Chapter Ten : Gerald

                    Gerald Steele

"Remarkable turnout," the man beside me said. Councillor Aldric, seventy-one years old, pack elder, looking like a man who had been in every important room for so long that people forgot to question his presence. "Richard was well loved."

"He was," I confirmed. "He made it easy to love him."

Aldric nodded slowly, reading the room the carefully, with the patience of someone who understood that gatherings like this one were never really about the person being buried.

"And the family," he continued. "How are you holding up, Gerald?" We hold," I said simply. "That's what this family does.

He squeezed my arm once and moved away toward the food table. I watched him go and then I turned back to the room.

The gathering was thinning at the edges now, guests beginning the slow drift toward goodbyes and cars. I moved through what remained of it comfortably, stopping here and there, saying the right things in the right register. 

And yes, this was not a performance for me the way it was for most people. I genuinely enjoyed these rooms. You could learn more about the architecture of a family in two hours at a post-burial gathering than in two years of formal meetings. Grief loosened people. It made them careless about what they revealed.

I stopped near the window and picked up a fresh glass of water from a passing tray.

Richard.

My brother had been sixty-four years old when he died and he had spent the majority of those years being, in my honest assessment, entirely too good for his own interests. Not weak, I would not say weak. Richard had a kind of quiet stubbornness that could surprise you. But he was sentimental in ways that cost him, repeatedly, and he never seemed to learn from the cost. The woman was the clearest example.

Helena Voss… Sophie's mother. Richard had met her at some charity function twenty-five years ago and decided, for reasons I never fully understood, that she was worth bringing into this family. She came with a daughter. A quiet girl with dark eyes who had no bloodline, no pack standing, no claim to anything the Steele name represented.

Richard gave her a room in the east wing. He bought her birthday presents. He treated her like she belonged.

I told him once, directly, that it was a mistake.

"She's a child, Gerald," he said. "She needs stability."

"She needs to be somewhere appropriate for what she is," I answered. "Which is not here."

Richard looked at me the way he always looked at me when I said things he found uncomfortable, like he was genuinely puzzled by the way my mind worked, like I was a language he had been trying to learn for fifty years and kept failing at.

"I think we have different definitions of appropriate," he responded. And that was the end of it.

I did not raise it again. Richard was Richard and arguing with him about sentiment was like arguing with when next it'll rain. .

But I watched.

I watched the quiet girl grow up in the east wing, claiming the bathroom no one used, sitting in corners of rooms that weren't hers. I watched Dominic notice her just with the usual way young Alphas notice things they have been told not to want, which is to say urgently and without good judgment.

And when the bond activated I knew within forty-eight hours. Mrs. Harrow was thorough.

I moved quickly, I didn't move because I hated the girl. I want to be clear about that, at least to myself. I did not act out of cruelty. I acted because an Alpha bonded to an outsider with no standing and no bloodline is an Alpha whose authority will always be questioned by the traditionalist half of the pack council. I had spent fifteen years building relationships on that council. I was not going to watch them destabilise because my nephew couldn't manage a physical attraction.

The call with Dominic had gone exactly as planned. He said what I needed him to say. I considered the matter handled.

The girl left within a week. I did not arrange that. She arranged it herself, which I took as evidence that she understood the situation better than I had given her credit for.

I put it away and moved on.

Seven years.

And then her name appeared on the funeral guest list.

Mrs. Harrow had flagged it the same day. I told her to look deeper, pull whatever she could from old records and current sources. She came back to me within twenty-four hours.

A child…six years old. A boy with grey eyes.

I stood in my office when she told me and I did not say anything for a long moment.

A son.

Dominic had a son he did not know about, which meant the bond had gone further than I understood before I intervened, which meant the situation I had considered handled for seven years was not handled at all. It was simply waiting.

I told Mrs. Harrow to send the message.

And my intention was not to harm the girl. I want to be clear about that also. The message was a nudge. A rational nudge toward a rational decision. She was a grown woman with a life somewhere else. The sensible thing was to attend the burial and go back to that life and let this particular chapter stay closed.

I thought she would. I assessed her as practical.

I was now revising that assessment.

I found her across the room without difficulty. She was standing near the far wall, her face composed, her posture controlled. She had just finished speaking with Vivienne, which I noted with mild irritation. I had not anticipated Vivienne choosing a side this quickly. Vivienne was usually more patient about these things.

Sophie looked exactly as Mrs. Harrow had described from yesterday's reception. Contained and so watchful. She was far different from the nineteen-year-old I had categorised and dismissed.

This was a different version of that girl.

She had built something of herself in seven years, that much was visible simply in how she stood. Women who had struggled and survived stood differently from women who had simply been comfortable. I knew the difference…

It made her more of a problem, not less.

"Gerald."

My voice called me within me. I contemplated a little. Then returned back to focused. And when I turned back, Sophie was gone from the wall.

I scanned the room once, and found her near the door to the hallway. She had her phone to her ear and her back was partly turned. Her free hand was pressed flat against the wall beside her.

Whatever she was hearing, it was not comfortable.

I watched her shoulders. The way they pulled in slightly, the way her head dropped a fraction. Something in the call was landing hard.

Good.

I turned away before she could feel my eyes on her.

I found a quiet corner near the side table and stood with my water and thought about the next steps clearly. The message had not moved her out. That was a setback, not a failure. There were other tools. The council was one. Aldric was manageable. The question of an heir born outside formal bonded union was a legitimate procedural matter and I could raise it legitimately, which was always preferable to back channels when the back channel had already failed once.

Dominic was the variable I respected most. He was sharp and he was fast and he did not show his hand until he played it. I had watched him operate for ten years. He was better than Richard at almost everything except one thing.

He felt too much. He hid it well, but it was there.

And Sophie was the direct line to everything he felt.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I drew it out and read the screen.

“Confirmed… She hasn't left yet.”

I put the phone away.

I picked up a glass of wine from the tray of a passing staff member, turned back to the room, and found Dominic standing twenty feet away looking directly at me.

He raised his glass slightly.

I raised mine.

And in the half second that we looked at each other across that room, with Richard freshly in the ground between us and Sophie somewhere behind me on a phone call that was clearly going badly, I understood something I had perhaps underestimated until this moment.

Dominic already knew it was me.