39. Aiden
39
Aiden
“We’re actually staying here?” Camden mumbles at me the second we’re out of Daniel’s mansion.
“For the time being,” I say.
He follows behind me as Constance takes up on my right, her arm brushing against mine while we follow two of Daniel’s enforcers through town. Her voice is quiet when she speaks.
“I thought you didn’t want to leave the packlands, Your Grace.”
“Things changed.” Glancing around, I don’t spot Delilah at all, so hopefully that means she’s keeping herself hidden. The last thing I want is for Daniel to get his hands on her, on the off-chance that he knows she left Andromeda in the first place.
“Such as?”
I shake my head at her subtly instead of answering. We’ll need more privacy than this for me to tell them about Delilah. Especially if what she’s been telling me is true and that my fated mate has been sold off to some pack in the South.
No matter what, at the end of the day, Raine should’ve never been sold to any pack outside of my jurisdiction. We cut off all relations with Nyx Calloway and everything beyond the Southern borders a long time ago, back when my father was still king.
If for some reason Raine voluntarily decided to become a breeder—which I don’t believe in the slightest—then she would’ve at least stayed in the North, regardless of which packs were still practicing keeping a breeder.
Hell, if there aren’t any, then she should’ve stayed in Andromeda.
We’re brought to a large cabin just a few down from Daniel’s mansion. I have no doubt that Daniel, along with the rest of his pack, will be wondering why in the world we’re staying here and not the mansion, but there’s a reason for it.
There’s no telling where his eyes and ears are inside of that mansion, and being able to speak freely with my beta and advisor will be crucial in figuring out what the hell happened.
Not to mention, I can’t exactly sneak Delilah in if we’re occupying the mansion.
Once the enforcers are dismissed, we head into the cabin. Camden steps around both of us to begin sweeping the area, checking for any kind of bugs, traps, and whatever else could be used to spy on us.
Both Constance and I wait until he gives us the all clear, and when it happens, she immediately turns to me. “What’s going on?”
I usher them both into the living room. “Someone from this pack ran all the way to our borders and begged for an audience with me. She told me that she’d been held captive, but escaped and came straight to Pollis to tell me about what went on with that pack from the South.”
Both Constance and Camden’s eyes widen.
Settling down on one of the couches, I let out a sigh. “Look, there’s…a lot both of you don’t know about. I haven’t wanted to talk about it because I was still hurt over what happened, but clearly it’s come back to bite me in the ass.”
They both exchange looks with each other. Constance sits across from me on the couch while Camden hooks a leg up over its arm and settles down on the edge.
“What are you talking about?” he asks. “If this is about your weird mood lately, then it’s about damn time you said something.”
The urge to roll my eyes is almost overwhelming. Leave it to my beta to be upfront about it.
Constance smacks his knee loud enough to make a sound. He lets out a small yip that reminds me of our days as pups.
Folding my fingers together, I lean forward on my elbows. “During the ball…I met someone.”
“You met a lot of someones, Your Grace,” Constance says in a bland tone. “You’ll have to be more specific than that.”
“My fated mate.” It’s hard to force the words out, my chest burning from admitting it out loud for the first time since I met Raine. “That’s…I met her at the ball.”
Stunned silence follows. I don’t look up from my hands, not wanting to see the expressions on their faces. I know exactly what I’ll find—disbelief, wonder, confusion, a silent request of are you sure it was her? that I really don’t want to deal with.
The intense passion that Raine and I shared had been on a cosmic level. Her soul meeting mine had suddenly made the world make sense. I never knew I’d been missing her until after I’d met her.
And now being separated, even with it being my own doing, is torture.
“That’s why I was avoiding anything to do with the ball—I was spending all of my time with her and also trying to get the elders on board before they chose a Luna for me.”
“Why did we never meet her?” Constance asks.
“She had to go back here, to Andromeda. I needed time to convince the elders with her being from a lower pack, so we kept in contact during the weeks we were apart. We wrote letters back and forth weekly, sometimes three times a week. But then they suddenly stopped.”
I pull in a deep breath. I hate this part. Talking about it, or even thinking about it, feels like I’m reliving the memories, just as painful as if I was receiving the news right at this very moment.
My soul hasn’t been the same since. I don’t know if it will ever be.
“Your Grace?” Constance prompts.
I shake myself out of my thoughts. “Almost four weeks passed where I didn’t hear anything, and just as I was getting ready to leave to go try to track her down, Daniel came to me with a letter that she supposedly wrote…along with a test.”
“Test?” Camden says.
Lifting my eyes, I glance at him. “A pregnancy test.”
His mouth drops open.
“The letter stated that she lied to me and that she came to the ball with nefarious intentions. She’d gotten pregnant by someone in her pack and had panicked after being rejected by the baby’s father. So she went with the sole intention to seduce me and claim me as the father, since her pack alpha would have no choice but to accept the bastard child into their pack. She just never expected for us to be fated mates when we met.”
I lean back and sink into the couch, suddenly feeling exhausted.
“She came to our pack a few weeks ago, claiming that the letter was fake.”
“That was the female we tossed out,” Camden murmurs.
I nod. “What else was I supposed to do when her alpha was claiming one thing and her another? Who was I supposed to trust in that situation after not hearing from her for weeks?”
Constance sighs. “So, what made you second-guess everything? The shifter who came to Pollis after her?”
I nod again. “Her name is Delilah. She claims to be my mate’s best friend and was there when everything happened, including at the ball where we first met. She says that everything Daniel’s said is false and that the letter was forged. However, the pregnancy is real.”
I watch as both of their faces fall.
“You believe it’s your child, then,” she says.
I shrug. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“Where is your mate now?” Camden asks. “Surely if she’s here, we can just ask her ourselves.”
“Apparently the pack from the South that visited here had actually come to buy her as a breeder. I didn’t know until after you both left and Delilah showed up.”
“And you believe Delilah?” Constance asks.
I shrug. “Again, I don’t know what to believe. The only thing that I know is one hundred percent true is that Raine is my mate. Everything else, I have no way of proving who is lying and who isn’t.”
“Where is Delilah?” she asks.
“She brought me here. I told her to take cover in the woods just outside of the border. Tonight we can go meet with her and you can both speak with her to see if you believe she’s telling the truth or not.”
Camden slides off the couch’s arm. “I can go now.”
I shake my head. “Not with the entirety of Andromeda on high alert right now. We’ll go when everyone’s asleep. I can’t risk messing this up. Delilah’s told me she had to escape imprisonment to get to Pollis.”
Camden swears under his breath. “What the hell kind of pack is this?”
“I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.”