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Chapter 88
publish date:
2026-09-17 19:56:05
Latest chapter
FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL Chapter 90
ElenaI found Ryder alone in the small courtyard behind the library two days later, sitting on the same stone bench where we had first pieced together the shape of the leak weeks earlier, and something in the tired, guarded way he held himself told me he had been carrying a conversation he did not want to have long before I ever walked toward him."You look like you have been avoiding me," I said, sitting down beside him."I have not been avoiding you," he said. "I have been trying to figure out how much of what I know I am actually allowed to tell you; versus how much I have simply been raised to keep buried the way everyone else in this territory keeps it buried.""That sounds like the beginning of a conversation I am not going to enjoy.""Probably not," he admitted. "But you deserve to hear it anyway, especially after everything happening lately. The way people look at you now. The elders. The staff. All of it.""You noticed that too.""Everyone has noticed it, Elena. I think that
FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL Chapter 89
ElenaI had grown almost used to the particular kind of stare Marcus gave me at every gathering by the time the next formal dinner rolled around, so when a different set of eyes started following me across the room that evening. It took me a moment to place the unfamiliar weight of it, and even longer to understand that it belonged to someone I had barely spoken more than a few polite words to in the entire two months I had been circling the edges of this family's world."You keep glancing at that corner," Aiden murmured beside me, following the direction of my attention toward an older elder standing near the tall windows, a man I recognized only vaguely as one of the Council's longer serving members, someone whose name I had never bothered memorizing because he had never once, until tonight, seemed to notice I existed at all."He has been staring at me for the last ten minutes," I said quietly, keeping my voice low enough that it would not carry past the two of us. "Not the way pe
FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL Chapter 88
ElenaNaomi's message sat with me for two full days before I found the courage to ask Martha anything about it directly, and even then, I chose the moment carefully, waiting until we were alone in her kitchen on a quiet evening when no doctors, no nurses, no anonymous texts, no Council deadlines were pressing in on either of us.She stood at the sink washing dishes, humming something soft and tuneless under her breath, the kind of ordinary domestic peace that had become rare enough in my life lately that I almost did not want to disturb it with a question that might crack it apart entirely.I asked anyway."Martha," I said, drying a plate she had just handed me, keeping my voice as gentle and unhurried as I could manage. "Can I ask you something about a long time ago?""Of course, baby." She kept scrubbing at a pot, her attention only half on the conversation, the way it usually was during these easy, unremarkable evenings."Have you ever talked to anyone from the Hart family before
FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL Chapter 87
ElenaLooking back now, I could see it clearly, but at the time it had crept in so slowly I almost missed it entirely.It started weeks before the hearing, before Naomi's disappearance, before the file Marcus had locked away in his desk without telling anyone. I noticed it first at a small pack dinner, one of the quieter, less formal gatherings Victoria still made me attend, standing near the wall with a tray in my hands the way I always did.Marcus was watching me.Not the careful, tense way he had watched me the very first time, back when I still thought his attention meant suspicion, or the way he might have watched a stranger he was trying to figure out how to handle. This was different. Steady. Constant. His eyes finding me across the room again and again throughout the evening, lingering a beat too long every time, something unreadable behind his expression that I could not fully name."You are staring," Aiden had murmured to me once, at a different gathering, nodding subtly tow
FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL Chapter 86
MarcusThree weeks before the hearingThe household had gone quiet hours ago, the last of the staff finally retired for the night, and I sat alone in my study with the door locked, a stack of old pack files spread across the desk in front of me, the lamp casting the only light in the whole dark house.I had not told anyone I was doing this. Not Victoria, not Harold, certainly not Naomi, whose careful discretion had managed every sensitive request I made for over two decades without ever once asking a question I did not want answered.This time, I could not risk her knowing.I pulled the first file toward me, records from Hartwood's own maternity ward stretching back over thirty years, searching methodically through birth logs and staff assignments from the exact week Elena had been born. I found nothing unusual, nothing that contradicted the careful cover story I had constructed twenty-one years ago, and something in me relaxed slightly, foolishly, believing for a moment that the past
FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL CHAPTER 85
ElenaMarcus called his security team the moment Naomi finished speaking, and within minutes the garden filled with guards, someone wrapping a blanket around Naomi's shoulders, another guiding her carefully toward the house to have her wounds looked at properly. She looked back once before they took her inside, her eyes finding mine with something like an apology still unfinished behind them.Then it was quiet again. Just Marcus and me, standing near the fountain, the night suddenly feeling heavier than it had ten minutes ago."You should go inside too," Marcus said. "Rest, if you can manage it. Tomorrow is going to ask more of you than any day has so far.""I do not think I can rest after that."No," he admitted. "I do not suppose you can."We stood there a while longer, neither of us moving toward the house, both of us apparently needing the quiet a little longer before facing whatever waited inside."Thank you," I said finally. "For telling me about your mother earlier. Before all
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