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CHAPTER 72
publish date:
2026-09-01 22:30:39
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FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL Chapter 140
Elena“Ten minutes,” Elder Thorne said. “I’ve been rounding up. It’s nearer nine.”Dennis dragged the exam stool across the linoleum and set it behind her knees. “Sit down, ma’am. It won’t change the clock, but it’s better than falling over in front of company.”She sat. She did it the way very old people do, hands on her thighs first, then the rest of her following. The gray lines ran from her wrist to her elbow now, and I could see them moving, slowly, like ink spreading through a wet napkin.Her six guards had stopped a few feet inside the door. Their captain was a thick man with a gray mustache and a hand resting on his holster. Ryder stepped between him and me without a word. Gideon moved to Ryder’s other side, and Marcus’s two guards closed in behind us, and for a moment the exam room held very still.“Captain,” Thorne said, without looking at him. “Take your hand off that.”“Elder, with respect, our orders came from the full Council.”“Your orders were written by people who hav
FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL Chapter 139
Elena“No,” I said.It came out before I’d decided to say it, and the gold in my chest hummed one clear note under it, like a bell somebody had struck once. It was true. I couldn’t have made it gentler if I’d tried.Aiden’s face didn’t change. He nodded slowly, the way you nod when a doctor tells you something you already guessed.“Good,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”“Wait,” Ryder said hoarsely. The gray had reached the base of his throat, and he was swaying a little on his feet. “You asked her that to see whether she’d lie?”“I asked because I needed to know whether I’d still do it if the answer was no.” Aiden looked down at the ring in his palm. “I would. I wanted to hear it out loud first, so nobody could say I was doing it for a reward.”“Aiden, you don’t have to,” I started.“Yes, I do. It’s the only thing in my whole family I’ve ever been able to fix.” He tried to smile, and it wobbled. “Where’s the paper?”I pulled the yellow sheet out of my pocket. It was warm, almost fev
FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL Chapter 138
Elena“Okay,” Ryder said. He was still holding his hands out in front of him like they belonged to somebody else. “Nobody panic. Elena, how long do I have?”“I don’t know.”“Guess.”“Ryder.”“You’re the one with the gift. Guess.”The gray had reached his wrists and was creeping up the insides of his forearms, thin lines branching out like cracks in a frozen pond. He didn’t look scared. He looked like a man filling out a form. That scared me worse than if he’d screamed.“An hour,” I said. “Maybe less.” I hadn’t known the number until it came out of my mouth, but when it did, I felt how true it was. Whatever had its hooks in him was moving slowly, and it was moving steadily, and it was not going to stop.“Can you see where it’s coming from?” Marcus asked. He’d pulled himself half upright in the wheelchair, and Eleanor had a hand pressed flat against his chest like she could hold him in place.I closed my eyes and let the gold come up, and there it was, thin as fishing line, running from
FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL Chapter 137
Elena“Let me make sure I’ve got this right,” Dennis said, leaning on his mop in the fourth floor family waiting room. “It’s one in the morning, and you want me to stand here and watch a rich guy confess to something. And I’m not getting overtime.”“You’re getting my thanks,” I said.“I’m getting a story for the guys at the Elks Lodge. That’s worth something.” He pushed his reading glasses up into his hair. “Nineteen years in this building and nobody’s ever asked me to witness anything. Mostly I get ‘watch the wet floor.’”The waiting room had a fish tank that bubbled too loudly, a TV playing a cooking show on mute, and a lighthouse puzzle on a card table with about forty pieces missing. Joanie from the front desk had brought her lanyard upstairs and kept twisting it around her fingers. Walt sat in a vinyl chair with his coffee, still wearing the Bulls hoodie, and every few minutes he checked his phone for word from his wife’s room down the hall.“Gallbladder’s fine,” he told us for t
FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL Chapter 136
ElenaThe elevator doors opened on the fourth floor and the sound hit us first—Martha’s laugh, bright and broken and too loud for a hospital at midnight.Ryder and I stepped out into the corridor and found the door to Marcus’s room standing wide. Inside, Martha sat on the edge of the bed with both hands pressed to her chest like she was still checking that the tightness had really left. Eleanor held one of her wrists. Marcus was propped higher against the pillows, color returning to his face in slow patches. Victoria stood near the window with her arms folded, watching the hallway as though she expected more gray coats to appear at any second.Martha saw me and the laugh cut off mid-breath.“Baby,” she said. The word cracked. “You’re here. You’re actually here.”I crossed the room and let her pull me into a hard, shaking hug. She smelled like hospital soap and the peppermint candy she always kept in her purse. Underneath it I felt nothing of the cold wire that had been choking her for
FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL Chapter 135
ElenaRyder’s face had gone the color of the marble floor.I held the paper out so he could see it properly, the brown smear of Martha’s blood and the two signatures side by side under the fluorescent light. His eyes moved over the heavy cross-stroke on the G the way a man looks at a wound he already knows is fatal.“Elena,” he said again, softer this time. “That’s my father’s signature.”“I know.”He came the rest of the way down the stairs like someone walking through water. Marcus’s guards shifted but did not stop him. Behind us the medics were still shouting orders around Cassian’s gurney; the sound felt far away, like it belonged to a different hospital.Ryder stopped in front of me. He did not take the paper. He only stared at it.“He never told me,” he said. “Not once. Not even after the cabin. Not after Halloway. Nothing.”“Cassian said to read the bottom. All of it.”I turned the page over. The back was almost blank except for three lines written in the same slanted hand, sma
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