Prince Caelan

22. Change

Caelan POV

"She shows no sign of changing" I say stressed as I run my fingers through my hair.

My father hums. "Could be stress." He simply says, glancing up from his work as he sits behind his large desk in his office.

I sigh. "It's been 3 days, she's starting to get back to her normal self, but she still has nightmares of Ben Braum."

My father found out every single bit of detail of what happened that night, Olivia approached these men before they were called to escort the Braum wife and children out of The Vale, for their safety, if anyone got word that they were in The Vale, no doubt someone would try and assassinate them for the horrors her husband and mate had caused.

It only took my father five minutes to get everything out of the four men. Nobody has seen my father until today, he was in the room with the men for three days without coming out. I already know what he did, they disobeyed an order, it's an Alpha's and King's duty to see fit to the punishment.

Somehow those men are alive after spending all that time in the same room as my father, I know him enough to know he did not go easy on them, I bet they wished for death a couple of times during the time Kane was in there, they have their trial today before Ron and Mason Aldin's trial.

"I failed that family, Elizabeth Braum had cut her bond willingly just to escape and protect her children." He grits out angrily. "Those fucking pieces of shit, they don't deserve a trial." He says deadly silent, his eyes blazing with hatred as he clenches his hand into a fist.

I stand up from the sofa and look over the folder that is placed in front of my father. The four men and their entire life are in this folder. They left the legion army and settled down, kids, wives, they lived the good life.

But then the next page is very good detail of their confession, they were not the good wolves their mates and children thought they were. Rape, murder, torture, extortion... the list is never-ending, they confessed every single thing they had done since and after the war, in the time of five minutes with my father.

"Where is your mate?" My father asks, pulling me from the horrors inside this folder. I close the folder and throw it back on the desk and walk to the stained glass window behind my father's desk, I look outside the unit l can see her.

"With mother, I thought it might be good for her to get some fresh air." I say as I gaze into the garden and watch my beautiful mate walk beside my mother.

They are both walking in and around the royal palace gardens, something my father and mother do often to get a release from the burden of their title, no one bothers you in the garden and if they do, it's important. Nature is a safe haven for my kind, everyone knows that when we are in it you do not disturb us.

I feel my father stand behind me as my eyes never leave my mate. How far we have come, the two years I did not see my mate were the worst of my life, the stares of disgust and embarrassment from my father had affected me more than others, it was no secret in the palace that day Acela left me that she was my mate and she had rejected me.

A part of me during those two years without her was contemplating accepting her rejection, resulting in my immediate death. I was at an all-time low, knowing that my mate was somewhere happy without me and she didn't need me, the thought consumed me, until that day I found out she was still in The Vale, she had made a life for herself, she worked hard and opened her own business, she did something she enjoyed.

I didn't want to leave this world without anything to show for it, I wanted to show her that me she met the first time was not the real me, I was living on borrowed time from The Tears of Tris, I was hateful, often wondering without a purpose, I was losing my mind.