The Professor's Mate Clause novel Chapter 107

107

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KELVIN’S POV

I killed Freya’s mother. That truth has never stopped following me, not for a single day since it happened. It sits inside my chest like a permanent wound, something that never closes no matter how much time passes or how many battles I survive. I told myself I did it out of grief, out of rage, out of the collapse of everything I thought I had lost when Elena died. But the truth is simpler and uglier than that. I needed someone to blame, and I chose her. I chose wrong. I chose cruelty. I chose to become the very thing I hated.

And maybe that is why I am here now, stepping into another battlefield with something fragile but real burning inside me, something that feels like a chance at redemption. I don’t believe I deserve it, not truly, but I need to try anyway. Because if I don’t, then everything I’ve ever done will remain exactly what it has always been: pointless violence without meaning. If I die today, maybe it will at least be for something that matters. Maybe it will balance nothing at all, but at least it will be an attempt to become something less hollow than what I was before.

The battlefield around us is collapsing into chaos. Asher’s forces are breaking under Adrian’s command, and Corbin’s influence is fading fast, but there is still danger in the confusion. I see them before anyone else does, twenty wolves breaking off in a clean, coordinated arc toward Adrian’s exposed flank. It is deliberate, precise, and lethal. They will reach him if no one stops them. And in that moment, there is no question in my mind about what I am meant to do.

I move without waiting for permission or thought. I cut across the field and intercept them alone, knowing exactly what it means. It is not bravery. It is not glory. It is simply the only thing left that I can offer. Twenty against one is not a fight, it is an execution waiting to happen, but I do not slow down. I do not hesitate. If I can buy even a few seconds for Adrian, then my death will not be wasted. That is all I am now–time given to someone who still has a future.

They recognize me immediately. Asher’s bloodline does not need introductions on a battlefield like this. I see the rage in their eyes, the certainty that killing me will mean something symbolic, something satisfying. Let them think that. Let them focus entirely on me. Because every heartbeat I steal from them is another heartbeat Adrian gets to use elsewhere. That is the only value I have left, distraction, delay, sacrifice.

The fight comes down on me like a storm breaking open. I am overwhelmed almost instantly, dragged down by numbers and force and exhaustion that I can no longer outpace. Still, I fight. Still, I take what I can. I bring down three of them, maybe four. but it changes nothing in the larger tide. My body is failing me now, my movements growing heavier, slower, less precise Blood fills my mouth, and every breath feels like it costs something I cannot afford to lose.

And then Freya arrives.

She does not hesitate. She does not question. She tears into the fight like something forged from wrath and purpose, cutting through the wolves around me with terrifying precision. For a moment, I almost ask her why she is here, why she would risk herself for me after everything I have done. But the answer comes before the question fully forms in toyund, carmed my the way she moves beside me as if my survival still matters.

Her voice cuts through the chaos when she answers anyway, even without me finishing the question She tells the Lam still trying. That I am still fighting for something better. That Elena would not have wanted me to die drowning in guilt. Her words do not erase what I did, but they shift something inside me that I thought was permanent. They do not absolve me, but they open a door I thought had been sealed shut forever.

For the first time, I understand that redemption is not something given on earned in a single moment. It is something you! choose to keep reaching for even when you believe you have no right to it so I fight differently now Not to die. Not to disappear But to live long enough to become something better than the man I used to be Something Freya believes could still become, even if I do not fully understand how

Reinforcements arrive not long after. Our pack, battered but still standing, surges into the remaining fight and forms the cade completely. The last of the attacking wolves tall or retreat, and the battlefield slowly settles into the exhausted salence that always follows survival. Corbin is gone. Adrian has won the war, for now, is over

When I finally find Freya again, she is standing with Adrian, both of them covered in blood and exhaustion but still alive d hesitate before approaching them, unsure of what I am now in the aftermath of everything: Lam not the man I was when this

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began, but I am not yet the man I want to become either. I stop a short distance away, forcing myself to speak even when my

voice feels unsteady

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