Kaelen's POV
The door opened with a sharp squeal, and I looked up from the album on my desk. Riven, my beta, strolled in carefully, flexing the weight of his big body with each movement.
His lips cracked with a rather tensed smile as he glimpsed the album on the desk. "Isn't it time you forgot about Lara. She is dead, Kaelen. I watched the car hit, I watched her die myself." He said, sounding very sure, like always.
Before, I would have stood up and punched the confidence out of his lips. Now, I just let him be. It was no use getting angry over the same thing over and over again.
I had sent him to protect her, to keep her safe, so the elders wouldn't get at her. Instead, he had returned with the news of her death.
"You saw wrong," I replied, with a sharp inflection to my tone that should tell him I wasn't interested in pursuing the topic further.
She might be dead, as he claimed, but I didn't need him to constantly remind me of that.
He took the cue, clasped his lips shut, and leaned back to rest on the wall with arms folded across his chest.
I returned my gaze to the photo album, to the page showing one of her college graduation photos.
Father had forbidden formal education for everyone in the pack, except for the elders and the royals. His beta, Lara's father, Rowan Ashwyn, and I had fought tooth and nail to make sure that Lara could also go to college. It was a battle that took years, until my father agreed on the premise that my mate cannot be illiterate.
I traced the picture with my fingers, her smile, the smooth, silky brush of her skin, those full lips that always tasted like heaven. I could almost feel them twitch beneath my finger as I touched them on print.
I stood beside her in the picture, holding that slim waist of hers possessively, which was my way of telling her male college mates to keep off, yet I was faded to the picture's background, swallowed by her radiance, beauty, and liveliness.
How could she be dead? The thought crackled through my mind like a whip. She was the strongest, toughest, and most intelligent woman I knew. How could she die from something as simple as a car accident?
"Are you done?" Riven's throaty voice echoed in the room. The boredom in his voice tugged at my nerves.
"What is it?" I grunted. I barely glanced up from the album. I opened to another page to glimpse another beautiful smile of hers. The pictures were the only thing I had of her.
"The guards have just arrived with the doctor lady." He said.
"Then have them show her to her quarters and to the people she is going to treat."
"She is a very renowned doctor, Kaelen. The president of the World Medical Board, we can't just show her to her room and patients. She has to be welcomed properly. Elder Bali spent almost half the pack's fortune to bring her here." Riven narrated as if I wasn't aware of the fact already.
I couldn't give a damn about the Elders and their illnesses. It was time they all perished anyway. Left to me, they will. They were the reason I rejected Lara, the reason I couldn't protect her, the reason she was lying in some ditch somewhere, dead. The only reason I hadn't killed the Elders myself was that they still had the power over the pack's entire accounts. Once I get that from them, they'd be meeting their graves in seconds.
"The Elders should welcome her themselves," I said, still refusing to give up Lara's brilliant smile for Riven's ugly, serious ones, even though I had seen Lara's pictures a thousand times already.
"But the Elders aren't the Alpha King of the pack, you are,"
I looked up then, hating to. My lips curled in a derisive smile. "You and I both know that isn't entirely true. Technically, I am sharing my power with those old bags. I had sent those old bags to the battle front so I could get rid of them. Why should I care if they were treated or not?"
The bastards had asked themselves to fight in the recent small-scale war we had with the Silverfang packs and I had been more than happy to let them. I had sent them to the heat of the battle, hoping they would die. But the old bones had nine lives.
"And you know that was reckless, Kaelen. If they had died, we might never get the location of the pack's accounts."
I slanted him a hard stare that died the admonishment in his tone.
"How would I have known the bastards didn't have the locations of the account hidden in their quarters?"
"Because you—" Riven was about to yell at me again, but controlled himself halfway. He leaned from the wall with a sharper grunt now. "Just come, welcome the guest, Kealen. Even if just for five minutes, I'll handle the rest."
I knew from experience that the ugly hunk of meat wouldn't let me be until he got what he wanted. I barely glanced up from the album, my eyes traced the curve of my arm on Lara's waist as we kissed in the picture I was looking at now. "Three minutes, Riven," I said. "That's the best I can do."
"Four, Kaelen. You can't just—"
"It's three or nothing, Riven."
He grunted, and he yanked the door. "Fine." He growled.
I closed the album with slow, reluctant fingers and left the room with him grudgingly.
"How about the location of her gravesite, Riven. Have you found it yet?" I asked him while we climbed down the stairs.
"I haven't, but I think I am getting close to it." He replied.
"You have been saying that for three years now. You are always getting close and yet you never—" I paused, my words cut short when my wolf suddenly surged inside of me with a force unlike any I have ever felt.
I staggered on the stars, almost tripping on the stone as I dropped into the large hall that made the throne room.
"Mine." My wolf growled so powerfully that I was momentarily deafened. I looked up immediately, and my eyes fell fast on her.
She was different, completely different, but it was her. My mate, my woman. My Lara.