
But that was the problem, wasn't it? That was exactly what she was telling me not to do.
“Nova, this matter is not up for debate." I said, knowing I was digging my grave as far as our newfound relationship was concerned but I would be damned if I let Nova get hurt again because of me. “We are not accepting the challenge. End of discussion."
Hudson let out a thin, reedy wail, his face scrunching up against Nova's neck. She broke eye contact first, looking down at him, and the shift from warrior to mother happened swiftly as she visibly relaxed and began to rock back and forth on her heels while stroking his back. He settled back to sleep quickly.
"I'll put him down in his crib," I said, reaching for him.
"I've got it." She stepped back, just enough that my hands caught air instead of our son. "He needs to nurse again before he settles anyway.”
The dismissal in her tone was clear. She walked out of the bedroom without looking back and I stood there, fists clenched at my sides, listening to Hudson's fading cries and the soft murmur of her voice as she carried him down the hall to his room.
I couldn't stay here. If I stayed, I'd follow her, and if I followed her we'd fight again, and right now I didn't trust myself to fight fair. Not with Shadow this close to the surface, not with Lucas Steele's voice still ringing in my ears.
I pulled on my discarded shirt and boots, grabbed my phone, and headed downstairs. The house was still quiet. Emma's door had been closed when I passed it, and I hoped to God Hudson's crying hadn't woken her. I didn't have it in me to explain any of this right now.
Jake. My office. Now.
The mindlink snapped taut as Jake responded instantly.
I cut across the grounds toward the pack's administrative building, the morning air cold enough to bite through my shirt. Good. I needed the cold. Needed something to cut through the haze of rage before I did something stupid like shift and run straight for Steele territory.
Jake was already outside my office when I got there, dressed but barely, his hair still damp. He took one look at my face and didn't bother with a greeting.
“Is everything alright?"
"That bastard, Steele called me twenty minutes ago." I pushed past him into the office and he followed, closing the door behind us. "He invoked the Rite of Grievance against Nova."
Jake's hand froze on the door handle. "The Rite of... that hasn't been invoked in decades."
"Yeah, well, the bastard apparently has a fondness for ancient customs when they suit him." I dropped into the chair behind my desk and pulled up the call log on my phone, sliding it across to him. "I need you to trace this number. Find out where he's calling from, where he's been, where he sleeps. I want a location by the end of the day."
Jake picked up the phone, scanning the number, but I could see the questions stacking up behind his eyes. "What did you tell him?"
"The hell do you think I told him?" I growled, the words forced out through clenched teeth.
"Right." He pocketed the number. "I'll get our tech team on it. But Alpha, should we take it up with the Council? I'm sure they will have something to say about this if he's formally invoked..."
"I don't care about the fucking Council right now." I leaned forward, my hands flat on the desk because if I curled them into fists again I was going to put one through the wood. "I care about finding that fucking bastard so I can kill him."
Jake studied me for a beat, then wisely dropped it. He opened his mouth to say something else but his phone buzzed. He glanced down, frowned, and the color left his face.
" What is it?” I asked, just as my own phone started buzzing insistently.
"Alpha." His voice was low, urgent. "You need to see this."