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CHAPTER 183: The Man My Father Remembered

작가: Manie write
last update 게시일: 2026-11-09 04:40:37

Cael's POV

"Ione," I said.

The word came out of me like a breath I had been holding for twenty years. I had not said it aloud since a night in the kitchen when I thought the whole lodge was asleep, and I had not expected to hear it again from a page in my daughter's hand.

Sera sat down on the bench beside me. She did not ask a question. She had learned that from Riven, I think, the art of leaving a silence open until the other person walked into it on his own.

"He was a physician," I said. "Dr.
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  • The Alpha's Hidden Debts   CHAPTER 183: The Man My Father Remembered

    Cael's POV"Ione," I said.The word came out of me like a breath I had been holding for twenty years. I had not said it aloud since a night in the kitchen when I thought the whole lodge was asleep, and I had not expected to hear it again from a page in my daughter's hand.Sera sat down on the bench beside me. She did not ask a question. She had learned that from Riven, I think, the art of leaving a silence open until the other person walked into it on his own."He was a physician," I said. "Dr. Ione Marrow. He kept a practice on the north road, in a stone house with a cellar. The winter your mother and I ran, he hid us there for three months.""Concealed a hybrid male and his wife," Sera said, reading from the page."That was us." I almost smiled. "He told the patrol we were his cousins from the coast. He lied beautifully. He had a way of looking so tired and so honest that nobody ever thought to check.""What happened to him?""They found out. Someone in the village talked." I rubbed

  • The Alpha's Hidden Debts   CHAPTER 182: The Names They Buried

    Sera's POV"Before we begin," said the investigator, "I want you to know you may stop at any time.""I will not need to," I said.She gave me a long look over her spectacles and slid the first folder across the table. Her name was Calder, and she was the calm woman with ink on her cuffs who had sat through Brandt's four-hour confession. We were in a windowless room on the second floor of the council hall, with a single lamp, a pot of tea nobody had touched, and a stack of boxes that smelled of a basement. Wren sat on my left with a notebook open. Two more investigators sat across from us, a thin man named Pruitt and a younger woman who had not yet said anything.Riven had driven me here and then waited in the corridor. He had said he would stand outside the door all day if I asked him to. I had told him to go home and eat something, and he had stayed exactly where he was.I opened the folder.The photograph from the messenger was on top, and I looked at it once more. My old name stood

  • The Alpha's Hidden Debts   CHAPTER 181: The Life After the Hearing

    Sera's POV"Something has ended," I told the ceiling, "and I cannot tell what."Riven's side of the bed was empty again, and the morning light lay across the quilt exactly as it had every other morning. The stone sat warm on the table. The ring was on my finger. Nothing in the room had changed, yet I lay there with the odd, hollow feeling of a person who has carried a heavy bag for so long that she keeps reaching for it after setting it down.The hearing was over. The three Alphas were restricted to their territories, and the inquiry would grind on for months. There were no more doors to kick in and no more lists to read at midnight. I waited for the next emergency to announce itself, and the lodge stayed quiet.I got dressed and went downstairs.The kitchen was full. Mara stood at the stove with her sleeves rolled to the elbow, arguing with a pan of eggs. Cael sat at the long table with a mug of tea, reading a letter he kept folding and unfolding. Dex had his boots propped on a secon

  • The Alpha's Hidden Debts   CHAPTER 180: The Last of Them

    Sera's POVTeague did not answer me.He sat with both hands flat on the table and stared at a spot just past my shoulder, and I watched his mouth open and close twice without a sound. In the end it was Harrow who broke the silence, and he did it badly."This is an ambush," he said, standing so fast that his chair scraped. "The council cannot accept testimony from a man who was declared dead thirty years ago, or from a girl who has a personal grudge.""Sit down, Alpha Harrow," said the hearing officer."I will not be lectured by...""Sit down." She did not raise her voice, and that was what made it land. "I have heard your presentation, and I have heard the witness. I have also heard something I did not expect, which is a man declining to answer a direct question in an open session." She looked at Teague. "Alpha Teague, do you wish to revise your statement?"Teague swallowed. "I wish to speak with counsel.""That is your right," she said, and she wrote something down. "It is also an an

  • The Alpha's Hidden Debts   CHAPTER 179: Cael's Voice

    Sera's POV"I will begin with the room," my father said, "because that is where I have spent most of my life."The hall had gone so quiet that I could hear the scratch of the clerk's pen. Cael stood at the speaker's stand with his hands resting on the wood, and he did not glance at any notes. I had heard him talk about the past before. I had heard it late at night in our rooms, and in Bette's kitchen over cold tea, and in Riven's study with a stack of old records between us. But this was different. He spoke in his full voice, a deep, steady voice I had only heard in pieces, and he did not soften a single word for the people listening."It was twelve feet by nine," he said. "I know because I measured it every morning with my feet. One window, too high to see out of. One door, which opened twice a day. I was in that room for thirty years, and in all that time I was told that my wife was dead and my daughter had never been born."A low sound moved through the benches. The hearing officer

  • The Alpha's Hidden Debts   CHAPTER 178: The Three Alphas

    Riven's POV"They brought better lawyers than Drenn ever did," Dex muttered."Lower your voice," I said."I am whispering.""You are whispering the way other people shout."Dex slumped back in his seat, and Mara, on his other side, pressed two fingers against his sleeve until he went quiet. The regional council hall was full, every bench taken and the aisles lined with standing wolves. I had sat in this room for fifteen years, and I had never seen it so silent. Word had gone out to every pack in the north, and half of them had sent someone to watch.The regional council had scheduled the hearing within the week. I would have preferred a month, but nobody asked me. The three Alphas had demanded a public session, and a public session was what they got.They sat at a long table across the floor from us, with two legal representatives behind them, and they looked exactly like what they were, men who had never once been told no. Alpha Voss, on the right, was broad and gray-bearded, with th

  • The Alpha's Hidden Debts   Chapter 10: The First Crack

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  • The Alpha's Hidden Debts   Chapter 9: What Northesk Runs On

    Sera's PovMy second week at the household desk started the way the first one ended, with Mara handing me a stack of ledgers and saying, "These haven't been touched since spring," in the tone of someone who'd been waiting a long time to say it to someone other than herself.I worked through them at

  • The Alpha's Hidden Debts   Chapter 8: Liora

    Liora's PovIronmoor's dining hall was smaller than the great hall, which I'd been grateful for at first. Fewer eyes. Fewer wolves tracking my every movement like they were waiting to see if I'd do something wrong.I'd been wrong about that too. Fewer eyes just meant the ones that remained looked h

  • The Alpha's Hidden Debts   Chapter 7: The Deal on the Table

    Sera's PovThe knock came mid-morning. Mara opened the door before I could, already halfway through saying something else."Riven wants to see you. His study, second floor, end of the hall." She paused, reading my face the way she seemed to read everything. "It's not bad news.""You don't know that

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