로그인Lillian’s POVI was up earlier than usual that morning, dressed and ready before the house had fully come alive around me. After everything that had happened the night before, sitting still was not something my body was willing to do. I needed to move, needed to do something that felt productive, needed to put my hands on a problem I actually had some ability to solve.The company was where I was going. The Hendersons pulling out was not something I could afford to sit back and accept without at least making the effort to change their minds directly.I found Dorian in the hallway near the main entrance, jacket on, keys in hand, clearly also heading out. I fell into step beside him naturally, the way we used to move through mornings together before everything fractured, and asked him if he was heading straight to the office.He didn’t answer immediately, which was already an answer of its own kind.“I have somewhere to be first,” he said.I looked at him. “Where?”“I’ll be at the compa
Dorian’s POVThey were all seated when I walked in, arranged around the east sitting room with the deliberate formation that told me this had been organized before they arrived, not assembled casually. Elder Marcus, Elder Patricia, Elder William, Elder Rex and Elder Carter, all of them present, all of them wearing expressions that sat somewhere between grave and accusatory. The morning light coming through the windows did nothing to soften the atmosphere. If anything it made everything sharper, more exposed, like a conversation that had been waiting too long to happen and had finally run out of patience.I took the chair at the head of the arrangement and said nothing, waiting for them to start whatever brought them here with coldness. Elder Marcus spoke first. “There was a rogue attack last night on the northern border. Three of our patrol wolves were injured, one seriously. The breach lasted nearly forty minutes before it was contained.” He let that sit for a moment before contin
Dorian’s POVThe room felt different after she left. Not quieter exactly, because silence had its own quality and this was not peaceful silence. It was the kind that pressed against the walls and sat heavy on every surface, the kind that only exists because something that should have been said wasn’t, or because something that was said landed in a way that couldn’t be taken back.I stood there for a while without moving. Then the stillness curdled into something else, something hotter and less patient, and I moved to the window, stood looking out at the dark grounds below because I needed somewhere to put my eyes that wasn’t the empty doorway she had walked through.The anger came first, the way it always did, quick and defensive and looking for somewhere to land. But it had nowhere to go this time because underneath it, sitting solid and immovable, was the knowledge that she was not wrong. Not about any of it. The people in this house had made her feel unwelcome from the beginning a
Dorian’s POVI had braced myself for tears or anger or a flood of questions I wouldn’t have answers to. I had expected her voice to crack or her breathing to change the way it did when she was trying to hold herself together under pressure. I had even prepared myself for her to shout at me, because that at least would have felt like something real passing between us.What I had not prepared for was silence.She went completely quiet on the other end of the line for long enough that I pulled the phone away from my ear to check that the call was still connected. Then she said okay in a voice that was flat and distant and entirely unlike her, and the line went dead.I stood there holding my phone and stared at it for a moment. She hadn’t even picked up quickly. The call had rung out long enough that I had started mentally rehearsing a voicemail before she finally answered. That alone had told me something was off, but the okay had told me something worse. Lillian did not do okay. Lillia
Lillian’s POVFor a full second neither of us moved. I stood there in the wardrobe with clothes hanging around my shoulders and Miranda stood with her hand still gripping the door she had just flung open, and we stared at each other in a silence that felt like the moment before something breaks.Then Miranda’s face went from shock to something that was closer to pure fury than anything I had seen from her yet, and she stepped forward with her whole body coiled tight like she was going to come at me right there in the closet.“Get out,” she said, her voice low and shaking with it. “Get out of my room right now.” She grabbed my arm and pulled, not a gentle suggestion but a hard yank, and I stumbled forward out of the wardrobe and into the room. Her hands immediately went to my arms, my pockets, patting down the sides of my clothes with rough searching movements. “What did you take? What did you touch? Give it back right now.”I shoved her back hard with both hands flat against her shou
Lillian’s POVThe pages were not long but every word on them hit me like cold water thrown directly into my face.Elder Carter’s handwriting was neat and deliberate across the top of the first page, the instructions were written without a name anywhere on them, just references to her, take her down, remove her, take her place. No specifics about who she was, as if Carter had been careful enough not to commit that detail to paper, but I knew. There was only one her that any of this could be referring to. The letter laid out the broad shape of the plan, the positioning, the timing, the expected outcome, all of it written with the calm confidence of someone who had done this kind of thing before and expected it to work.But it was the second page that made my hands go completely still.It was shorter than the first, written in a different hand, less careful and more urgent. And what it said was plain enough that there was no reading it any other way. If Miranda failed to seduce Alpha Do
Lillian’s POVThe weeks that followed were a strange mix of emotions I couldn’t quite untangle. The awkwardness between Dorian and me hung in the air like a thick fog at first, making every interaction feel forced and uncomfortable. We’d pass each other in hallways and barely make eye contact, our
Lillian’s POVI woke up that morning with my lips still tingling from Dorian’s kisses and my mind racing with what we’d done. The memories came flooding back in vivid detail his hands in my hair, his body pressed against mine, the way he’d kissed me like he’d been starving for it. I couldn’t believ
Aaron’s POVThe email notification came through while I was in the middle of reviewing our quarterly losses, and when I opened it, my blood ran cold. The IRS was launching a formal investigation into AMS Corporation for potential tax evasion, they wanted all financial records submitted within thirt
Aaron’s POVI was speeding down their street when I saw the Hendersons’ car backing out of their driveway, and I immediately slammed on my brakes and swerved to block their exit. They stopped abruptly, alarm crossing their faces as they realized who had just cut them off.I was out of my car before







