The Messenger( Iva) novel Chapter 65

Confusion-1

Caleb did not answer her question.

Not because he wished to ignore her.

Because, for the first time in years… he had absolutely no plan.

The realization irritated him more than he cared to admit.

His fingers rested steady on the steering wheel, posture controlled, breathing measured – yet beneath the stillness, his thoughts moved like a storm beneath ice.

Where was he taking her?

He had no destination in mind when he ordered her into the car. No strategy. No calculation. No political angle. No advantage.

Only impulse.

And impulse was a dangerous thing for a prince raised on discipline.

He exhaled slowly through his nose, gaze fixed on the road stretching ahead into darkness.

Beside him, she sat unnaturally quiet – small, tense, contained. Not submissive in the calculated way court females often performed… but genuinely uncertain. Guarded. Like a creature that had learned survival through invisibility.

Strange.

No… more than strange.

Unsettling.

He had never met a wolf like her.

Not among Lycans. Not among alphas. Not even among the lowest-ranked pack members he had encountered in political visits. Every wolf he had ever known carried a core of dominance — ambition, pride, hunger for position.

Power recognized power.

But this girl…

She behaved like prey.

A frightened mouse wrapped in a wolf’s scent.

He glanced briefly toward her, unnoticed. Her hands were clasped together in her lap, fingers curled tight enough to pale the skin. Shoulders drawn inward. Breathing shallow, as if the very air around him was too heavy to inhale freely.

And yet…

Confusion

She had stood before him at the fake and declared they were mates.

Declared she was the Messenger.

Declared truths that should have been impossible… and he had no idea what to think about it.

His jaw tightened.

He had seen liars tremble. He had broken spies who believed themselves unbreakable. He knew deception – its smell, its rhythm, its fear.

But her fear had not been the fear of being caught.

It had been the fear of him.

And that realization stirred something deeply inconvenient within him.

His grip on the steering wheel tightened imperceptibly.

+25 Points

From the moment he told her to get into the car outside that miserable building, he had known what he was doing.

He had placed a target on her back.

Association with him was never neutral. Never quiet. Never safe.

Enemies watched him. Rivals studied him. Opportunists waited for weakness like vultures circling a dying beast.

Anyone near him became visible.

Exposed.

Vulnerable.

Which was precisely why he had always kept his distance from attachments.

Why he preferred controlled encounters. Temporary arrangements. No bonds. No claims. No vulnerability.

At least… until he selected a mate worthy of the throne.

His father had made that expectation unmistakably clear.

The Lycan King did not request.

He decreed.

୮

No ascension without a mate. No crown without an heir. No future without lineage secured.

For years, Caleb had resisted with calm precision. He had attended diplomatic gatherings. Entertained alliances. Observed potential candidates.

Powerful she-wolves. Noble bloodlines. Ambitious lycan females who saw a crown when they looked at him.

None had moved him.

23

< Confusiont

None had challenged him.

None had mattered.

He had believed control was absolute.

+25 Points

Then he saw a trembling girl in a kitchen corridor… and something inside him snapped with terrifying ease.

His mind replayed the moment outside the hostel with brutal clarity.

The smell of cheap alcohol.

Predatory laughter.

The way one of the men leaned too close to her.

The way she tried to pass quietly, without drawing attention..

And the surge of fury that had risen from somewhere primal – instantaneous, violent, unquestionable.

It had taken every fragment of his restraint not to crush the man’s throat against the wall.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify