Kaelen POV

Smash!

I hurled a glass across my office in a fit of rage.

Darius, who was seated on the other side of the room with a book in his hands, did not even flinch. He simply tilted his head to the side, effortlessly dodging it as the glass shattered against the wall and rained crystal shards across the floor.

Then, as if nothing had happened, he went right back to reading.

"You can’t seriously be this worked up over one silly comment," he said, slowly turning a page.

He was always doing this.

Whenever I needed a moment to vent my frustration, he would sit quietly in a corner and act as though I was nothing more than background noise.

It was infuriating.

It was also exactly why I kept him around.

He was the only person who ever saw this side of me.

"Silly?" I growled, gripping the edge of my desk before letting out a disbelieving scoff. "She looked me dead in the eyes and said I was bad in bed. There is nothing silly about that."

Just saying the words out loud again was enough to make my blood boil all over again.

Was I really that bad?

Was that why she had snuck out, leaving me to wake up to an empty bed while somehow convincing herself she could hide from me?

I might not remember everything in full detail because I had been heavily drugged, but I was certain she had responded to every single touch.

Even though my memory was messed up, I still remembered how loudly she had moaned and how tightly she had held on to me.

Or had all of that been a performance?

I could not believe this.

I genuinely could not fucking believe this.

"She might not be completely wrong," Darius said at last, finally looking up from his book.

His gray eyes met mine with complete indifference as he set the book aside.

I raised a brow, silently daring him to continue.

And he did.

"You haven’t had sex in almost a decade," he said. "It is entirely possible that you’re a little... rusty."

That caught me completely off guard, and my hands immediately curled into fists.

"Rusty?" I repeated in disbelief. "Rusty?"

"Out of practice," he went on, completely oblivious to the way my expression darkened as he turned his back to me and returned the book to the shelf. "You know, you forgot the basics. Maybe you just lost your touch."

In a fit of rage, I reached for another glass.

"Don’t," Darius said without turning around.

I threw it anyway.

The glass shattered against the wall beside his head, spraying crystal shards across the floor.

Only then did he turn around. He raised one eyebrow as he looked at the broken glass.

"Feel better?"

"No," I replied, watching him walk back to his chair and sit down with his arms crossed. "You’re supposed to be on my side."

He really was supposed to be on my side.

We had practically grown up together.

We had taken over this empire together.

We had even suffered similar fates.

The only difference was that Darius had always been an orphan, while I had been the illegitimate son of an Alpha King who was ashamed of my existence and a crazed mother who blamed me for every misfortune in her life before eventually abandoning me into the hands of a woman who made the rest of my childhood a living nightmare.

"You’re the one who dragged that girl in there to die, even though I told you not to," he replied, and the tone of his voice made it clear he was still holding a grudge.

"It was a test," I shot back.

"A test that could have torn her to shreds!" he snapped.

His voice rose unexpectedly, and the outburst caught me completely off guard.

My brow furrowed as I stared at him.

I still did not understand why he cared so much.

She was a rogue and a thief. We both hated rogues. If anything, he should have been just as furious as I was.

The moment he realized he had let his emotions show, Darius looked away. His jaw tightened, and the muscle there twitched.

I studied him for several long seconds.

The more I looked at him, the more something felt off.

Then the pieces suddenly fell into place.

"You know something about her," I said slowly. "There is something you’re not telling me."

Darius did not answer.

Instead, he lowered his head even further.

"Darius."

I said his name more sternly this time, putting enough force behind it to let my Alpha authority slip into my voice.

I almost never used my Alpha voice on him.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Then he finally looked up.

His gray eyes met mine, and they were harder than I had ever seen them.

It looked almost as though he was fighting back emotions he did not want me to see.

"I think she was the one who saved me that night," he said, and my breath caught because I knew exactly what he was talking about.

Darius had always been the quiet type.

Even when we were children, he barely spoke.

But there was one story he talked about more than anything else.

A young girl had helped him escape his traffickers, and ever since then, he had carried that memory with him. No matter how many years passed, he never forgot her. He never stopped looking for her.

"How sure are you that she’s the one?" I asked carefully.

"I’m not," he replied, and I found myself letting out a quiet breath of relief. "They just share very similar features, so it could be anybody."

"What if she turns out to be the one you’ve been searching for?" I asked, voicing the question that mattered most.

Within seconds, his fingers curled at his sides.

"Then I will go against you for the first time," he said. "Because I would want her for myself."

For some reason, my entire body tensed.

The reaction was immediate and instinctive, and I did not understand why.

"But I doubt she is," he continued, releasing a heavy sigh. "They don’t smell the same."

"I think my wolf is finally waking up." Her voice echoed through my mind, but I quickly shoved the thought aside.

That could mean anything.

It did not necessarily mean what I was thinking.