Fleeing the Storm

Kaelie had absolutely no concept of how long she had been lying paralyzed in the freezing, thick mud of the royal gardens. The torrential rain beat down mercilessly against her back, but the physical cold was nothing compared to the violent, tearing ache in her chest. Suddenly, a frantic, desperate voice broke violently through the deafening roar of the raging storm.

"Kaelie! Kae, what is wrong? What happened?" Evander pleaded, his voice cracking with sheer panic as he sprinted wildly through the blinding downpour.

He dropped to his knees in the slick mud beside her without a second thought. Immediately, he reached out, violently pulling her violently shivering, soaked body directly into his chest. A massive crack of lightning struck nearby with an earth-shattering boom, the sudden flash violently illuminating the sheer terror etched deep into Evander's face.

Kaelie could not speak. She clung desperately to the wet fabric of his shirt, her body wracked by unrelenting, breathless sobs that tore from her throat. Through her violently chattering teeth, she tried to form words, fighting through the suffocating grief drowning her lungs. Finally, she managed to force out a barely audible, broken breath.

"He’s my mate."

Evander’s brow furrowed in deep, panicked confusion. He held her even tighter against the driving, freezing rain, trying to shield her from the storm. "What? Who? Kae, tell me," he pressed urgently, desperate to understand who she was talking about.

Kaelie buried her face into his soaked shoulder. Her voice was nothing more than a raspy, devastated whisper as she spoke the single name that instantly, brutally knocked the breath straight from the young prince's lungs.

"Cyrus."

Evander went entirely rigid. Utterly shocked out of his trance, he stared at her as if the world had just stopped spinning. The terrifying weight of her confession hit him like a physical blow. But the moment of hesitation lasted only a second before his training and protective instincts completely took over.

Shifting instantly into protective action, Evander scooped Kaelie up into his arms. He held her tight against his chest and guided her stumbling form rapidly inside the palace. He deliberately bypassed the bright main halls, taking the shadowed servants' corridors to entirely avoid the patrolling guards. He ushered her straight into the massive, empty palace kitchen.

Setting her gently down on a stool, he frantically began opening cabinets, grabbing every thick, dry towel he could find. He wrapped her shivering frame tightly, bundling her up as she continued to drip freezing rainwater all over the pristine tile floor. His hands shook with residual adrenaline as he quickly set a kettle on the massive iron stove, brewing a strong, steaming cup of chamomile tea to try and stop her violent trembling.

Once the tea was steeping, he fetched dry clothes for her. When she finally emerged from the nearby servant's washroom—having changed out of her ruined, mud-caked dress into dry, oversized sweatpants—her hyperventilating breathing had somewhat evened out.

Evander pulled out a chair and sat directly beside her at the grand kitchen island. He reached out across the marble surface, gently covering her freezing, pale hands with his own warm ones.

"What happened?" he asked softly, his voice thick with concern. "Start from the absolute beginning, Kae. Take your time."

Kaelie stared blankly down at the swirling steam rising from her mug. Her eyes were hollow, entirely void of light. "I smelled a scent," she began, her voice trembling violently, barely able to force the jagged, broken words past the massive lump in her throat. "It was so perfect that it had to be my mate, so I followed it. It was faint... at least a few hours old. So, I hurried."

She trailed off, her chest hitching violently as fresh, hot tears began falling rapidly onto the dark wooden table, mixing with the spilled water.

"I followed it all the way to his bedroom door, and when I got there..." She choked on a sob, the devastating images playing on a relentless, torturous loop in her mind. "He was with a woman. I heard them. I stood right outside that heavy door and heard the undeniable sounds of his hard dick violently thrusting deep into her pussy. I heard the wet slapping of their skin, his heavy grunts as he pounded his cock into her, and her moaning how good it felt."

The raw, explicit devastation in her voice hung terrifyingly heavy in the cold air of the kitchen. Evander’s jaw tightened so hard a muscle feathered in his cheek, but he didn't push her for a single detail more. He simply sat beside her, maintaining a solid, comforting presence, and let her cry. She wept until her eyes were completely red, swollen, and painfully dry, her body completely emptied of tears.

