Chapter 50

[Killian]

I wake at 4:17. Not from a nightmare. I'd prefer a nightmare—nightmares have edges, shapes, something to identify and dismiss. This is just absence. A hollow pull behind my sternum, like a fist-sized hole someone

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• Addicted to His Rejected Mate   Chapter 103

  [Sera]The paramedics arrived before the police. I don't know who called them. Silas, probably. He was on the phone while I knelt on a carpet that had turned warm and dark under my knees, pressing both hands against Killian's chest while Lulu screamed from the rocking chair where I'd set her down because I needed both hands and couldn't hold them both at the same time.That was the choice. Hold your daughter or keep a man's blood inside his body. I chose the blood. Lulu screamed and I chose the blood, and if that is a thing I have to carry for the rest of my life, then fine. Add it to the pile.

• Addicted to His Rejected Mate   Chapter 102

  [Killian]The hallway was nine feet long. Conrad stood at one end. I stood at the other. Between us was his security consultant with an undrawn weapon and fifty years of accumulated certainty that the world would do what it was told.I'd done this math before. Boardrooms, negotiations, the particular arithmetic of power where you count leverage and exposure and available exits. But the math had never included a gun, or a child five feet behind me breathing into her mother's neck, or the sound of Silas somewhere downstairs, motionless, coiled.

• Addicted to His Rejected Mate   Chapter 101

  [Sera]Silas drove the way he did everything. Without excess. No tire squeal pulling out. No dramatic acceleration on the highway. Just a steady velocity that felt faster than the speedometer showed, like the car itself had agreed to cooperate.The rain was heavy now. Not Seattle's usual mist but real rain, the kind that turns windshields into waterfalls between wiper strokes. I sat behind Silas. Killian sat behind the passenger seat. Between us, the middle seat held his phone, face-up, tracking the route.Nobody spoke for the first ten mi

• Addicted to His Rejected Mate   Chapter 100

  [Killian]"Here's what's going to happen," Conrad said. He used the same cadence he'd used in boardrooms for fifty years. Unhurried. Certain. The cadence of a man who has never been interrupted because no one in his life had ever dared."You will sign a full retraction of the board motion and issue a public statement that the audit findings were based on misinterpretation. My executive authority will be reinstated by Monday morning. In return, the child will be home by tomorrow evening. Simple terms. Clear outcomes. This is what I've been trying to teach you, Killian. Everything is a negotiation. Even family."

• Addicted to His Rejected Mate   Chapter 99

  [Sera]The sound I made wasn't a scream. Screams have shape. This was just air leaving my body in a direction I couldn't control, and it lasted until Silas put his hand on my shoulder and said my name. Once. Not gently. Like a command.I stopped.The crib was empty. The blanket was folded back, not thrown. The night-light was unplugged with the cord wrapped around the base in a tidy loop. Whoever had been in this room had taken my daughter and tidied up after themselves, like a hotel guest checking out.

• Addicted to His Rejected Mate   Chapter 98

  [Sera]The text came Friday afternoon.It's done. Vote passed. His executive authority is suspended.I read it standing behind the counter at Vance's during the 3 p.m. lull. Danny was restocking cups. Mia was on her day off. A regular named Joan was reading at her usual corner table.I put the phone down and exhaled for what felt like the first time in two weeks.That

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