Chapter 322 322
Maurice POV
“What do you mean she’s safe?”
My face twists as the words leave my mouth, confusion knotting my thoughts before I can even catch them. None of it makes sense. My mind scrambles, grasping for meaning that isn’t there.
“Exactly that,” he says evenly. “She’s safe.”
The words land wrong. They sound wrong. Impossible, even.
“How long,” I demand, my voice sharpening, “how long have you known this?”
“Six months.”
Six months.
For six unbearable months, he’s known she was alive and still, he let me believe the worst. Let me sit with the possibility that my mate was dead. Gone. Every visit here, every moment I’d confided in Evely, every time I’d spoken about the weight crushing my chest no wonder he’d been so quiet. The bastard had been holding it all back.
My hands begin to shake. I feel it immediately the stir of my wolf, furious and clawing for release. Rage coils through me, dangerous and wild, pressing hard against my skin. The Alpha King standing in this pristine, high-end kitchen suddenly feels like a target begging to be torn apart.
Shifting here would be catastrophic.
So the only option left is violence human against human.
The snarl that rips from my throat is the only warning he gets.
I launch myself at him, the dining table be damned. Wood splinters beneath us as I drive him to the ground, our bodies crashing and rolling amid shattered glass and broken furniture. We grapple viciously, each of us fighting for dominance, for control.
“Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?” I snarl, forcing him into a chokehold.
He grunts, then slams a fist into my ribs, breaking free. “Yes,” he snaps, breathless, “but I didn’t have a choice, Maurice. She left my wife for dead.”
He reaches for my arms, trying to restrain me, but my right hook catches his jaw and sends him reeling.
“She’s my mate!” I roar.
“And I have to protect my family!” he shouts back, catching me off guard and trapping my head between his legs.
“Like it or not,” I growl, struggling against him, “she is your family!”
We tear into each other fists, teeth, boots our rage echoing through the house in thunderous roars. The sound swells, feral and unstoppable
Until a baby’s cry slices through it.
The sound halts us instantly.
“What is going on?” Aurélie’s voice rings out, sharp and commanding, before she even reaches the kitchen. “What is going on?”
Her presence shifts the entire room. The raw testosterone-fuelled chaos Damien and I created collapses under the weight of her authority, like opposing forces snapping into balance.
“He’s known where Bee is this whole time,” I snarl, fury still burning hot, “and he never told me. He let me imagine every sick, twisted possibility of what could’ve happened to her.”
I loosen my grip as she steps closer.
“I don’t know where she is,” Damien says, doing the same. “Only that she’s safe.”
She stares at him, unimpressed. “You haven’t told him?” she snaps. “For goddess’ sake, Damien tell Maurice where his mate is!”
Then she turns and walks back upstairs as if discovering us destroying her kitchen and each other barely registers far more irritated that we woke the baby.
Damien and I lie flat on our backs beside each other, chests heaving. I elbow him one last time.
“Prick,” I mutter once she’s gone.
“Uncle Maurice!” Dominique launches himself onto my chest, knocking the breath clean out of me.
I laugh despite myself. “Hey, Dominique… help this old man up.”
The edge of my anger dulls slightly. Getting it out of my system helped but I’m still furious. Damien owes me answers. Immediately.
“Here,” Aurélie says as she returns, placing baby Frédéric into Damien’s arms. “You woke him. You can settle him.”
“Dominique, we need to get Delphine!” she calls, already heading for the door.
I let Dominique haul me upright, playing along as if the little terror is actually strong enough to lift an alpha.
“Bye, Uncle Maurice! Will you still be here when I get back?”
“Most likely.”
“And Maurice,” Aurélie adds sharply as she exits, “you owe me a new table.”
Right. I’ll order one tonight.
I turn back to Damien, gently taking Frédéric from his arms. The baby settles instantly against me he’s always been fidgety with everyone else, especially his father.
“Where is Delphine?” I ask.
“Where else?” Damien mutters. “Roland’s.”
“I need details, Damien.”
“Fine.” He exhales heavily and pulls out his phone. “I need to see you now,” he snaps into it. “I don’t care make time.”
He ends the call and pockets the phone.
“Who was that?” I arch a brow at his tone.
“My tracker.”
“Just one?” I scoff. “One tracker, when my men couldn’t find her?”
“Maurice,” he says grimly, “let’s go to my office.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he answers, already turning away, “you’re going to need to sit down.”