Chapter 26 26

Chapter 26 26
Alpha Kael

“I will not trust you. You have spoken only lies to me till now.”

The cruel words I had just spoken tasted like ash in my mouth.

You broke her, my beast snarled. She gave us her bleeding heart, and you stepped on it.

I closed my eyes, taking a deep shaky breath. Odette’s tear-stained face flashed behind my eyelids. I remembered the agony in her brown eyes as she confessed the truth about her mother, her toxic father, and the cruel betrayal of her sister and her ex-mate.

It was a crazy story. It sounded like a tragic movie.

Someone cannot lie that deeply. Someone cannot fake the kind of soul-crushing despair I had seen in her eyes. There had to be truth in her words. If she was telling the truth, if she really was just an innocent victim sacrificed to a "monster" to save her cruel family, then the entire dynamic of our relationship would change forever.

I was not her punisher. I was her only way out.

I turned away from the bedroom door and marched straight to the private elevator. I rode it down to the administrative wing and kicked open the door to Lucas’s office.

My Beta jumped, nearly spilling his coffee all over a stack of patrol reports.

"Goddess, Kael! Use the handle," Lucas complained, grabbing a napkin.

I ignored him. I walked over to his desk, placed my hands flat on the wood, and leaned forward, my blue eyes burning with urgency.

"I need you to investigate the Mist Rain pack," I ordered, my voice a demanding rumble. "I need you to dig into every single thing that happened on the island during the week leading up to the wedding."

Lucas stopped wiping up his coffee. He looked at my serious expression and slowly set the napkin down. "What are we looking for?"

I told him everything. I recounted the entire story Odette had just dumped on me while sitting on the floor surrounded by junk food. I told him about the fake letter from Serena, the toxic obsession of the Alpha father, the affair, the setup, and the bet Josh had made.

Lucas listened quietly, his eyebrows rising higher and higher with every sentence.

"Are you serious?" Lucas asked, letting out a low whistle when I finished. "They threw the bastard Omega into the wedding dress and told her you would slaughter them all if she didn't play along? That is bold. And stupid."

"I need facts, Lucas," I growled, pacing across the length of his office. "I need to know if she is telling the truth. Because if she is... I have made a terrible mistake. I have been treating my mate like a manipulative villain, when she has actually been a hostage her entire life."

"I will check it," Lucas agreed immediately, pulling out a secure laptop. "I have a few spies planted in the plain lands. I will have them sniff around the Mist Rain packhouse. But Kael, you need to understand something. If her father planned this, he is the Alpha. He controls the narrative. It will be very hard to find full-fledged and concrete proof of a private family conspiracy."

"Just find me something," I pleaded, the sheer desperation bleeding into my voice. "Anything that proves who she really is."

For the next three days, I lived in agony.

I did not go back to the penthouse. I slept on the small couch in my private study. I was too ashamed to face Odette until I had the truth. I missed her so much it felt like a physical sickness. I missed the smell of wild jasmine. I missed the sound of her sarcastic comebacks. I was starving for my wife.

My wolf howled day and night, demanding I go upstairs and beg for her forgiveness. But my human pride and fear kept me frozen in my study, waiting for Lucas to call.

Finally, on the afternoon of the third day, the door to my study opened.

Lucas walked in. He looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes, but he had a highly amused and triumphant smirk on his face. He was holding a small stack of shiny plastic cases.

I shot up from my desk. "Did you find it? Did you find the proof?"

Lucas walked over and dropped the stack of plastic cases onto my desk. They clattered loudly against the wood. I looked down. They were old, burned CDs, and a couple of modern flash drives.

"I did not get full-fledged proof of the wedding conspiracy," Lucas admitted, holding his hands up. "As I said, her father covered his tracks well. The official pack records say Serena was deathly ill that morning, which is why Odette took her place. Total bullshit, but it is locked tight."

My shoulders slumped. A heavy disappointment settled in my chest. "Then what is this?" I asked, pointing to the CDs.

