Chapter 200
Draven.
And when I looked closer, really looked, my heart stopped.
Her breathing wasn’t shallow anymore. Her nose, which should have been swollen and bleeding fresh, was only stained with dried blood.
Impossible.
I took another step forward, letting the first aid box drop softly onto the floor. The soft thud echoed between us.
She flinched, just slightly.
“Look at me,” I ordered, my voice low.
She hesitated. That hesitation spoke volumes.
I reached out, ignoring her recoil, and tugged the collar of her shirt down over her shoulder, exposing pale skin where bruises should have already bloomed dark.
My hand brushed down her arm, then to her back, searching. But there was nothing. No bruises. No broken ribs, no trembling breath from pain.
Only one explanation coiled in my mind, sharp and ugly: Meredith had a wolf, and she had hidden it from me.
Fury burned through my veins, boiling hotter than anything I’d felt in years.
“Meredith,” I rasped. “How long?”
She swallowed, eyes stubborn and guilty all at once as she rearranged her shirt.
“For how long have you had your wolf?” I pressed.
“For the past two months,” she admitted, voice barely above a whisper.
Two months.
My mind flashed back: to that night she asked about Serena, the ancient warrior Queen. The curiosity, the oddly specific questions.
Was that when her wolf surfaced?
My jaw clenched so hard my teeth hurt. Betrayal gnawed at me from inside.
“How could you keep this from me?” I demanded. “How could you lie?”
“I never lied to you,” she shot back, voice rising. “I only… kept it from you.”
“And what is that if not a lie?” I snarled. “You broke my trust, Meredith.”
She stepped forward, her eyes sharp, wet with unshed tears.
“And what about you? You betrayed me too!” Her voice cracked but didn’t falter. “You made Wanda train me today—without telling me, without even asking me if I was ready!”
I inhaled, my chest tight. “I did it for your sake—”
“I don’t care!” she shouted, the words tearing from her. “Do you know what it felt like? Standing there and realizing the man I trusted most handed me over to my enemy?”
“That was the point,” I growled. “To show you what a real enemy looks like, how they fight. You needed it.”
She shook her head, hair falling across her face, eyes blazing.
“And you didn’t even think to warn me?” Her voice dropped, hoarse. “Why, Draven? Why her?”
I opened my mouth, but she didn’t stop.
“You want to know why she volunteered?” Meredith spat, her chest heaving. “Yesterday morning at breakfast, she called me worthless, a bedwarmer—right in front of the servants. And I fought back. I grabbed her hair and slammed her face into her plate. Then I punched her. That’s why.”
My breath caught.
She did what?
Meredith watched the surprise flash across my face, and she seized it.
“This wasn’t training for her. It was revenge.”
My hands curled into fists. Rage flickered in me—not at Meredith, but at Wanda.
But I forced myself to lock it down.
“She still showed you what you were missing in combat,” I muttered. “I had good intentions for you, Meredith. But what good intentions did you have for me by hiding the fact that you had gotten your wolf?”
Her laugh was short and bitter.
“And what good intentions did I have by hiding my wolf, huh?” she demanded, eyes wet. “Do you think I need to give you a reason for that?”
My chest constricted painfully.
“And did you think I wouldn’t find out?” I rasped.
“Of course, I knew you’d find out one day!” she fired back. “But until then, it was my secret. The only thing that was mine alone.”
Silence slammed between us. Our chests rose and fell, ragged, caught between fury and something rawer.
At that moment, I realized we stood on opposite sides of the same battlefield. Both of us felt betrayed. Both of us had our reasons, and neither of us was willing to yield.
My pulse thundered. Rhovan’s voice whispered low in the back of my mind, urging me to stop.
But the words stuck in my throat. I bent down, grabbed the first aid box from where it lay forgotten on the floor.
“I hope you are happy,” I told her, my voice rough. “And that your happiness lasts forever.”
Then I turned and walked out, shutting the door behind me harder than I meant to.
The sound echoed down the hall, but her silence echoed louder in my chest.
“Of course, I will be happy forever, or are you wishing that I would be sad and miserable?” I heard her angry, muffled voice ask.
But I ignored it and simply walked into my bedroom and shut the door.
I dropped off the first-aid box in my walk-in closet and walked into my bathroom for a cold shower.
I needed it to cool down my boiling emotions.
There was nothing wrong with Meredith finally having a wolf after being tagged ’wolfless’ all these years. However, my anger stemmed from the fact that she had hidden this truth from me.
Why on earth would she do that?
I wasn’t an outsider. I was her husband. Her mate.
If she had reasons to keep her wolf a secret, then I shouldn’t be included. She should never have kept me in the dark.
“Now, I know why we felt something off about her that time,” I said to Rhovan.
Unlike me, he didn’t feel betrayed, just totally astonished by the situation.
“But, I’m more worried about how she was able to hide her wolf, making us unable to sense her all this time we were together.”
Rhovan finally growled. “Her wolf must be powerful, that even I couldn’t sense her, though she was hiding.”
There was a trace of unhappiness in Rhovan’s voice. He felt disappointed in himself for not being able to sense Meredith’s wolf.
“And Meredith would rather endure the beatings and pains from Wanda instead of revealing her wolf…”
This made me insist on the fact that there must be a tangible reason for Meredith to have hidden this information from me.
And for once, I no longer felt guilty for letting Wanda kick her ass.