The Alpha King Call Boy
Chapter 257

Fiona

I passed a sleepless night tossing and turning in the big bed I was currently sharing with my best friend instead of my husband as I would have preferred

But I was grateful to have her, since he was unavailable to me - in a diversity of ways, it seemed.

Nina had stayed by my side through all the tumult of this weekend, up to and including Alexander's painful homecoming. And though we discussed her moving into the tower suite (she called it "the cloud room"), for now she was still, gratefully, staying downstairs with me and Lexi.

I had braced myself for the fact that Alex would be coming back from the desert having sustained both physical and emotional injury. But I never expected this. I never could have prepared myself for this.

I couldn't believe that Alex would push me away like he did. Not after all this time. After all we'd been through together.

I never thought that I would hear him yell at me like* that again.

And I never thought he would ever tell me not to touch him.

I kept asking myself whether this all could be just another intense and terrible dream. But no, this wasn't Dreamland. There was no waking up from this. This was real life.

The new reality of my life was simply this: My Alpha King husband had gone away to battle, and he did not return the same. He did not return whole.

Silent tears of grief rolled down my cheeks, dampening the gold silk pillowcase beneath my head.

I was grieving my husband. The man Alexander had been before he went down into that cave.

I had hope that Alex could recover from all this, both the physical and emotional ail. But I knew he would never be quite the same. Something had changed inside him this weekend.

A piece of him had been lost. And I had a feeling it was not coming back.

In the morning, I received a message from Alex.

By mindlink.

He had the freaking nerve to mindlink me out of nowhere just to tell me he didn't want to see me this morning. I still need space, Fiona...

I was fucking furious. I wanted to yell at him,

But I did not give him a reply in kind. Or any kind of reply at all.

Fine, I conceded internally. I'll keep giving him space.

But not for long.

No, my patience with this pity party was wearing thin.

I know Alexander was going through something truly terrible-but so was I.

And he was the one who had turned me soft. He started this. He made me a mother. He started this family and he made me love and need him, and he had no right now to wallow in whatever lonely place it was he was spiraling out into. He'd promised he would come back to me. And he hadn't, really. His body was here in the next room, but his heart had not returned to me.

I wasn't going to let him get away with this behavior forever. But for now...

I did have much to do this morning, anyway. So I granted Alex his wish and left him alone.

For now.

The smoke had cleared out of the West Wing.

After feeding Lexi and then forcing myself to eat a small breakfast with Nina, I called the Fire Marshal.

The stern, stoic man came and escorted me over to the fire site at my request. I left the baby behind with Nina, of course.

There was still soot and ash everywhere over there. In our bedroom, charred bits of structure and furniture and our disheveled personal items were heaped all over the place. But the fire crews had cleared a path through the wreckage.

I'd been given a ventilator to wear, and I was grateful for it. An overwhelming stench of smoke was still everywhere, and to my surprise, so was the smell of gas.

I could not help but stare, stunned, into the nursery for several minutes once I caught sight of it.

The small room was unrecognizable. It had been burnt to a crisp. And there it was-a big rectangular hole in the wall with a dark, creepy passageway behind it, through which a cold breeze drifted into the room, carrying that dizzying gas smell upon it. There was no sign of Iris.

"The body" was gone.

What remained in the passageway was a big steel grate that had been sawed in half and pried apart by something like the jaws of life. And a black scorch mark on the stone floor just inside the passage. Just behind where there used to be a wall. Nothing in the nursery survived the fire.

That was too bad, but not exactly tragic. I'd already: gotten Alexis a new crib. Money made things like that pretty easy. Toys, clothes and books could all be replaced later. Furniture and other material things, they didn't matter at all. My baby was safe because I'd been holding her in my arms when all this happened that's what mattered.

The only thing that I really regretted losing from this ruined place, I realized as I surveyed the black, smoke-scented rubble that filled it, was that lovely old photograph. The one of Alex's mother as a baby.

I doubted a copy existed of that exact photo. I hated that it had been lost.

I spent nearly an hour working in the bedroom with a couple of servants. They helped me gather and remove all the salvageable belongings that I deemed worth taking. I left all of my and Alex's smoke-drenched clothing behind, and everything else that was replaceable. Alexandra's necklace. That was not getting left behind. Nor was my box of love notes that Alex had sent to me at the office, back when I was working at his company.

I looked carefully through my husband's dressing room, an unfamiliar little place I had never been inside before. It didn't appear that he kept much in there besides clothes. I found all his fancy cufflinks and took those. A few boxes of business-related paperwork came, too.

And then, that was it.

I stood in the hallway and gave one last look into the once beautiful but now destroyed place where I had lived for nearly a year. The first place where I made a home with my true love, my mate. And our baby's first home.

And I said goodbye.

I had emailed my assistant this morning with the instruction to get me a new laptop. When I returned to the East Wing, I found her waiting there for me in the hallway, holding my new computer in her arms. I spoke with Tracy for a few minutes, took the computer and dismissed her. The servants that carried over our salvaged personal items deposited the bags and boxes in one of the closets of our new room. Then I sent them away, too.

"You okay?" Nina asked, once the door was closed on all the commotion.

"Yeah..."

I looked at my baby. She was in the adjoining room, fast asleep in her crib. Her sleep cycle was all screwed up from all the disruptions to our routine.

"I think I've made a decision, though," I added quietly, easing down into the oversized green velvet armchair that had become my new favorite place to sit. I started unboxing my new laptop in my lap.

Nina came close and sat on the floor near me, so we could whisper-chat and not disturb the baby. "What kind of decision?"

I handed her the big, glossy cardboard box after removing the laptop from it. Nina compliantly took my garbage and set it down neatly on the floor beside her.

"I'm going to reach out to Conrad," I said. It was strange how suddenly confident I felt about this. "I want to see him.