They remained sitting together at the massive kitchen island in a numb, suffocating silence through the entirety of the long, dark night. The hours dragged on in an agonizing crawl, neither of them moving a single muscle as the heavy storm outside slowly battered itself to death.

As the first pale, gray rays of dawn finally began to break through the large kitchen windows, heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. A half-asleep Kieran came casually stumbling down the back stairwell, aggressively rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he made a beeline in search of coffee.

The moment his gaze landed on his sister sitting at the island, he completely froze in his tracks.

The disheveled, hollow, and utterly broken sight of Kaelie instantly shocked his alpha system. The sleepy fog in his brain evaporated in a millisecond.

"Kae, what happened?" Kieran demanded, suddenly wide awake. His posture shifted instantly into an aggressive, fiercely protective stance, the air around him crackling with sudden, dominating alpha energy.

Kaelie didn't look up. Staring dead-eyed into her now entirely cold tea, she forced herself to recount the horrific events of the night once more. Her voice was flat and lifeless as she explained the sweet scent, the restricted corridor, the door, and the undeniable, sickening sounds of Cyrus's cock relentlessly burying itself inside another screaming woman.

With every single word she spoke, Kieran’s volatile alpha anger mounted exponentially. The sheer betrayal of it burned through his veins like battery acid. His fists clenched tightly at his sides, his knuckles turning stark white as his nails dug violently into his palms.

"Son of a bitch," Kieran hisses venomously through his teeth. The violent urge to march upstairs and rip the King apart with his bare hands battled fiercely with his strict pack training and logic. He shot a deadly glare across the room.

Evander sat rigidly across from them, fully sharing in the twin's profound, boiling fury. Meeting Kieran's murderous gaze, the young prince solemnly admitted that he had absolutely no idea who the mystery woman in the bed was. Cyrus had absolutely no known girlfriend or public romantic attachments. It was a completely random, meaningless hookup, making the betrayal feel infinitely cheaper and more agonizing.

Knowing that the palace staff and guards would soon be awake and time was dangerously short, Kieran made an executive, tactical decision. He entirely abandoned his desperate need for coffee.

"Stay here," he ordered sharply.

He hurried frantically upstairs to their guest rooms, tearing through the closets and dressers. He aggressively shoved all their belongings haphazardly into heavy duffel bags, zipping them violently before hauling them down the back exit. He practically threw their heavy luggage into the back of his waiting truck, his jaw locked in a furious scowl.

He rushed back into the kitchen, his chest heaving, his voice tight with undeniable urgency as he issued a sharp warning to his sister.

"He’s probably going to smell you when he wakes up, Kae. The moment he opens that door, he'll catch your scent. So if you don’t want to have that conversation right now, we need to get a move on."

Curling deeply in on herself, Kaelie desperately wrapped her arms tight around her torso, as if trying to physically hold her shattered heart together so it wouldn't spill entirely onto the floor. She admitted in a small, broken whisper that she absolutely could not face Cyrus yet. She confessed, her voice cracking with pure trauma, that the sickening, explicit sounds of his bedroom were still echoing relentlessly in her head.

She finally pushed herself up from the wooden table, her body feeling like absolute lead.

Outside by the idling truck in the cool, gray morning light, the engine rumbled a steady, impatient rhythm. Kaelie turned before climbing in and wrapped her arms around the young prince, hugging him incredibly tight.

"Thank you, Evander," she whispered into his chest, her voice thick with pure gratitude for the boy who had sat with her through the darkest night of her life.

"Anytime, Kae," he replied softly, resting his chin gently on the top of her head, his own heart aching for the pure mate she was supposed to be.

Kieran stepped up next. He reached out and firmly shook Evander's hand. The two men locked eyes, Kieran’s gaze communicating a deep, unspoken alpha gratitude for taking such fierce, unwavering care of his sister during her most utterly devastating moment.

Nodding solemnly in complete understanding, Evander stepped backward into the misty driveway. He crossed his arms over his chest, watching quietly as Kieran climbed into the front seat, aggressively threw the heavy truck into drive, and pulled rapidly away from the towering, iron palace gates. The tires kicked up wet gravel as Kieran sped off, taking Kaelie far, far away from her nightmare.