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CHAPTER TEN
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2026-03-16 16:08:58
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My Alpha, My Verdict CHAPTER FIFTEEN
KIERAN'S POVHe brought the Aldrich documentation to Thursday dinner in a separate folder from the treaty materials, which told me he'd been thinking about the order of things — business first, then the rest of it.I brought wine because Drea had said he wasn't fussy and because it felt like a normal thing that a person does when they go to dinner with someone, which was a category this had quietly become.Eli looked at the bottle when I set it on the table. Then at me. "Your assistant called Drea.""I didn't have your number for that kind of question.""You have my number for treaty questions.""That's a different number," I said. "Professionally speaking."Something moved in his expression — not quite the small private smile but adjacent to it. He poured the wine without making it a thing and we opened the Aldrich folder.The payment chain was as clean as Drea had made it sound. Reina's connection was documented across six transactions, the shell entity paper trail forensically mapp
My Alpha, My Verdict CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ELI'S POVDrea had the Aldrich records by seven in the morning.I was already at my desk when she forwarded them, still in the clothes I'd slept in because I'd fallen asleep at my desk, which happened during heavy case periods and which I'd stopped being embarrassed about.The records were clean on the surface, contractor license, board-adjacent work history, nothing that would flag in a standard review. But Drea had gone deeper. Aldrich's contracting fees over the past eight months showed three payments from a shell entity that traced back, after two layers, to a holding company registered in Reina Cross's territory.She was paying him. Not through the board. Privately.I forwarded it to Kieran with one line: "Drea found the money. It's Reina. Full records attached."His reply came in four minutes: *I'll handle Aldrich directly. Can you have Drea document the payment chain formally before the hearing?*I typed back: *Already in progress.*Then I got up, changed, made coffee, and sat
My Alpha, My Verdict CHAPTER THIRTEEN
KIERAN'S POVWednesday dinner became Thursday dinner became the thing I organized my week around without deciding to.Eli always brought the folder. We always started with the treaty. Somewhere in the middle the folder closed and we talked about other things — the pack, his firm, the gap years between eighteen and now that neither of us had fully mapped for the other yet. We didn't push. We just let the conversation go where it went and stopped when it needed to stop.The cold kept receding.Not gone. Not even close to gone. But Ingrid's Wednesday check-in showed improvement two weeks running and she'd said *good* in the particular tone she used when she meant it, which was different from the tone she used when she was managing expectations.I didn't tell Eli about the check-ins. He knew I was going. He didn't ask for reports and I didn't offer them, which was an unspoken agreement that felt right — this wasn't a medical arrangement, even when it was.Five weeks to the substantive hea
My Alpha, My Verdict CHAPTER TWELVE
ELI'S POVThe preliminary hearing was on a Thursday.Judge Mott's courtroom was the kind of room that had been designed to make people feel the weight of what was happening in it, high ceilings, good acoustics, the particular silence of a space that had absorbed a lot of consequential language over the years. I'd been in it twice before. I knew where the light hit the plaintiff's table and I knew Mott's habit of watching the gallery when she wanted to think without being watched thinking.Drea and I arrived forty minutes early. We set up, we reviewed, we did the quiet pre-hearing ritual we'd developed over three years of working together — she handles the physical documents, I handle the room. I walk it, I find the angles, I figure out where the pressure points are before anyone else arrives.Draven's team came in at twenty minutes before. Four attorneys, which was two more than necessary and therefore a performance. The lead was a man named Harwick — I'd faced him before, two years a
My Alpha, My Verdict CHAPTER ELEVEN
KIERAN'S POVThe place Eli chose was a small restaurant that was mostly a bar after seven, low light, separate tables, the kind of ambient noise that gave conversations privacy without trying. I got there first again. I was starting to think that was just going to be my position in this, arriving early and waiting, which was not something I was used to and which I was choosing to treat as practice.Eli came in at seven exactly. He spotted me without scanning the room, which meant he'd already figured out where I'd sit. He ordered water from the passing server before he'd fully taken his coat off and sat down with the folder he carried the way other people carry phones, constantly, naturally, like an extension."Status memos went in," he said."I know. Mott's clerk confirmed receipt this morning.""Draven filed a counter-request this afternoon. Trying to push the preliminary hearing back two weeks."I hadn't seen that yet. "On what grounds.""Scheduling conflict. It's thin." He opened
My Alpha, My Verdict CHAPTER TEN
ELI'S POVIngrid's office was in a converted brownstone on the edge of pack territory, close enough to be accessible, far enough that human neighbors didn't notice the occasional wolf-related emergency coming through the side entrance. I'd been here once before, years ago, for a mandatory pack health clearance I'd needed to transfer my legal credentials into supernatural jurisdiction. I remembered it as clean and quiet and entirely without warmth.It was still all three of those things.The receptionist showed me in at ten. Kieran was already there, which I hadn't expected. I'd assumed separate appointments.He stood when I came in, which was a reflex he probably didn't notice. Pack-raised Alphas do that. I'd spent years being annoyed by it in courtrooms and deposition rooms and I let it pass now without comment."I didn't know she'd have us both at once," he said."Neither did I."We sat. Not next to each other — the chairs were arranged in a slight arc facing Ingrid's desk and we ea
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