Chapter Two
Elle's POV
Kaden's office had become a haven for me, where I could hide from the narrowed eyes and scrutinised stares. Sometimes, just being there gave me a sense of just doing something, working towards the eventual decision to become the person Kaden was waiting for.
I could see him most mornings through the windows as he stood, a tall figure swathed in dark clothes, pacing by the training fields. He liked to watch the trainees as they marched along to the demands of the old Gamma.
Rylan, the man he had selected to be his Beta, was always with him, standing to his right, a testament to his future position as an advisor and second in charge. While Kaden paced, Rylan took notes on an old clipboard, checking charts and noting improvements, constantly tracking the agility, skill and strength of those expected to protect the pack in an attack.
Jacobi was with them today, offering a trained eye to their analysis of the trainees. He was talking, gesturing towards the field of wolves. His hands moved erratically as he spoke, something I was familiar with after a decade of friendship, but now it hurt to be reminded of the familiarity between us, and I wished he would stop.
Kaden listened carefully, his head bobbing as he nodded to whatever Jacobi said. He would shake his head occasionally, and Jacobi would take a step back and dive into another long speech.
The conversation shifted to me. Kaden stilled, his eyes shifting to study me through the window. It was barely a glance before he turned back towards Jacobi, but it was enough.
Chills raced through my fingers, and I pulled away from the window. I had been caught, and I hated that. It was made ten times worse because I had no reason to be hiding out in here rather than being out there with him. I should have been listening to everything discussed and getting ready to take on that role.
Originally I had come in for a book. I had noticed it a few weeks ago while scouring the shelves in his office. It was a guide to the National Conference, and I had hoped to find it on the third shelf of the far wall where I'd last seen it. Except everything had been stripped from the shelves.
Everything in the office was gone. It had been packed into twelve boxes, stacked neatly beside the door. The room's emptiness was unsettling, and my steps echoed upon the wooden slats without anything to catch the sound. A sense of unease stirred in my chest.
All that remained was a heavy mahogany desk with a small stack of files. There were hardly as many as a week ago, and I wondered if he had packed them away. Over the past month, pack members filed their documents with him instead of his father. They did so because he was set to take leadership of the pack in the coming weeks, and it was their way of showing their support.
The dark wooden shelves, which had once been filled with books on Law and policies, binders filled with reports and past legal actions, and contracts between packs and letters of disputes, were now barren.
Pushed into the corner of the office, out of the way, was a brown couch. The old leather had weathered the years poorly and was stained and cracked. It had been Kaden's since childhood and fared well against a young boy. It should have been removed years ago and was scheduled for removal at least twice, but there was sentimental value in a gift from the deceased that made it impossible to part with.
It was one of the last things he had of his mothers.
I sat unblinkingly by the boxes, thinking of the change they represented. I told myself I had to be ready. Whether I liked it or not, a change was coming, and I couldn't let them down. I couldn't let him down.
Footsteps down the hallway brought my attention back to the window, and a strange relief flooded through me as I spied Jacobi and Rylan through the glassy pane. Kaden was nowhere to be seen.
I didn't turn as he knocked on the doorframe, wishing there wasn't a compulsion to do so in his own office. He crossed the room in three long strides and used a hand to smooth back my hair as he placed a tender kiss on my forehead.
I smiled softly as a greeting, touching three fingers to his wrist as he pulled back, moving towards his desk. It didn't feel like enough – it never did – but we had reached a standpoint. He waited for me to make the first move, but I felt like I was in quicksand. I knew I wouldn't make it to him before time ran out.
The old chair groaned under his weight, and he reached for a leaf of paper, the springs creaking under him. An awkwardness hung in the air, and Kaden took the time to smooth a fresh sheet of paper atop his new writing pad, a gift from Rylan following the news of the looming alpha ceremony. The slow, languid movement had no objective – done only to keep his hands and eyes busy before he leaned back in his chair, watching me from across the room. 'How was your morning?'
I turned my eyes back toward the training fields, unable to meet the intensity in his stare. 'It was okay. I met with Kendra for tea before going to the library. It was a nice start to my day.'
'That's good.'
'Mhhh,' the note hummed on my lips, 'How was your morning?' I didn't mean to feel so detached, but I couldn't help thinking about what it meant to hear him knocking on his own door. Moments were rare between us. Our only solace was found when we hid away from the world. 'I see it was productive.'
Kaden finally pulled his gaze away to study the empty office, and my lungs managed to fill with air. I wanted to change the rarity of moments between us, but floundering to grasp something concrete, I sunk further into the quicksand.
