Chapter 726 Caught in the act.
Bella smiled though the expression never reached her eyes. It sat on her lips like a mask, hollow and practiced, sending a chill down Kael’s spine. “Beta Kael, I have something to tell you, but you have to promise to make me your pack member first.”
Kael’s stomach turned. The words slithered between them like a serpent, coiled and waiting to strike. This sounded like manipulation, plain and simple. He had dealt with enough schemers in his time to recognize the stench of it.
“I will have to discuss with your mistress.”
“It will be too late,” Bella said hastily, her voice rising with urgency. Her eyes darted toward the pack grounds, toward the elevator, toward anywhere but his face.
Kael was about to speak when Damon leaned in close against Kael’s ear. “Can you let me handle this?”
Kael agreed. Right now, his mind was a storm he could not navigate. Every thought crashed into the next, leaving him drowning in confusion and pain. He was not in the right mind to make any decisions.
“Go ahead.”
Damon at smiled the maid, his expression easy and disarming. “Bella, tell Kael whatever you want, and I will ensure that you become a pack member.”
“Thank you, Beta Damon.” Bella’s smile brightened, relief flooding her features. She turned back to Kael, her eyes locking onto him with desperate intensity. “Beta Kael, you have to come with me, or it will be too late.”
She reached for his arm, her fingers brushing against his sleeve, but he pulled away sharply. “To where? What if it is a setup?”
Bella’s smile faded, disappointment clouding her pupils like storm clouds rolling across a summer sky. She dropped her gauze, her shoulders sagging. “Beta Kael, Miss Cleo told me to seduce you and set you up so she could stand on it to reject you. But I am not foolish enough to do so in a pack like this.”
Kael froze. The world tilted beneath his feet, the ground crumbling away until there was nothing solid left to stand on. He wanted to doubt her. He wanted to call her a liar, to dismiss her words as the desperate ramblings of a servant seeking favor.
But the pain in his chest, that relentless, gnawing ache that had haunted him for hours, told him she was speaking the truth.
“Let’s go.”
Just as they reached the guest quarters, Cleopatra’s mother stepped out of the elevator. Luna Cassandra moved with the quiet grace of a woman who had spent decades navigating pack politics, but something in her eyes seemed off, distant, troubled. Kael greeted her politely.
“Mom, how is Cleo?”
The woman smiled, though confusion flickered across her features. “I should be asking you, Beta Kael. Haven’t you two marked each other already?” Her gauze settled on Kael’s neck, lingering on the unmarked skin, and her frown deepened.
Kael jolted from the shock, his heart hammering against his ribs. He forced his voice to remain steady. “Do you like her massage?”
“Massage?” Luna Cassandra’s brow furrowed, her head tilting to the side. “What are you talking about?”
“Cleo said you needed a massage. She said she would be with you.”
Luna Cassandra freezes. “No. And I have been feeling strange ever since the mate bond took effect.” Her voice dropped, barely above a whisper. “Is it supposed to hurt?”
“Luna Cass, I think you should see it too,” Bella said quietly, her voice trembling as she reached in front of Alpha Dean’s door. He was the Alpha of the Western Tribe, and Luna Cassandra’s mate.
“That is my mate’s room,” Luna Cassandra said, her voice cracking. “And he said he needed time alone. We have never shared a room since we got married twenty years ago. He is the one who comes to mine, but I am not expected to enter his.”
With everything going on, realization crashed over Kael. His mate. Her mother’s mate. The pain. The lies. All of it swirled together in a sickening pattern he could no longer deny.
As soon as he reached for the knob, he caught movement from the corner of his eye. Bella was rushing back into the elevator, her face disappearing behind the closing doors. He ignored her, his focus narrowing to the door in front of him. He entered the master code, his fingers moving with practiced precision.
Per pack rules, he could only use it during emergencies. This was an emergency. This was his life crumbling to ash in his hands. If using it became a breach, if he had to face the consequences, so be it.
The door swung open, and the sounds hit him first. Sinful, breathless, unmistakable. Moans and whispers, the creak of the bed, the slap of skin against skin. The noises wrapped around him like chains, squeezing the air from his lungs, making his knees weak and his vision blur.
“Yeah, fuck me harder daddy, you are the only one I want,” he heard the voice of his mate. The one the moon goddess had paired him with.
Kael felt like the breath had been ripped from his lungs, torn out of him and stomped into the ground.
The world narrowed to a tunnel, dark and suffocating, with only the scene before it illuminated in sickening clarity. The parties involved did not even notice they were being watched. Why would they?
They had been told that no one could open the door without the code. Alpha Dean had not given that code to even his wife. It was Cassandra’s scream that shattered their sinful moment.
“Dean!” she screamed, the sound tearing from her throat like a wounded animal’s cry. Her body swayed, her legs buckling beneath her, and before she could hit the ground, Kael moved. He caught her, his arms wrapping around her trembling frame, cradling her against his chest.
His cold gaze pinned on his naked mate and her naked father. A moment ago, Cleopatra had been bent over the headboard, her fingers clutching the wood, her back arched as the middle-aged man thrust into her with merciless rhythm.
The image burned itself into Kael’s mind, tearing and permanent, a wound that would never heal.
Kael said nothing. There were no words for this. No words for the depth of betrayal, the magnitude of the sickness that coiled in his stomach. He simply lifted Cassandra into his arms, her unconscious form light against his chest, and carried her out of that room. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing the sin inside.
He took her to the hospital pack, his strides long and purposeful, his face a mask of stone. Damon caught up to him just as he reached the emergency room doors, his expression a mixture of concern and curiosity.
“How did it go? I had to keep my promise to make the girl a pack member. Luna Oriana understood and took her through the process.”
Kael clutched his chest tightly after the doors of the emergency room closed, his fingers digging into his shirt as if he could physically hold his breaking heart together.
The pain was beyond medicine, beyond healing, beyond anything a doctor could touch. Only rejection would stop it. Only the final severity of a bond that should never have existed in the first place.
“Thank you, Damon. You were right.” His voice came out hollow, scraped clean of emotion. “My mate was cheating on me.”
A tear slid down his cheek as he spoke, tracing a hot path along his skin. A soft smile curved his lips, bitter and broken, as he endured the pain that radiated through every cell of his body.
“I wanted to do the right thing. To follow the will of the moon goddess. I let go of Jasmine for her, and she did this to me.”
Damon opened his mouth to ask with whom, but the words never left his lips. Kael answered the unspoken question first.
“With her father.”
Damon staggered backward, his face contorting with disbelief and disgust. The words hit him like a physical blow, knocking the air from his lungs. He could not believe something like this was possible. Could not fathom the depths of depravity that would drive a daughter to betray her mate with her own flesh and blood.
Before he could speak, before he could process the horror of it all, a mindlink invaded his mind, sharp and urgent.
“Beta Damon, Beta Kael’s mate is causing a scene. She is abusing her maid in the middle of the pack ground.”