Kaelen POV
Of all the people in the empire, of all the places she could have been, and of all the moments she could have chosen to show up... it had to be her.
Callista.
Lorelei’s twin sister. The woman who had spent years making Lorelei’s life a living hell.
Her expression was difficult to read as she scanned the room, one hand resting protectively over her lower belly. The second her eyes landed on Darius and me, her face briefly lit up with what looked like relief, completely oblivious to how hard my expression had fallen.
She quickly made her way toward our table with a warm smile. "Alpha King," she greeted, but before she could get any closer, her foot caught on the edge of something, causing her to stumble.
I didn’t move a single muscle.
Darius, however, surprised me by shooting to his feet and catching her before she could fall, one hand wrapping firmly around her pregnant waist.
"Are you okay?" he asked, his voice unexpectedly soft.
My brow lifted slightly, watching as Darius hesitated with his hand still resting against her waist before quickly pulling away.
Now that was strange.
Darius was normally worse than me. He didn’t have a curse keeping him away from women, but he was still an arrogant bastard who rarely spared a woman who wasn’t Lorelei more than a passing glance.
So there were only two explanations for what I had just witnessed.
Either he was forcing himself to be a gentleman because she was pregnant, or...
"Yeah..." Callista answered softly, still looking a little shaken as she straightened her clothes. She lowered her head toward him. "I’m sorry, Beta Darius. Thank you for catching me. I wasn’t looking where I was going."
"Sure you weren’t," I replied coldly, my fingers tightening around my glass before I carefully set it back on the table.
Her eyes immediately shifted toward me.
"What is a heavily pregnant woman doing walking around a bar alone?" I asked, my gaze sweeping over her before settling back on her face. "And more importantly, what are you doing in a private lounge reserved exclusively for the Alpha King? Surely you didn’t come here to drink, did you?"
As I spoke, my gaze dropped to her rounded stomach before lifting back to her face, only to find those familiar green eyes already brimming with tears.
For a split second, my chest tightened.
Just for a second.
Then I forced myself to remember that the woman standing in front of me was not Lorelei.
Yes, they had the exact same face. The same eyes, the same hair, everything that could make them look like perfect copies of each other. But everything else about them was completely different. The cruelty, the manipulation, the years of making her own sister’s life miserable. Those things made them complete opposites.
"I’m so, so sorry, Alpha King," Callista sobbed, putting on such a fragile, heartbroken expression that it probably would have made any other man feel guilty for even speaking harshly to her.
Unfortunately for her, Lorelei had already warned me about all her little tricks.
My expression didn’t change.
When she realized her tears weren’t getting the reaction she wanted, she pressed a hand against her chest and lowered her voice, making her sobs quieter and somehow even more pitiful.


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