'I packed last night. I've had meetings most of the morning, nothing serious.'
As he looked upon the room, I stole my chance to study his features, pushing aside the twinge of discomfort which triggered in the back of my mind. You're allowed to look at your soulmate, I told myself. It's not wrong.
Kaden slouched against the leathered cushion of his chair, using the pad of his thumb in soft, slow movements to draw rings atop the wooden grain of his armrest. His thoughts were somewhere else. The focus in his eyes never dwindled – I'd grown to know that the bright awareness would always be there – but I knew something was wrong. It was the hollowing of his cheeks and his skin's pale pallor. It was an immediate cause for worry.
'Did you sleep last night?'
A faint smile caught on his lips, 'Not much. There was too much to do.'
'Come here.' I ignored my pounding heart, twisting my fingers together.
He didn't move at first, with a sharpness to his eyes as he studied me, waiting for a contradiction to my words. It had to be only the fourth or fifth time I had initiated anything close to intimacy in the year we had been together. There was a tightening in my chest with the realisation that he was so used to it that the thought of anything else concerned him.
He was so used to me shying away from his touch that the suggestion caused him to hesitate.
I wanted to apologise immediately, but the darker side of my mind started working hard to convince me that he hesitated only because the idea of coming near me repulsed him. So I waited, unable to reassure him as I fought back the dark thoughts. My heart caught in my chest, unable to beat while Kaden fought his internal battle.
I was close to pulling back the words, willing to give him the contradiction he sought, but I forced myself to wait. I wanted to keep my promise to try harder. I felt vulnerable as I waited, like I had offered a piece of myself up, and all I could do was wait to see if he took and cherished it or destroyed it in the process.
When he finally decided that I must have meant it and didn't intend to take the words back, he pushed away from his desk, making his way towards me slowly as though I was an animal he didn't want to frighten away. When his fingers brushed mine, I wrapped them around his and led him towards the couch.
I tried to stop my thoughts from racing, but it was impossible to stop myself from keeping a mental log of everywhere my hands went, how light my touch was, and how uncomfortable it might be for him. His silence spoke louder than words, but I wasn't sure it was saying what he intended.
I realised I was coming across as timid, more so than caring, as I pulled his head into my lap, and as I internally debated running my fingers through his hair, I found myself doing it subconsciously.
As I mirrored how his fingers would run through my hair, Kaden's eyes shuddered, his whole body wilting under my touch. He gave himself a moment, and his eyes closed for a beat before he forced them open, staring up at me, unabashed, unblinking.
'Close your eyes.' I whispered, praying my voice wouldn't crack.
He continued his unique appraisal, and with anyone else, I would have been discomforted at such intensity, but his long stares only managed to warm my heart. Time passed between us, stretching out peacefully, and then he lifted his chin to catch the inside of my wrist with his lips, a slow, gentle kiss, his eyes fluttering.
The soft gesture caused my pulse to jump, and my hands stilled, tangled in his hair. Reaching, with eyes closed, he freed one of my hands. Pressing another delicate kiss to my knuckles as he brought my hand across his chest, laying it above his heart. A slight smile pulled at the tension on my face as his heart drummed under my palm.
'Could you wake me in an hour?'
***
I didn't have the heart to wake him. The hour came and went, and even when Jacobi knocked on the door, Kaden slept on, exhaustion dragging him so deep into unconsciousness that not even the sound of murmured voices could pull him back.
I decided to tell Jacobi I would tell him when Kaden was awake, my voice barely above a whisper. Kaden needed sleep more than he needed to do anything else, and I didn't want to risk Jacobi returning and waking him.
I was right because Kaden slept so long that my legs went numb, and when his eyes opened, blinking unsteadily after three hours, it was as though he had awoken in a parallel universe. His eyes glazed with remnants of deep sleep. A yawn pulled at his lips, and he let his eyes drift shut, burrowing closer into the couch and closer to me.
'What time is it?'
'Three-fifteen.'
His hand clenched without thought, closing around the fabric of my jacket as he arched his back. The air turned solid in my lungs, and I almost choked as my sight tunnelled on his hand.
'You should have woken me.'
'Sorry.'
He sighed, turning so he lay flat, his eyes tilted upwards. 'Don't be. It was a good rest. My brain will clear up in a second.'
With a groan, his eyes fell closed. 'Is it still Saturday?' he asked.
I pushed his hair back, smoothing the static mess I had created. 'That good, huh?'
'I think I forgot my own name for a moment.'
I laughed, a full-bellied laugh, and the sound pried Kaden's eyes back open, so he looked up at me, his smile growing. My laughter was a rare commodity, and he always seemed to bathe in a glow of light upon hearing it.
