Chapter 186

Isabella kept her hands flat against the marble, the cold surface seeping through her skin and chilling the restlessness beneath her.

Behind her, she could still feel the weight of Alaric’s stare lingering as he silently walked into the kitchen.

He had been heading this way before their eyes met on the stairs, and despite the thick tension radiating off Isabella, he didn’t turn back.

"You’re here," Clara remarked without looking up from her work, the rhythm of her knife against the wooden block unchanging.

"Yes," Alaric replied, moving deeper into the kitchen, his footsteps cautious. He gave Isabella a wide berth, deliberately placing a significant amount of distance between them as he moved toward the other side of the island.

He stopped close enough to Clara that he could have reached out and touched the hem of her robes, yet he remained stiff, his body language screaming of a man walking on glass.

Isabella watched them from the corner of her eye. The air in the room shifted, growing heavier with a different kind of static—the pull of a mate bond that was being stubbornly, almost violently, ignored.

Alaric’s gaze flickered toward Clara with a desperate, aching sort of hunger, the kind that only a wolf who had found his half could feel.

Clara, however, didn’t offer so much as a glance in his direction. She continued to slide the chopped vegetables into a simmering pot, her movements icy and professional.

The silence was excruciating. Isabella felt like an intruder in a scene she didn’t fully understand, yet she couldn’t bring herself to leave.

She looked at Alaric, seeing the way his fingers twitched at his sides, and then at Clara, who remained a fortress of indifference.

In the South, a mate bond was treated as a sacred law, a crowning achievement. Seeing it dismissed so casually by the North’s resident witch was another jarring reminder that the rules Isabella had grown up with were meaningless here.

Clara said nothing more, her focus narrowing entirely to the meal as if the Alpha heir standing a few feet away were little more than a kitchen fixture.

Isabella, needing to ground the buzzing energy under her skin, pushed off from the marble island and moved toward the stove to join her.

Clara didn’t question the movement. Instead, she wordlessly handed Isabella a wooden spoon and gestured toward a secondary pot of simmering broth, signaling her to begin tempering the spices.

Isabella took the task gratefully, the steam rising to dampen her face as she stirred. "Where are Lucian and Marcus?" Isabella asked, her voice low enough to stay between them.

"I woke up and the room was empty. I haven’t seen him all morning."

"They left the mansion in a hurry," Clara replied, her voice as crisp as the vegetables she had just finished slicing. " Lucian’s only instruction before the doors closed was that no one is to enter or leave the estate until his return."

Isabella’s hand faltered for a second, the wooden spoon clinking against the side of the pot. She had been quietly planning to slip away into the dense forest surrounding the grounds, hoping that the solitude of the trees might finally trigger the shift she was waiting for—to see if her body truly knew how to be a Lycan.

Hearing Clara’s words, she immediately discarded the plan. But What could be so important that he left in such a rush without a word?’ Isabella wondered, her internal monologue spiraling.

She glanced toward the hallway, then back at the man sitting just a few feet away. It felt contradictory.

Lucian was terrified enough of outside threats to bar the doors, yet he was confident enough to let Alaric—the same boy who he knew she had a rough history with— wander the halls without a supervision.

Did Lucian truly trust Alaric now, or was he simply that certain of Clara’s power? She looked at the witch’s slender hands, currently deboning a piece of meat with precision.

Lucian likely knew that if Alaric so much as bared a tooth, Clara would have him on his knees before he could even draw breath.

Isabella’s eyes drifted toward Alaric. He had claimed a stool at the far end of the island, his large frame looking out of place in the domestic setting.

As if sensing her gaze, he looked up. His eyes, once so cold and dismissive in the South, were now brimming with a suffocating mix of guilt and raw emotion.

He opened his mouth, his shoulders shifting as if he were gathering the courage to finally bridge the eighteen-year gap of silence between them.

Isabella saw the intent in his expression—the desperate need to explain, to apologize, to have the chat that was a decade overdue.

For a heartbeat, she felt the pull of the past, the old Isabella wanting to hear what the "Golden Boy" had to say.

But then she felt the humming power in her own veins. She wasn’t that girl anymore, and she wasn’t ready to carry his guilt on top of her own confusion.

She sharply shook her head, a clear silent signal for him to stay quiet, and turned her attention back to the broth. She would have a talk with him eventually—she needed to understand how their pack had been so far—but not now.

She focused on the circular motion of the spoon, watching the golden oil swirls break apart and reform in the broth. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

The task was simple, almost meditative, providing a much-needed air as the silence in the kitchen stretched, taut and uncomfortable.

Aleric took the hint. He slumped slightly on the stool, his gaze dropping to the marble countertop. He looked smaller than she remembered—not physically, for he was still the broad-shouldered Alpha heir who had dominated the training grounds of the South, but his presence had lost its sharp, arrogant edge.

"The salt, Isabella," Clara prompted, her voice cutting through Isabella’s wandering thoughts.

Isabella blinked, realizing she had been staring into the steam for too long.

She reached for the small ceramic pinch-pot of sea salt, her fingers steady despite the turmoil in her chest.

As she sprinkled the grains into the liquid, she couldn’t stop the mental gears from turning. Lucian’s departure gnawed at her.

He was a man of calculated moves, and a ’hurry’ for him usually meant something was threatening the very foundation of his control.