SWNOVELS : Chapter 123
Alexander
I heard a familiar chuckle and looked up to find
Kayden smirking at me. “Should I ask?”
My Beta had caught me looking down at my phone while walking over to meet him. I’d been setting one of the pics Fiona sent me as her contact photo.
“You should not.” I locked my phone and slid it into my pocket. “Ready for this?” I jerked my head in the direction of Iris’s room, and we started walking that way.
Kayden shrugged. “Let’s just hope she’s in a good mood today.”
She was.
Iris beamed when she answered the door. Her
“hellos” were light and cheerful. She was ready to go and quick to scoot out of her room for our lunch appointment.
Earlier in the week, I’d asked the palace staff to bring her some new clothes. I figured she could use them. I kind of forgot that I’d done that until I saw her standing there in a still casual but much smarter outfit than I’d ever seen her wear before. I almost did a double-take at the sight.
“You look great today,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“I feel good.” She blushed and looked away.
For a split second there, she reminded me of the old Iris. The quiet, innocent Iris I remembered from long ago, when we were teenagers.
“Real good,” she continued. “You guys… you’re so smart. I was being dumb before, and I’m real sorry about that. It’s just cuz I was in pain, you know… But anyway, I did wind up doin’ what you said, Kayden.”
“And what’s that?” he asked.
“I went to the library. I still can’t read, of course! But I thought maybe it’d be pretty to look at. Before, you see, I never got to explore the palace. Took me a minute to feel like I was alright to do that now, you know? Different, living here, not being a servant anymore… Anyway, I went to see what the library was like, just to finally do that—explore.”
“And how’d you like it?”
“Oh, it was beautiful! So nice. And a worker, a nice lady I met in there, she showed me all these books about art. They’ve got pictures, you see. Of paintings, statues, all kinds of things. I been sitting and looking at those for some of the time.”
“That’s wonderful, Iris. I’m glad you’re settling in.” I
offered her an encouraging smile.
The difference in both her appearance and affect today was staggering. I was grateful to see her like this, but cautious not to be too hopeful. It remained to be seen if this change would be lasting.
“You know,” she said, her voice going quiet. “I really like these nice clothes you sent me, Alexander.”
“It’s no trouble at all.”
“Mm-hmm. And I was thinking, if it’s not too much trouble, could I ask you for another thing, too?”
“Sure.” We reached the dining room and went inside, meeting the fragrances of the meal I’d asked the staff to prepare for the three of us. “What do you need?”
“I was thinking, looking at all the art books, that
maybe I could try doing that myself. Painting, I mean.
Is that something you could get me, some painting things?”
I smiled. “Of course. I’ll have some art supplies ordered right away.”
“You are wonderful,” she said, grinning. I noticed that she often skipped over the simple words “thank you”
when it seemed apparent that’s what she was trying to say.
Iris having a hobby seemed like a good thing. And it occurred to me that painting was often employed as a therapeutic activity. Maybe this could help my charge calm her troubled mind, in addition to keeping her hands from falling idle.
Kayden and I escorted Iris back to her room after lunch, and then he and I headed into the city together.
I had three meetings this afternoon at three different locations, and I’d scheduled them, ambitiously, in rapid succession. The idea had been to handle these obligations quickly and get back to the palace with time to spare for pack business and Fiona.
I wound up running late coming out of the very first of the three meetings. But Kayden made the impossible happen and still got me to the second on time. I even got to the third one a few minutes early.
“The kid needs a break,” Caldwell said. “And you and I should speak alone, anyway.”
I’d met him and Jacob in the center of the training field. Cal had reached out, mindlinked me when they were close. Kayden and I were just pulling up in the palace parking lot at the time, and I’d headed straight to the courtyard to wait on their arrival.
Caldwell had a fighting look in his eyes. This full day of forced marching had my Gamma warrior channeling a kind of strength he hadn’t needed to access in a while. The younger soldier at his side was his perfect foil, standing upright but only just barely and pale-complexioned like he’d been ill.
But Jacob was looking over at his superior officer with clear respect and gratitude. The energy between the two men had changed a great deal. That’s what I had been hoping for when I’d sent them back into the forest this morning to suffer a few hours of punishment together.
“Dismissed, Jacob.”
He inclined his head to me, as much of a bow as he could muster with his weighted pack still strapped to his back. His legs were shaking, making his whole
Caldwell held out his hand; Jacob unstrapped his pack and handed it over.
“So, let’s have it,” I said, once Jacob was growing small in our view, crossing the length of the courtyard on unsteady feet. “What the fuck happened, Cal? And why didn’t you bring it to me immediately?”
His mouth was a flat line. “I’ve got no good excuse for that. There’s a reason, but it’s no good. I should have talked to you the day you got back.”
“And what’s that reason?”
“I think it’s best I start from the beginning… answer your first question first.”
I took Jacob’s rucksack from him, motioned for Cal to
follow and started slowly back toward the palace.
“Some of the guys, when you and Kayden weren’t here… they got all excited over this idea. Someone got the message started that we should all go out for Alder’s birthday—that was the day this all went down—and they got all riled up about it… a few of us tried to turn it around, but in the end I went along, thinking I could be some kind of chaperone. That obviously didn’t work out the way I thought it would.”
“Was it Alder’s idea to go out?”
“No, sir…” Cal paused to clear his dry throat. “I don’t know where the idea first came from. But it was this whole thing about ‘everyone’ has to go, everyone’s gotta be there. Sounds dumb, a bunch of grown men giving in to peer pressure, but it was almost like a mob mentality. A few of the other Gammas, they were pushing just as hard as the young guys, saying this
was our one chance to cut loose.”
I interrupted to get specifics; I wanted to know who said what exactly. Cal answered my questions as best he could.
“And then what happened at the club?”
He sighed. “Drinking, first of all. A fucking lot of drinking.”
“You included?”
He looked away and tightened the straps of the heavy pack on his back. “Yeah. I didn’t go as hard as most of the other guys, I was still kidding myself that I was keeping an eye on them. But I got distracted, had a few more than I should’ve.”
His upper lip twitched. Cal was trying hard to keep his
face firm despite the temptation to frown or indulge in some other display of emotion.
“Then what?”
“Then… some of the guys were at the bar, the rest were upstairs at a table with some girls. I’d just gotten a beer and was going up to join the guys in the upper level. I don’t think Jacob would’ve kept running his mouth in front of me, if he’d seen me. But I was behind him.”
Cal was getting slower to speak. I could feel fear in the air around him.
“Jacob was loaded. Drunk out of his mind. And saying, well… he was talking some shit on you.”
Instantly the match was lit; my anger was aflame. I let the fire start to burn inside, but kept my cool on the
“Tell me what he said.”
“He said… that you’re keeping a girl on the side. And, uh, made some crude remarks, some… speculations of a sexual nature… both about that… alleged…
girl… and about your fiancée as well.”
This was why he hadn’t reported the incident to me sooner. And why he’d insisted on telling me the story without Jacob nearby. He didn’t want me to hurt him.
I guess Cal knew me pretty well.
I was already visualizing dragging Jacob out here by the neck and beating the shit out of him.
He’d challenged my authority and undermined me in front of the pack. That would have been enough of a
But hearing that one of my own men had disrespected Fiona like that… that fell like gasoline onto the licking flames of my anger and made it rage.