Pustaka
Cari
Beranda / Romance / ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE / Chapter Seventeen: The Light I Didn't Leave On

Share

Chapter Seventeen: The Light I Didn't Leave On

Penulis: Author Rowan
last update Tanggal publikasi: 2026-03-23 03:06:57

I don't move.

I sit up in bed with my phone in my hand and the kitchen light spilling through the gap under my bedroom door and I think, very carefully, about the last hour.

Isobel's team was here. Dominic is on my couch twelve feet away. The window was patched and re-locked with hardware that a professional installed forty minutes ago. There is no logical way someone got back into this apartment.

Which means the light was on before everyone left.

Which means whoever sent that text has been wat
Lanjutkan membaca buku ini secara gratis
Pindai kode untuk mengunduh Aplikasi
Bab sebelumnya Bab selanjutnya
Bab Terkunci

Bab terbaru

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Fifty-Five: The First One They Found

    Nobody moves.The kitchen holds us all in it. Dominic at the counter, Isobel with her mug, me at the table, and Nora in the doorway.Four people at three in the morning with the last piece of the thing sitting in the open between us.I look at Nora.She looks back at me with the expression she uses when she has decided that honesty is the only remaining option. Not comfortable, not relieved. Just decided."How long ago?" I say."Four years," she says. She comes into the kitchen properly and sits down across from me. The doorway version of herself, standing and ready to retreat, is gone. She is in the chair now. That means something. "I was twenty-nine. Working a contract research position at a genetics lab. Routine bloodwork as part of a study I was enrolled in." She pauses. "The results came back with a flag I didn't understand. The lab contacted me through a representative who said they wanted to discuss my results with a specialist.""Hadrian's specialist," I say."A woman named Dr

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Fifty-Four: Come Home. I'll Explain.

    Dominic drives.Neither of us speaks for the first four minutes, which is the right call. The city at three in the morning has its own quality, emptier and more honest than the daytime version, and I look out the window at it and let the Isobel information settle into a shape I can think around.Nine years.Dominic trusts very few people completely. The list is short enough to count on one hand and Isobel has been at the top of it since before Nadia, since before the Conclave campaign, since before any of the last six weeks. She is the person he calls when something cannot wait. She is the person who sweeps rooms and traces proxies and appears in fourteen minutes at two in the morning without being asked how she knew to come.She knew to come because she always knows.I've been reading that as competence.What if it's also information."How did she come to work for you?" I say.Dominic is quiet for a moment. "She applied," he says. "Nine years ago. Through a standard security consulti

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Fifty-Three: The Woman Who Saved Herself the Trouble

    I sit up.Two in the morning and the room is dark and my phone is lit and Petra Adair has sent me an email with the specific confidence of someone who has decided that being found is less dangerous than being hunted.I read the subject line three times.“You've been looking for me. I thought I'd save you the trouble.”I opened it.The email is long. Longer than I expected. Not the short, operational communication of someone covering their tracks. Something else. The length of someone who has been composing this in their head for a while and is finally putting it somewhere outside themselves.I read it once quickly to get the shape.Then I read it again slowly.She starts with Callum.She says she was placed near him eighteen months ago by a handler she identifies only as V, which I assume means Voss, Hadrian, before his health declined to the point where Orlan began managing operations directly. She was given a specific brief. Get close to Callum Sinclair. Learn what you can about Dom

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Fifty-Two: The Case That Wouldn't Close

    I look at Judith's message.Petra is still beside me. She reads the screen over my shoulder and her hand tightens on mine briefly before she releases it, which is Petra's way of saying go, I'll be fine, go handle the next thing.I call Judith.She answers immediately. She sounds the same as she always sounds, which is like a person who has chosen composure as a permanent state rather than an occasional tool. But underneath tonight there is something additional. The specific quality of information that surprised even her."Tell me," I say."The detective on the Maddox case received new evidence this afternoon," she says. "Submitted anonymously. A thumb drive was delivered to the precinct by courier at two-fifteen, which was during the session."During the session."Someone submitted it deliberately while we were occupied," I say."The timing appears intentional," she says. "The drive contains security footage from the clinic. The secondary entrance. The night Maddox died.""Nora was on

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Fifty-One: What She Left Before I Arrived

    I don't move.The phone is in my hand and the interim director's voice is still in the room and Dominic is beside me reading my face the way he always does and I am completely still.My mother.At Harlow Fertility Clinic.Eight years before I walked through those doors."She was a patient there?" I say."Not a fertility patient," the interim director says carefully. "Our records show she visited the clinic once, eight years ago, as a walk-in. She spoke with the clinic director at the time, a Dr. Hargrove, who has since retired. She was not seeking treatment. She requested to leave a sealed document in a patient file." A pause. "The file she requested it be placed in was registered under a future patient name.""My name," I say."Yes," she says. "The file was created in anticipation. It's a practice we occasionally accommodate for estate planning purposes. A parent leaving medical history documentation for an adult child who may become a patient later."Estate planning.My mother walke

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Fifty: After the Room

    We eat lunch.This is Petra's decision and it is the right one. She finds a restaurant two blocks from the session building, a small Italian place with tables close together and bread that arrives without asking for it, and she herds everyone into it with the authority of a woman who has decided that the most essential thing available right now is a hot meal.Everyone comes.Dominic and Callum. Nora and Camila, who sit side by side for the first time properly, their shoulders almost touching as if reclaiming proximity they lost. I smiled and looked at Gareth, who is still in the chair but has the color back in his face and eats an entire bowl of soup without pausing. Orlan, who sits at the end of the table quietly and pays for his own meal when the bill comes, which I notice and don't comment on.Aldric Vane does not come.He left the building after his testimony with the contained, forward-facing energy of a man executing the next phase of a plan. He shook Dominic's hand in the corri

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Forty: The Woman Who Always Knew

    It's ten at night.Rosamund's text sits on the screen and I look at it the way I've been looking at things tonight that rearrange what I thought I knew. Four words. No explanation. No apology for the hour.Just: "I've been waiting. Come.""She knew we were at the hotel," I say."She knows most thin

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Thirty-Nine: What My Mother Actually Was

    "Say that again," I say.Delia's voice on the phone is careful and low. "Your mother didn't just carry a Lunare bloodline. She was something more specific within that lineage. Something that hasn't existed in the documented pack world for over two hundred years.""What specifically?""I need to sho

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Thirty-Eight: What Happens on Sidewalks

    He's still smiling.It's the full version. The one I've been collecting in pieces for weeks, the almost-smile, the ghost of one, the careful half-second of something real before the walls came back up. This one has nowhere left to go because the walls came down on a River North sidewalk and apparen

  • ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE   Chapter Thirty-Seven: Walking In Alone

    Dominic reads the message over my shoulder.I feel him go still beside me in the way that means the thing underneath the control has just gotten significantly closer to the surface. His hand doesn't move from mine. If anything it holds more firmly for one second before he releases it and leans back

Bab Lainnya

Anda juga akan menyukai

Jelajahi dan baca novel bagus secara gratis
Akses gratis ke berbagai novel bagus di aplikasi GoodNovel. Unduh buku yang kamu suka dan baca di mana saja & kapan saja.
Baca buku gratis di Aplikasi
Pindai kode untuk membaca di Aplikasi
DMCA.com Protection Status