Chapter 11 Working Day
Elara's hands shook as she pushed the cleaning cart down the third-floor hallway, the wheels squeaking against floor.
She forced herself to breathe slowly because panicking now would ruin two years of preparation.
Kai's bedroom door stood at the end of the hall, and she stopped the cart outside it while her wolf screamed mate mate mate so loud inside her head she thought she might go insane.
"Shut up," she whispered to her wolf and pulled latex gloves from her cleaning apron, wearing them on with more force than necessary.
The door wasn't locked, so she pushed it open to find a massive bedroom that looked like it belonged in a magazine, there was a king size bed with black sheets, the windows overlooking the estate grounds, furniture that matched perfectly.
His scent hit her immediately and that made her wolf whine with longing even though Elara wanted to burn everything he owned.
She started with the bathroom because putting distance between herself and his bed seemed smart, scrubbing the countertops and polishing fixtures until they reflected her face.
You can call it Sera's face with its different nose and rounder cheeks and blue eyes.
His medicine cabinet held the usual things plus prescription sleeping pills with a recent date and a dosage that made her eyebrows rise because that was a lot of medication for someone who should be sleeping fine.
"Suit him for not sleeping well," she muttered and moved to the shower where his products lined a built-in shelf, everything organized by height.
The bedroom took longer because it was bigger and because she kept getting distracted by details that felt too intimate—his watch on the nightstand, athletic clothes thrown over a chair, a framed photo of him holding a championship trophy that she remembered from news coverage two years ago.
There was no photos of Maya anywhere which seemed significant but Elara didn't let herself think about what that might mean.
She was dusting his dresser when the door opened and Kai walked in wearing gym clothes soaked with sweat.
He stopped when he saw her like he'd forgotten someone would be cleaning his room.
"Sorry, I'll come back later," Elara said in Sera's accent, keeping her eyes down submissively the way omegas were supposed to around Alphas.
"No, finish," Kai said and pulled his shirt off in one motion, tossing it toward a hamper and missing by two feet.
Elara kept dusting and absolutely did not look at his bare chest or the way his muscles moved under skin.
But her wolf was doing backflips inside her head begging her to go to him.
"New maid," Kai said, walking to his closet. "Your name is Sera, right?"
"Yes sir," Elara said and her hand tightened on the duster because hearing him say her false name felt surreal.
"Where'd you work before this?"
"Morrison family in Portland, sir, I was an estate management for five years."
"Why'd you leave?" He asked again.
"The family moved to Europe, and I didn't want to relocate."
Kai came out wearing fresh clothes and studied her with an expression she couldn't read, and for three horrible seconds she thought he recognized her, thought the disguise had failed and everything was about to fall apart.
"Margaret said the last three girls quit because I'm difficult to work for," Kai said finally.
"I can handle difficult, sir."
"Can you?" Something almost like amusement crossed his face. "They said I'm too demanding, that I work irregular hours and expect perfection."
"Perfection is reasonable to expect," Elara said.
Kai looked at her for another long moment and Elara kept her body language neutral, kept Sera's accent in place.
"Finish up," he said and walked toward the door. "I've got practice at the arena in an hour."
He left and Elara waited until his footsteps faded down the hall before letting herself breathe properly, her hands shaking so bad she had to grip the dresser edge to steady them.
Her wolf was still howling and her chest ached from the mate bond trying to reform even though it had been broken two years ago, and she wanted to scream or cry or both.
Instead she finished dusting and moved to make his bed, pulling the black silk sheets tight and arranging pillows the way Margaret had shown her, and when she found a strand of blonde hair on his pillowcase that definitely wasn't his she felt satisfaction curl in her stomach.
Maya's hair, or someone else's, which meant Kai wasn't sleeping alone despite his obsessive search for his lost mate.
"Hypocrite," Elara whispered and pocketed the hair as potential evidence.
She spent another twenty minutes cleaning and cataloging everything she found—more sleeping pills in his nightstand drawer, a laptop sitting on his desk that would have emails and documents if she could get past the password, but she knew that will be hard, so she just ignored it
And immediately Margaret appeared in the doorway as Elara was finishing. "How'd it go?"
"Fine, he came back early but I stayed out of his way," Elara said, pushing the cart toward the door.
"Good, some of the girls got flustered when he was around and made mistakes," Margaret said. "Alpha Kai doesn't tolerate mistakes, his father's even worse about it."
"I'll remember that," Elara said and followed Margaret downstairs to the staff room where other housekeepers were taking their lunch break.
She ate a sandwich she'd packed that morning and listened to the other maids gossip about Kai.
"I heard he's obsessed with finding some omega he exiled years ago," one girl said. "He even spends thousands on private investigators."
"Why would he want to find someone he exiled?" another asked.
"He's guilt, or maybe she had something he wants," the first girl shrugged. "Either way he's falling apart over it."
Elara kept her expression neutral and took another bite of sandwich while inside she was smiling, because Kai was suffering and desperate and exactly where she needed him to be.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Sarah, the woman watching Adrian: He asked about you today, but I have tried to convince him that mama working, when are you calling?
Elara typed back quickly: Tell him mama loves him and I will call tonight.
She put the phone away and finished her sandwich, and when Margaret assigned her to clean Kai's office next she felt pieces of her plan clicking into place.