Lucas’s smirk grew wider. "I had my spies bribe one of the old maids who used to work in the Mist Rain packhouse. I told them to look into Odette’s past. Her father wiped a lot of her existence from the official pack records to keep the bastard secret, but the maid had these stashed away."

Lucas leaned against my desk, crossing his arms. He suddenly rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in a universal gesture for money.

"Now," Lucas said in a fun, entirely too casual voice. "Smuggling private property out of a paranoid Alpha's territory is highly dangerous work. My spies risked their necks. I risked my beauty sleep. So, I am going to need to charge you for these."

I glared at my Beta. "You are charging your Alpha?"

"Absolutely," Lucas grinned shamelessly. "For this specific treasure? I want a five million dollar bonus, two weeks of paid vacation, and you have to let me drive your new black sports car for a month."

"Done. Take the keys. Take the money. Just tell me what it is, Lucas."

Lucas chuckled, clearly surprised I had caved so easily. It only proved to him exactly how obsessed and desperate I was for my tiny island bride.

"Put the first CD in the computer, Kael," Lucas said softly, his teasing tone fading into genuine respect. "You need to see this."

My hands actually shook a little as I picked up the plastic case. I slid the old CD into the disk drive of my large desktop monitor. I clicked on the first video file that popped up on the screen.

The video was a little grainy and clearly filmed a few years ago.

The screen showed a larg and  empty wooden studio. Sunlight was streaming through tall windows, illuminating the dust dancing in the air.

Then, Odette stepped into the frame.

My breath was completely caught in my throat. I couldn't look away.

She was a few years younger, her brown hair pulled back tightly into a perfect bun. She was wearing a simple black leotard and pale pink pointe shoes. But it wasn't her clothes that shocked me.

It was the look on her face.

The Odette I knew in my penthouse was either terrified, furiously angry, or completely dead inside. The girl I knew hid behind sharp words and thick walls.

But the girl on the screen was completely and beautifully alive.

The classical piano music started playing through the computer speakers. Odette closed her eyes for a brief second, taking a deep breath. When she opened them, they were shining with a brilliant and untamed fire.

She began to dance.

She leaped across the wooden floor with such effortless and gravity-defying grace that she looked like she was flying. Her body bent and stretched in ways that seemed impossible, yet she made it look as natural as breathing. Every single spin, every arch of her back, every extension of her delicate legs was filled with grace and passion.

"Goddess," I whispered, leaning closer to the screen.

She wasn't just performing; she was pouring her entire soul out into the empty room. She looked so free. A bright and genuine smile broke across her face as she landed a difficult spin. It was a smile so breathtakingly beautiful it made my chest physically ache. I had never seen her smile like that.

"Keep watching," Lucas murmured from beside me.

I dragged my eyes away from her radiant face and looked at the background of the video.

Sitting in the dark corner of the studio, sitting on a wooden chair, was a man. He was an older, wealthy-looking Alpha. Her father.

He wasn't smiling. He wasn't cheering for his daughter. He was staring at her with a settling intensity. He watched her every move, completely unblinking. It was the look of a man who was obsessed with a ghost.

“He pushed me to be a ballerina so he could feel his dead lover in me... It was completely, suffocatingly toxic.”

Odette's heartbreaking words from the bedroom echoed loudly in my mind. 

She had told me the truth.

She loved dancing. She loved the freedom it gave her. And her father had used it to trap her in his sick and twisted grief.

I watched the rest of the videos on the CDs. I watched her grow up on the screen, from a teenage girl into the beautiful and curvy woman who now sleeps in my bed. In every video, the dancing was phenomenal, but as the years went on, I noticed the light in her eyes slowly beginning to fade. 

By the time I clicked on the last video, my heart was completely shattered.

I paused the video on a close-up of her face. She was sweating, panting slightly, but her brown eyes were looking straight into the camera lens.

I reached out, my rough and scarred fingers gently touching the cold glass of the computer. 

I needed to see her as soon as possible.