Chapter 126

Caleb is only half-listening to Annabelle. Rather, his full attention is on Harper and the way she sways as if she might faint. He will not let her head hit the ground if her legs give out, which they seem about to at any moment.

“My King?” Annabelle says, likely trying to reclaim Caleb’s focus, without realizing it’s a lost cause.

He needs to check on Harper. Right now. Now!

He darts forward, catching Harper right at the moment her knees start to buckle. Even as he catches her, her gaze seems so far away, like her mind is a great distance from the royal gardens.

She slumps slightly, so Caleb scoops her up into his arms in a bridal carry, cradling her safely against the wide expanse of his chest.

Annabelle flitters to his side. “My King, I’m sure others can attend to your harem member. She does not require your specific attentions.”

Caleb begs to differ. If anyone would try to take Harper away from him right now, he would rip their arms off.

Even Annabelle, he is growing annoyed with. Though, reminding himself that she is likely to become his betrothed, he tries to reel in most of his anger.

“Stay here and enjoy the flowers, Annabelle,” he says through clenched teeth. “I must tend to this.”

Without hearing another word – and frankly, Annabelle was lucky that Caleb heard those few words he had – Caleb carries Harper back inside and all the way to her personal rooms.

By then, she is starting to rouse again.

“Water,” he commands Harper’s handmaiden while he brings Harper to her bed. Once there, he gently lays her down onto it.

“Caleb?” Harper asks. “What happened? Where am I?”

“You are in your room,” Caleb answers. “You passed out in the gardens.”

“Oh.” She still seems confused, with a small line forming between her brows. Though she doesn’t say anything more, she’s clearly troubled.

More secrets.

Caleb hates secrets, but this time, since she’s fainted, he doesn’t have the same fury that possessed him before in seeking answers. This time, he just wants to make sure she is alright, health wise.

“I will send for a doctor,” he says. As soon as Bethany returns with the water, Caleb sends her straight back out for a doctor.

“That’s really not necessary,” Harper protests, but by now it’s already too late. Her reaction times seem to be on a delay of some kind. Even after fainting, she is still distracted by plaguing thoughts.

Caleb wants to press but he doesn’t. Instead, he waits, quietly watching her.

After a moment, she looks at him, worry mixed with confusion there, and asks, “Do you remember much from the night we first met?”

“On your pack lands?” Caleb asks, to clarify. She could be meaning when she was first brought to the palace.

“Yes,” Harper says. “That night… So much is a blur…”

“You truly do not remember?”

“Not everything,” Harper says. “I was hoping you could fill in some blanks for me.”

Caleb had plenty of dark moments from that evening too, but he remembers Harper beneath him, begging him to fuck her. She was so hot, physically and temperature-wise. And she smelled so fucking good. No one else has ever smelled like that for him, not before and not since.

Not even Harper now, though she’s the closest. Something always seems to be in the way, holding back the full scent.

“Your heat scent triggered my rut,” Caleb says. “I’m afraid much of the evening is hazy after that.”

“What about before?” she asks. “Do you remember how you found me? Do you remember if my sister was there?”

Caleb remembers Harper’s sister Leah from the Alpha Council events. The bitch had been unkind to Harper, and Caleb had thought of disappearing her into the dungeons many times. He held himself back, only because he thought Harper would not appreciate the gesture. She’d likely be mad at him, like she so often was.

“You were alone when I found you,” Caleb says. “Other werewolf males had been attracted to your heat scent, but I chased them all away. Then you called out to me. You begged me to have you…”

Harper rubs her forehead. “I don’t remember any of that.”

Irritation swells within Caleb. The best scent of his existence, the best sex of his life. He had thought she’d been right there beside him, along for the ride. Instead she’d been… what?

“The heat makes things so intense,” Caleb explains. “It’s possible you were lost to all but the feeling.”

She nods. “I remember some of it. But I don’t know how it happened at all. What triggered my heat? It came so suddenly. There was no warning.” Looking at Caleb, she asks, “Did you wonder at all, who this woman was? Why she was suddenly in heat?”

As soon as Caleb had caught the scent, all logical thinking had gone out the window. And when she called out to him, begging for him to take her, telling him how much it hurt being so empty… He lost all reason as well.

“I don’t have an answer for you that you’ll like,” he says. “But it doesn’t matter now, does it? What happened, happened, and you are here with me now.”

“That was the night of my disgrace,” she says. “The entire trajectory of my life changed that night.”

“Fate had plans for you and me.”

Harper lowers her chin. “What if it wasn’t fate, Caleb? I keep having these dreams, these memories? Of that night. It plays out in my head all over again. Meeting Leah at that club. Her ordering me a drink. I think… I think I remember her putting something in my glass.”

Caleb goes very still as sudden inexplicable rage fills him. How dare someone interfere like that? And since a child culminated from that event…

Was Leah trying to sabotage her sister’s future, or her king’s?

“It could have been a dream. I could have imagined it, but…”

“You think it’s real,” Caleb fills in the blanks. “You genuinely believed she sabotaged you so that she could ruin your reputation and steal your fiancé.”

“I do,” Harper says, seeming sad about it.

She didn’t have anything to be sad about. Not anymore. Maybe her sister set them both up, but Caleb will make sure that she will pay for what she’s done.

“When the Alpha Council reconvenes, she will be welcomed back to the capital,” Caleb says. “When she arrives, we will make certain that she receives a very special greeting.”

“If she dies, I won’t know the truth,” Harper says. She looks away. “Plus, she is always my sister, even after what she’s done to me.”

Harper’s soft heart has no business being in a place like this. Even if it meant he never would have met her, Caleb hates Leah all over again, for ruining the perfect and happy life Harper might have otherwise lived.

“I won’t kill her.” Right away, he adds in his mind. “But she will be interrogated. We will make certain that she tells us the truth of what happened that night. In fact, I’ll see to it personally.”