Chapter 221

The loud pop of a gunshot makes me jump. Unfortunately, I’m very familiar with that sound, from far too many close encounters at the palace.

I look toward the door. Caleb still isn’t back yet.

“Wait!” Cameron calls. Stepping toward us, his hand is raised. “It’s too dangerous!”

I don’t have time to wait, or to be careful. Caleb is out there, and more likely than not, that gunshot was aimed at him!

Throwing caution to the wind, I run to the door and then out in the hallway.

“Harper!” Bethany calls. She’s close to me, likely chasing me.

“Bethany, no!” Cameron says, perhaps chasing her.

In the hallway, I follow the direction of the sound, wandering through side corridors until I finally and blessedly see Caleb standing tall.

My heart racing, I don’t stop until I am at his side. Then, looking at him, I gasp as I see that he has a hole in his shirt. He stares down at it with some annoyance.

“I liked this shirt,” he grumbles, somehow more upset at the hole than he is at being shot.

In front of him, further down a narrow corridor, stands the butler holding a smoking gun. The butler looks incredibly confused, his brow furrowed.

I touch Caleb’s arm. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Caleb tells me. “It’s already healed. That bullet wasn’t even silver.”

“Not… silver?” I turn my attention back the butler. Surely he knows that a regular bullet would feel like nothing more than a bug bite to an Alpha werewolf. Yet, even so the man seems totally shocked.

“I don’t understand,” the butler says, his voice shaken.

“Explain yourself and your motives,” Caleb calls out. His annoyance has seemed to shift from the hole in his shirt back to the matter at hand – that someone maybe tried to kill him. At the very least, he’s been shot. Someone has to explain that. “What did you hope to achieve here with this?”

“I’d heard that the Alpha King is a vicious brute who goes into rages at the first sign of dissension or trouble,” the butler says, still taken aback. “Yet even shot, you appear calm as ever.”

“You hoped to trigger my rage?” Caleb asks. “Why?”

When the butler says nothing, Caleb starts to glare.

This butler is up to something, Caleb knows. There was some type of plan here that didn’t properly formulate to his desired outcome. He clearly wanted to trigger Caleb’s rage, but Caleb has no idea why.

If the rage was triggered, Caleb could have killed this man. Is that what he wanted? Did the butler have some kind of death wish?

Yet, as Caleb looks at him, and then looks beyond him, he catches sight of a sort of twinkle in the room behind the butler. There. Focusing on it, Caleb sees the glint of metal.

A cage. Set up to be dropped the moment Caleb takes one step into the next room.

So that was the plan. If Caleb wouldn’t follow of his own violation, force him into a rage and then lead him there like a horse with a bloody carrot.

It’s such a foolish plan, it’s downright insulting. Is Caleb not worth more effort than this?

Caleb’s hands curling into fists, he steps forward, ready to dole out his own punishment against this foolish man. It’s his right – he has been shot after all.

“King Caleb, I beseech you, wait.”

The clink of Gladys’s cane on the marble has Caleb turning his head. He moves, keeping Harper and Bethany – and Bethany’s servant friend too – behind him as he turns to consider Gladys who walks into the room.

“I ask that you spare my butler any mortal injury,” Gladys says. “After all, he was only acting in my best interests. The rumors of your rage are widespread, and this was a test from my dear butler with the intent only of keeping me safe. He did not mean to harm you.”

The butler did ruin Caleb’s shirt, which in another life would have been enough to infuriate Caleb to violence. However, with Harper present, the thirst for vengeance feels quenched at the moment. Caleb has no great desire to rip the butler’s limbs off, other than to prove a point that he is not one to be trifled with.

Without Harper, he would have surely torn the man to pieces. He’s noticed lately, with Harper’s quiet presence beside him, with the rest of the harem banished… even with all the other turmoil surrounding him, he has been calmer lately. More steady. As if simply being with Harper and keeping her happy has been helping him maintain his own level-headedness.

Almost like it’s given him a kind of purpose. Even his wolf feels more content within him, no longer pacing impatiently.

Oddly, this is the type of behavior Caleb would have expected when finding his true mate.

But Harper is no werewolf. He’s never heard of a wolf finding a true mate with a human before.

Regardless, he doesn’t have time to deal with this now. When he gets Harper, Bethany, Tristan, and his guards safely from this place, then he can give more credence to true mates and humans.

“I am not fond of being tested,” Caleb says, a growl in his voice, added more for intimidation than out of anger. “I did not realize this was how you treat guests to your home.”

“It typically isn’t, of that I can assure you,” Gladys says.

She’s irritatingly calm despite the fact that whatever plans she made have fallen through. Caleb doesn’t believe for a minute that she had nothing to do with this plot to confine him.

“Hector also had a quick temper and a hot-headed rage,” Gladys says. “The staff here have seen it first hand with their own eyes, as well as its affects against me.”

Slowly, Gladys reaches down, scoops up some of her dress, and slowly lifts it to her knee. Beneath, Caleb could see that she had one human leg, and one prosthetic.

“He didn’t mean to do it, I’m sure. But those rages of his… His mind was entirely filled with red. He could see or hear nothing, not even the sound of my calling him.” Softer, Gladys adds, “Not even my screams.”

Caleb goes cold, imagining himself losing control and hurting Harper in the same way that Hector hurt Gladys. He glances back at her.

Harper gives him a strong, trusting look in return. She won’t say so aloud, not within earshot of Gladys, but her determination is clear. She firmly believes that he would never do this to her.

She doesn’t understand how it feels to lose himself to the sickness and paranoia, when the whole of the world seems set against him.

There were too many almosts, moments in which he was so weak that he lost himself to his rage.

Gladys lowers her dress back down and then stands fully upright once more.

“Seeing this, knowing what your father has done to me…” Gladys says. “Perhaps you can understand now why my staff is so protective. Perhaps you can even find it within yourself to forgive my dear butler for this slight against you.”