Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 171

Chp 171; Uninvited.

Rick’s POV

“What is Kaelen to you?”

She didn’t answer me. She just stared.

“Aurelia.” I whispered her name. “I asked you a question.”

“I… I heard you.”

“Then answer it.”

Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat on her coat to hide it, and I saw that too, because I see everything about her, always have, even when I wish I didn’t.

“He helped me,” she said. “That’s all.”

“Helped you?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Rieck…”

“When, Aurelia?” My voice came out rough. My jaw was still bleeding and I didn’t wipe it this time. “The night you vanished off Warren Street. The night I tore this city apart looking for you. Was he there?”.

She said nothing.

“Was he there?”

“Yes.”

The room immediately went cold. I felt it leave me, that cold, the way it always does when I stop holding it in, and I saw her feel it too.

“So he pulled you out of an alley,” I said. “And then what?”

“I was hurt. I stayed until I could walk.”

“Stayed? Stayed where?”

“Rieck, please…”

“Say the name.”

“Ridgeline.” Her voice broke on it. “I stayed at Ridgeline.”

I turned away from her because I needed one second to not look at her face. One second.

On the wall in front of me was a picture of the two of us from a charity dinner last spring, her hand in the

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crook of my arm, my hand covering hers.

eeks,” I said. “You were in that man’s house for weeks.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Then tell me what it was like.” I turned back. “Because tonight I bled on my own land for that stupid man. and my wife is standing in front of me telling me he only helped her.”

“You want to talk about lying?” Her chin came up. “You? Tonight?”

“Don’t.”

“You lied to me about my father for a year.”

“I said don’t.”

“Then don’t stand there and act like you are the only person in this house who has been made a fool of.”

I moved before I thought about it. Two steps, and I stopped, because I had promised myself weeks ago that I would never again let her see me take a third one in anger.

“I’m not asking you as a fool,” I said quietly. “I am asking you as your husband. What is he to you?”

Her mouth opened.

But nothing came out.

“Aurelia.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t?”

“Rieck, I can’t say it. Not tonight. Please, not tonight.”

“Then when?” My voice cracked down the middle and I let it. “When, exactly, were you planning to tell me anything at all?”

Just then the front doors came open so hard they hit the walls.

I smelled him before I saw him. Pine and snow and something wild under it, wrong in my house, wrong in my air, and the wolf in me was up before my body had finished turning.

He walked in like he owned the floor. Tawny hair, scar across his face, four men behind him with the doors still swinging.

Aurelia made a small sound behind me.

“Kaelen.” I put myself between them without deciding to. “You have about five seconds.”

“I don’t need five.” He looked past me. Straight past me, at her. “Aurelia. Are you all right?”

“Don’t you dare speak to my wife.”

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“I just asked her a question, pup.”

ou are standing in my house.”

“I noticed.” He smiled with all his teeth. “Nice house.”

“Why are you here?”

“To see that she is safe.” He said it plainly, the way a man says the sky is grey. “That’s all. I heard there was blood on the border tonight, and I didn’t know whose. So I came to look at her myself.”

“Say that again.”

“I came for her.” His yellow eyes came to mine at last. “She is not safe here. And I don’t think she has been safe here for a long time.”

Without thinking I hit him.

My fist caught him under the jaw and his head snapped sideways and then he was laughing, actually laughing, blood in his teeth, and he came off the wall and into me and the entryway table went to pieces under us both.

“Rieck!” Aurelia’s voice, far away. “Stop it!”

He was strong. I will give him that until the day one of us dies. He drove me back into the banister and the wood broke, cracked all the way down, and I got a knee into his ribs and heard the air go out of him.

“You came into my home.” I had a fistful of his coat. “For my wife.”

“Your wife.” He spat blood on my floor. “You keep saying that word like it means something to her.”

I threw him. He took a chair with him and hit the wall hard enough to open a crack in the plaster, and he was up again before the dust settled, still grinning, wiping his mouth.

“Stop!” Aurelia was screaming now. “Both of you, stop! Please.”

My men stood along the wall with their hands empty and none of them moved.

They knew better. There are fights an Alpha doesn’t thank you for ending.

Kaelen came at me again. We went through the side table, both of us, glass everywhere, and his forearm came across my throat and held.

“You lost her,” he said in my car, quiet, almost kind. “Months ago. You just haven’t caught up.”

I got my thumb into the old scar under his eye and he roared and let go.

We came apart and circled. My shirt was torn to the shoulder. His nose was broken. The floor between us was filled with glass and splintered wood, and neither of us was anywhere near finished.

“Please.” Aurelia’s voice, breaking. “Please, I am begging you both.”

“Go upstairs, Aurelia,” I said, without looking away from him.

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“No.”

o upstairs.”

“I said no.”

Kaelen laughed again. “She doesn’t listen to you either.”

I went for him.

Then I heard her make a sound I had never heard from her before.

It was small and wet and awful, and I stopped mid step and turned, and Aurelia was bent double in the middle of my ruined entryway with one hand braced on the wall.

She threw up on the floor.

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