章節 5: Chapter 5: You Smell Good
Clare’s POV
I found myself barging into my father’s office later that day. It had been some time after our previous encounter, and the scene that happened between myself and the pack Alpha of Avondale before I decided to take my grievances up with my father. Something about this entire situation didn’t sit right with me, and I was determined to find out why.
“Have you spoken with him yet?” I asked my father as soon as the door was closed behind me. The question was redundant, but I had to have confirmation about everything before I started speaking. “Father, the Alpha of Avondale, was he here?”
My father only nodded, his body language speaking for him as he slumped into the chair behind his desk. I was about to open my mouth and say something else, but my father’s actions beat me to it as he threw a folder onto the desk in front of him. The look he gave me told me that he intended for me to open it.
I stepped forward as he began to speak. “Everything in that folder is all the information Avondale has gathered about you–every conquest, every fight, every place you’ve been to for pack business regarding politics.” My eyes shot up to him in alarm, wondering how they had managed to gather this mass of information on me.
“Leonel assured me that it was done on every eligible Beta they had visited. Something about the way he kept speaking about you unsettled me.”
“This is…” I breathed out as I flipped through all the pages in the file. There was even some photographic evidence of me outside of pack territory, on my emissary missions to other packs to strengthen alliances, with every detail about why I was there and how I moved around.
“This is insane. They’ve been tracking the Beta candidates for this long?” I looked up at my father as I asked and he nodded his head.
“However, Leonel did come to see me earlier as you had guessed.” Leonel… was that his name? The name of the Alpha of Avondale? Leonel… it sounded so… so—
“He has chosen you.” My father’s words cut off my thought process as I listened to what he had to say. “It seems that even before he had come here he was set on having you–a prime candidate he had called you, a remarkable fighter if there is any truth to the accounts they have collected.”
As a wolf and fighter, a swell of pride rushed through me at having my strength and skills acknowledged by another Alpha. As someone who was seemingly at the mercy of that Alpha's decision, along with my pack, however, I was skeptical of his opinions of me.
“He spoke of you as though you were a… an asset on the market, ready to be refined and honed only to further add to his own malicious power and greed.”
“Father—” I began to speak, but he didn’t allow me.
Anger grew up in him and I felt it was through the entire room.
“I will not stand for it!” My father stood up from his chair abruptly. “I will be d*mned if I let that alpha come into my home and procure who he pleases, to do as he wishes and wreak havoc in my peaceful territories!”
“Father, please—”
“I won’t allow it, Clare! You will stay here with your family and your pack where you have stayed and been protected all your life. I will be d*mned before I allow you to participate in those barbaric rituals.”
I allowed myself to digest my father’s words. There was nothing but the harsh breathing of his that echoed through the still room for a moment. I focused on the way his knuckles clenched on the surface of his desk, the way his chest rose and fell angrily.
“We don’t have the resources to fight Avondale,” I began slowly and held my hands up as my father’s furious gaze met mine. “Even if Leonel decided to take Aiden instead, even if we could avoid a war that way, I wouldn’t allow it. I won’t allow you to send him there when his rightful place as heir and duty to his mate and unborn child rests here, at Blue Moon.”
“Be silent, girl. You have no authority on such matters.” My father finally snapped at me, and I began to grow irritated with his unyielding nature myself.
“You would either send Aiden to his detriment or risk war with a pack ten times our size than send me away for some time? Have you so little faith in my capabilities and so low a trust in me that you would put the entire pack at risk?”
My father responded with nothing, only silence, and so I pushed. “Father—!”
“I have spoken enough of this, Clare! If that is what you choose to believe, then so be it. This conversation is over.”
I felt the grip I had on the folder tighten as I stared at my father. I didn’t know what to do or say in that moment and I could only stare dumbfounded at the reply he had given me. Something began to sneak up on me in that moment–maybe it was a sixth sense telling me that something was wrong, but I began to feel as though my father wasn’t telling me all there was to it.
Something was definitely wrong about this entire situation, but I didn’t know what it was.
But I didn’t want to push him any further,.I was too angry to speak to him now and he seemed resolute on being done with this conversation himself. Instead, I took the folder that I had in my hands and left his office, the door slamming behind me in frustration as I walked down the long corridor that led away from his office.
I didn’t get far, however, when I saw a large shadow turn around the corner and walk straight toward me. Just my luck–the shadow belonged to the man I had seen earlier that day, the Alpha of Avondale, Leonel—as I had now come to learn his name was.
I gave him a short nod, curt and respectful, before I tried to move and brush past him. But the Alpha seemed to have other plans and grabbed at my wrist to stop me from moving too far from him. His head was bent low toward me, a habit he seemed to have in the past two times we’ve met, and I felt him inhale deeply before he turned his head slightly toward me.
I could see him watching me out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t turn my head. I didn’t want him to see that I was just as curious about him as he seemed to be of me.
But on the inside, something in me tried to get me to go closer toward him; something in me wanted to push myself against him and have him hold me, kiss me, embrace me. I tried to fight that instinct with every fiber of my being.
But I relented slightly, I cursed myself as I felt my body tumbling slightly closer to him, and the grip he had on my wrist loosened as I got closer to him. And then I felt it—or rather, I smelled it.
It was that scent again, that same scent that had wafted through the air when I had kissed John for the first time. I hadn’t been able to fully pay attention to it then, but now it seemed to almost overwhelm me in every conceivable way.
It was then that I fully turned my head toward Leonel, and I breathed in deeply as I did so.
Was… the scent coming from him?
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