LOGINChapter 96I didn't move my things dramatically.That wasn't how either of us operated. There was no announcement, no formal moment, no gathering of staff to explain the change. Matthias told Marta on a Tuesday morning that the upper west guest room was being converted to permanent use and that Ms. Lennox would be relocating from the campus dormitory by the end of the week.Marta looked at him for exactly one second.Then she said, "I'll have the wardrobe cleared by Thursday."That was that.*******I told the university housing office I was moving off campus for personal reasons. Filled out the form. Paid the early release fee from the money I'd saved from my estate shifts. Arranged a car for Friday morning.Elena was in the room when I started packing.She sat on her bed with her knees pulled up and watched me fold clothes into a bag with the expression of someone who had been waiting for a conversation to arrive and was now watching it walk through the door."So," she said."So," I
Chapter 95The ruling came on the sixth day.Not through a courier this time. Through the Council's official digital channel, which meant they'd decided the weight of the envelope wasn't necessary anymore. The decision had been made and they were done performing around it.Dante brought it to Matthias's office at nine in the morning. Set his tablet on the desk with the document already open.Matthias read it standing up.I watched his face. The controlled version of him was fully present, giving nothing away in the surface of it. But I knew how to read the places he didn't show things now. The slight tightening at the corner of his jaw. The one breath that came out slightly slower than the ones before it.He set the tablet down and looked at me."Tell me," I said."The panel finds the relationship inappropriate given the employment context," he said. "Formal reprimand. Entered into the Council record." He paused. "I'm required to acknowledge the reprimand in writing within forty-eight
Chapter 94The Council chamber was built to make people feel small.That was the point of it. High ceilings. Stone walls. A raised panel platform that required everyone below it to look up. The lighting was cold and institutional and fell on the floor in front of the panel table in a way that left the people standing in it slightly exposed. Slightly lit from above like specimens.Whoever designed this room had understood power.Matthias stood in the lit space like he hadn't noticed any of it.I stood beside him and kept my hands folded in front of me and my face entirely neutral and looked at the five people behind the raised table.Five panel members. Three I didn't recognise. Two I did.Varen on the left. Silver-haired, precise, the particular stillness of a man who had been in rooms like this his entire career and felt entirely at home in them. He had a folder open in front of him that he wasn't looking at because he already knew everything in it.Solke beside him. Heavier. Older.
Chapter 93The estate was quiet by ten.The kind of quiet that settled in when everything that could be done had been done and what remained was just the waiting. Dante had gone to his quarters two hours ago after confirming the documentation was complete and the legal counsel Marcus had recommended was briefed and ready. The security team had their positions. The car was arranged for seven AM.Everything was in place.Which left Matthias and me alone in his sitting room with a fire that had burned down to embers and the hearing twelve hours away.He was in the chair nearest the window. Not reading. Not on his phone. Just sitting with a glass of whiskey he'd barely touched and his eyes on the middle distance the way he looked when he was thinking through something he'd already decided.I was on the sofa across from him.Neither of us had said anything for ten minutes.He broke the silence first."We could end it," he said.I looked at him."Before tomorrow," he said. "Walk away from t
Chapter 92The document arrived on a Thursday morning.Formal envelope. Council seal in dark wax. Delivered by hand through official channels to the estate's front entrance, which was itself a statement. The Council didn't send couriers to Matthias Ashford's door. They used digital channels and secure messaging systems like everyone else.Hand delivery meant they wanted the weight of it felt.Dante brought it to Matthias's office without opening it. Set it on the desk and stood back with the particular stillness of someone who already knew the shape of what was inside from the quality of the envelope alone.Matthias opened it.Read it once. Set it down.Then looked at Dante."Get Aria," he said.I read it standing at his desk while both of them watched.The language was formal and dense in the way Council documents always were. Constructed to sound procedural and neutral while being neither. But the substance was clear enough underneath the careful phrasing.Matthias Ashford, Alpha of
Chapter 91I didn't go to Matthias immediately.I went to my room first. Sat on the edge of the bed with my hands in my lap and gave myself ten minutes to think before I took it to anyone else.Two men.That was the thing I needed to sit with. The specific distinction that Victoria had handed me without fully understanding what she was handing over.Cassius Blackthorn had been searching for me for twenty years. He had built legal frameworks and financial infrastructure and an operation that had reached inside this estate and used real people as tools and caused real damage. He wanted the founding bloodline heir. He wanted what he considered his by right of old law and patient work. He had a claim and he intended to collect on it.Dorian Voss had been searching for me too. Differently. Quietly. Through a single private channel fifteen years ago, asking one question, is she safe. and then pulling back into silence when the answer was yes. Not pursuing. Not building infrastructure. Just







