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Chapter Sixty-Seven: The Petition and the Person Behind It
publish date:
2026-04-22 06:57:47
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ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Eighty-Four: The Window That Moved
I send Pren the photographs that night.All of them. The declaration. The box. The photograph of the Mira Seca community in 1923. A brief explanatory note in plain language: what it is, where it was found, what it means legally.I don't editorialize. The document speaks for itself. A 1923 community declaration stating formal rights that predate any Conclave acknowledgment or denial by decades. Not a petition and not a request. A prior claim.Pren responds at six in the morning Edinburgh time.One line."This changes the session significantly. I'm convening the senior members today."I put my phone down and look at the ceiling of Elena's guest room.Dominic is asleep beside me. His breathing is even. I keep staring at his chest heaving. I could slightly see a bit of skin from the upper missed button of his nightie and a part of me was hoping more was exposed. I stare at how peaceful he looked while sleeping. He has the ability to sleep through significant situations that I have always
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Eighty-Three: What the Castillo Family Left Behind
The wax breaks cleanly so easily cause of how long it was wearing in hiding experiencing all kinds of seasons.I lift the lid gently.Inside, nested in cloth that was once white and has aged to a pale cream, are three things.A folded document. Very old. The paper has the quality of something that has been carefully stored rather than forgotten. Thick, deliberate paper that someone chose specifically because they intended it to last.A small cloth pouch, tied shut with a cord that has dried and stiffened with age.And a photograph.I take the photograph out first because photographs tell you immediately what you're looking at and I need to know where I am before I read anything.It is the community.Not the one in Rosamund's hallway, the 1960s version. Older than that. Much older. Sepia-toned and slightly damaged at one corner but intact in the way that things survive when someone wraps them in good cloth and seals them against the weather.Forty, maybe fifty people. Standing in front
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Eighty-Two: What the Ground Kept
I am thirty-two weeks pregnant.Dominic points this out within thirty seconds of reading the text exchange over my shoulder, which is the appropriate response and also the one I was already having with myself before he said it."I know," I say."Albuquerque is a two-hour flight," he says."I know," I say."Dr. Vega would need to clear it," he says."I know," I say again. He looks at me knowing that I won't change my mind."You're going," he says."Not immediately," I say. "But yes."He is quiet for a moment.Then he casually picks up his phone."I'll look at flights for next weekend," he says. "If Vega clears it."I look at him."You're coming," I say."Of course I'm coming," he says, with the specific expression of someone who finds the question slightly baffling as if that was a question I shouldn't I have. Maybe it is. I text Paz."Next weekend if I can get medical clearance. Is that workable?"Her response is immediate."I'll be here. I'm not moving from Albuquerque until you se
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Eighty-One: The Cousin in Albuquerque
I don't call Elena immediately.This surprises me cause I am not typically someone who waits on things. I decide and I act and the gap between those two moments is usually very small.But this is different.This is family.Specifically, this is the first living family member I've learned about since my mother died eleven years ago who exists outside what I already knew. Elena Castillo. My mother's first cousin. Sixty or so years old if the math is right. Living in Albuquerque for thirty years. Knowing about me since November and being too afraid to reach out directly.Leaving yellow flowers instead.I need to be ready for this call in a way I didn't need to be ready for Cassius or Theodore or Administrator Pren. Those were conversations with stakes attached to outcomes I was working toward. This is a conversation with stakes attached to something I don't have a framework for yet.I wait for three days.I spend those three days in the ordinary rhythms of thirty-two weeks. The usual mor
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Eighty: The Stone and What It Means
I save the photograph to my phone.Both of them. The flowers and the stone. I put them in a folder I've been keeping since November, the one that started with the session record and has grown to include Rosamund's texts and Administrator Pren's email and the photograph of Lucia Castillo standing outside her home in Mira Seca.The folder is becoming a history.Not my history specifically. Something larger. The history of a community finding its way back to itself from thirty years of scattering.I show it to Rosamund the next morning.She is quiet for a long time after she reads the words on the stone.We are sitting in her kitchen, which has become one of the rooms I visit regularly now. Just because she is one of the people I want to be near, and being near people you want to be near is something I am learning to do without requiring a reason.She sets my phone down on the table."Who?" I say."I don't know," she says trying to make coffee. "I have my suspicions.""Tell me," I say.S
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Seventy-Nine: Ten Weeks
Ten weeks sounds like a lot until it isn't.I learned this in December.The days have the specific quality of a countdown that you're aware of without being anxious about, the way the last weeks before something important always feel. Full and moving and slightly faster than you'd like.I work through the first two weeks of December. Diane has rearranged my patient load the way she said she would, more assessment, less physical demand, and she was right that it's better. I am good at assessment. I've always been good at assessment. The work has a different texture but the same satisfaction.I stop at thirty weeks.Not because I want to. Because Dr. Vega and Diane and Dominic and Petra form an inadvertent coalition on the same Tuesday afternoon, each from different angles, and I look at four people being right simultaneously and decide that the practical choice is to accept it.I tell Dominic that I accepted it, not that he was right.He accepts this distinction without comment.The ap
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