With Hearts to Hear| ✔

|40|

As soon as the three of them stepped behind the closed door of Killian's office, she exploded.

"You cannot be serious. I told you to find Luna, not the same woman who left you in a pit without any thought or care for the repercussions of what she did!" Her voice was inhumane, something between a threatening growl and exploding firecrackers. Adelia seethed, pointing a glare and pointed claw of a nail at Rachel. "You could have died and it would have been her fault!"

Rachel's heart stuttered. The woman was beyond intimidating, and as much as she hated to admit it, her very human senses were telling her to run.

She felt little shame in her to admit she was afraid, but she would not let her fear stop her from standing up for herself.

"What is she talking about?" She turned to Killian with furrowed brows and a heart thumping with panic. Was she telling the truth?

"Mates don't last very long without one another," Killian murmured, rubbing a soothing circle on the back of her hand. He wasn't sure if the action was for her or himself, but he figured they both needed it.

He took in her eyes widening with fear and realisation, the burning urge to reassure her in his veins. "But that was never going to be the case with us because I hadn't marked you."

His stare hardened as he turned back to his mother. "So, you're just twisting things to make Rachel look and feel bad."

Adelia scoffed, her face a flaming red at being called out. Killian was one with little patience for bullshit, but Adelia had gotten too comfortable knowing that he always tried to accommodate her feelings because of her relationship to him. She had not expected him to accuse her so bluntly.

"Aren't you the one that all but told me that the kindest thing to do for your son would be to leave? What were your words... Something like 'If you can't step up then step aside?'" Rachel's eyes narrowed; this woman had been playing games with them both. "So don't you dare villainize my choices when all I did was exactly what you asked me to do."

She had thought that her intentions were purely about protecting her son, and perhaps for a while they were. But she could not look Adelia in the eye and pretend that the woman did not have some sort of personal dislike for her.

"You're the one that started that whole shitstorm?" Killian's eyes narrowed, his wolf rising to the surface, curling in his throat with a deadly growl. His eyes softened with a heart wrenching mix of disbelief and sadness. "How could you do that? I told you that I loved her mother!"

Adelia looked at him as if he had two heads; love had very little to do with whether a relationship worked. Especially a relationship that required the kind of dedication and discipline that it took to lead a pack. She had thought that she had taught him that, but it had taken all but one girl for him to forget it.

She shook her head at her son, a humourless chuckle leaving her lips. She could tear apart the girl without breaking a sweat, and Killian thought she could lead a pack?

"You think you can change the way you dress, and the way you talk and suddenly that makes you a Luna?" Adelia turned her snarl to Rachel, her lips curling back to flash her canines threateningly. She whipped back to Killian, pointing accusingly at the scoffing woman. "She's a HUMAN Killian! She has no business leading my pack!"

"Don't you dare speak to her that way." There was no room for argument, Killian's tone wrapped in a measured, darkened patience. "And this is no longer your pack. It's mine, ours. I will run it how I see fit."

"She isn't good enough Killian, not for you and not for this pack. Her record proves it."

"How many other things have you meddled in?" Killian ignored her, watching her with pointed accusation.