Chapter 216 - 0216

Jaxen POV

I couldn’t believe it. I genuinely couldn’t fucking believe it.

Lorelei was alive.

She was actually alive.

For months, I’d searched for her. Desperately. Obsessively. Like a man who had completely lost his mind. I’d turned over every stone, questioned every contact I had, chased every lead that came my way until there was nothing left to chase. I’d gone from one dead end to another, refusing to accept that there was nothing more I could do.

Eventually, I’d even started preparing myself for the possibility I never wanted to face.

That she was really gone.

That she had died somewhere out there, alone and freezing, because of me.

And now she was alive.

Not only alive, but sitting beside the Alpha King as his future Queen.

"You all called me crazy when I told you I saw her!"

My mother-in-law’s shrill voice tore through the quiet living room, dragging me out of my thoughts. Elara was pacing back and forth in front of the stone fireplace, waving her hands around as she ranted, her face flushed with the same frantic disbelief she’d been carrying ever since the banquet.

We were currently staying in the luxurious guest quarters the High Council Elders had given us for the next few days. They still hadn’t told us exactly why they had suddenly taken such an interest in us or what they actually wanted from us, but honestly, I wasn’t in any position to complain.

If anything, I was grateful.

They had stepped in at the banquet and saved us from the Alpha King’s terrifying wrath before things could get even worse. And since they’d scheduled a formal meeting with us for this afternoon, I assumed we’d finally get some answers.

"I told you! I told all of you!" Elara continued, her voice trembling with frustration. "But none of you believed me! You said I was imagining things. You said it was just stress, that my eyes were playing tricks on me!"

I glanced at her, already knowing exactly what she was talking about.

The incident from a few weeks ago.

The day she’d collapsed in the middle of the road, completely hysterical, swearing that she’d seen Lorelei.

But that hadn’t been the first time.

Ever since Lorelei disappeared, Elara had repeatedly claimed to see her in random places. Every single time, she’d managed to fill me with a burst of desperate hope, only for that hope to come crashing back down when we realized she’d simply mistaken someone else for her.

After a while, even I had stopped believing her.

The pack healer eventually diagnosed her with manic episodes brought on by subconscious guilt.

Because no matter how deeply Elara claimed to hate Lorelei now, Lorelei was still the daughter she had carried for nine months. Cruelly punishing her for years was one thing, but actually believing she might be dead had been something else entirely.

I think that possibility had quietly cracked something inside Elara, which was part of the reason we had brought her along with us to the empire territory in the first place.

After so many false alarms, though, we had stopped believing anything she said. Every time she swore she had seen Lorelei, we would simply brush it off as another episode, another delusion her guilt had created.

Turns out, she had been right all along.

"Mom, please..." Callista’s weak voice finally broke through the noise, barely more than a whisper. "You’re making my head hurt even worse."

She was curled up on the plush velvet settee, one hand pressed tightly against her forehead while the other rested protectively over her swollen belly. Her face was so pale that almost all the color had drained from it, and she looked as though she’d just seen a ghost.

And in a way, I supposed she had.

Lorelei.

The ghost that refused to stay buried.

Normally, seeing Callista like this, pale, trembling, and fragile, would have had me rushing to her side without thinking twice.

I would’ve bent over backward to comfort her, just like I’d done so many exhausting times before. Not because I actually cared about her, but because of the child growing inside her.

This time, though, I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t stop replaying that damn scene from the banquet in my head.

Lorelei, dressed in pure silk and dripping in diamonds, pressing her lips against another man. The Alpha King.

And somehow, the most infuriating part wasn’t even the kiss.

It was the way she’d looked straight at me afterward, as if I were absolutely fucking nothing.

My jaw tightened until my teeth started to ache, the memory burning through me all over again.

Rationally, logically, none of this was how it was supposed to go. Lorelei was supposed to be the one begging. She should have been on her knees, crying and pleading for me to take her back, desperate for even the smallest bit of my attention.

That was how it was supposed to happen.

After all, I’d spent months searching for her. Months regretting the sentence my father had passed down and hating myself for not standing up to the pack elders when I should have.

If Lorelei had simply come back to me, I would’ve taken her in. Even if I had to keep her as a side woman or a mistress, I would’ve done it. That was still a hell of a lot more mercy than the death sentence she’d been handed.

Even Callista had agreed.

With her heavily pregnant, she could no longer satisfy my sexual needs the way she used to, which meant I’d eventually had to look elsewhere. She had even been the one to quietly pick out a few women from the pack for me, women who wouldn’t cause trouble or make things complicated. But if Lorelei was alive, why would I settle for any of them?

She was my mate.

Things between us could have easily fallen back into place. Maybe not exactly the way they had been before, but close enough.

Except she hadn’t begged.

She hadn’t even looked at me like I was the man she’d spent two years secretly being intimate with. Even if we had never crossed that final line into full sex back then, what we had was still real.

At least, I’d thought it was. There had been late-night conversations, stolen touches, kisses we weren’t supposed to share, and all those moments when it felt like the two of us existed in our own little world.

That had to mean something.

So why had she looked at me like I was nothing?

Like I was some complete stranger she’d never known?

She hadn’t hesitated. She hadn’t even given me a chance to speak. She had simply turned her back on me and walked away with him.

The Alpha King.

My hands curled into fists at the memory.

I fucking despised that man.

He had humiliated me months ago when I’d first reached out for help with the rogue attacks, treating me like some pathetic alpha begging for scraps instead of showing me the respect I deserved. And now he’d done it again.

This time, he had also claimed my mate.

Lorelei was mine.

Fuck.

I hated him so much.

If I had the chance to kill him myself, I swear to the moon goddess I would in a heartbeat.