'I think you needed it.'
He peered, the glaze in his eyes fading away as he let time ground him back into reality, and then finally, as he came back to earth, a subtle frown puckered his brow. 'What did you do with Jacobi?'
'He told me it could wait and that he would return when you were ready.'
'And will he?'
I nodded towards my phone. It was still lit up after the message I'd just sent. 'I told him to come by in twenty minutes.'
'Good.'
Kaden pulled me to my feet, kissing my forehead before guiding me across the room towards his desk.
The files on his desk were working copies. Most of them belonged to his firm, while a handful, with highlighted scribbles, stood out as belonging to the pack. Even though there were more files for the law firm, he had placed the pack files on top.
I swept them up and put them into two separate piles. 'Are you going to miss it?'
He took the pile I wasn't working on and stared without seeing the words. 'Dad's going to return after I settle into the routine. He'll buy back most of my clients.'
'That doesn't answer my question. You spent three years at university and three years at the firm. That's a lot of time to give up.'
Silence. Then a sharp breath hissed through his nose as he caught my wrist and tugged me onto his lap. 'I did five years actually, and four for the firm, though my two years of masters were through correspondence, and my first year at the firm was a mandatory internship during my bachelor's degree.'
'How did you have a life?'
Chuckling, he twisted our fingers together. 'I didn't.'
There was something in the way he said it that sounded dark.
'I didn't go to university to work at the firm, though. Over the years, it's become somewhat of a requirement to take on the leadership role in a pack. More and more packs are requesting future alphas to go.'
Curiosity got the better of me. 'What degree did you do?'
'I did a double bachelor's degree in Business Management and Law and then went on to a Master of Business Management.'
I rolled my lip between my teeth as I remembered the years that had gone by. I had been passively obsessed with trying to get his attention. But in all those years, I had never gotten a glimpse past the facade he had built to protect me. Every time I learnt something new, it was a painful reminder that while he'd known me for years. I was still learning. 'That feels wrong. To force you to do that.'
'It didn't take much convincing. Elle, listen,' he leant forward, our noses touching, and I had to focus on not moving away. 'I loved every minute of my degrees, thrived even. It's what I was meant to do. I picked up Law as a hobby to distract my mind, and it's been more useful than the others.'
He didn't need to say the words to make it clear. He'd wanted to be distracted from me.
'Turns out my dad was teaching me how to run a pack for years, and the degree just proved to me that I was ready.'
'I don't have a degree.'
'No. You don't.' He brushed his fingers against my face, moving away unruly hair. 'But you only just graduated, and you could if that's what you wanted to do. I saw you in that conference room when you spoke out against Lachlan. I've heard you practically running the hotel from the ground up. You'll do a good job no matter what you decide. You just have to trust yourself.'
A sound at the door stole my response, and Kaden recoiled with a sigh, pressing into the leather-back chair. He gave a terse 'come in' as I scrambled to my feet and out of his arms.
Jacobi nodded briefly towards Kaden and me, his eyes scanning the room.
While Jacobi set a binder onto the desk and took two respectful steps back, Kaden stood fluidly from his chair and gestured for me to take it.
It was a power move that I didn't understand fully, but Jacobi seemed to respect it.
'As per your request, ma'am...' Jacobi's words softened as I flinched, and Kaden's hand rested tenderly on my shoulder. The formality of the address hurt, and I pushed it aside. 'We have spent the past week assembling a team for your security detail.
'This team is only introductory, and we plan to expand the current suggestions over the coming weeks. Following the time constraints of the Conference, we have decided on a preliminary team. Once you are safely back on pack soil, we will continue interviewing and training candidates to fill the positions. This extended team should be ready when you return from the Iter Coronam de Terra, though unfortunately not before.'
'How many people make up the current team.'
'Three, and we are looking at an additional three to join them and six others trained in the position for extenuating circumstances. Your day-to-day detail will consist of trained pack members who will each be with you for one of three eight-hour shifts covering a day and following a six-day cycle. The cycle will change at the end of the six days to remove predictability. For temporary changes in your schedule, such as meetings with other packs or travels away from the pack, your security detail will increase to two individuals for each eight-hour shift.
'Due to these changes and my increased involvement within the pack, your head of security will be another pack member. They will report back to Kaden and me in weekly updates.'
'Who will be given the position?'
'Fallyn Normandy has already been given the position as of this morning. She is currently drawing up security information for the Conference. She has been advised to be ready for a nine a.m. departure tomorrow morning.'