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CHAPTER 22: EYES IN THE DARK
publish date:
2026-08-27 03:25:09
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The Captain's Forbidden Mate CHAPTER 31: A DIFFERENT KIND OF WARNING
LENAI couldn't sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw that picture. My mother standing next to him, young and unafraid.Around two in the morning my phone finally stopped buzzing. A call. Unknown number again.I nearly didn't answer. Then I did."Lena," the voice on the other end was nothing like Cole's. Older. More careful. "This is Elias Thorne. I believe Cole told you about our little meeting in the woods?"My whole body went numb. "How'd you get this number?""I have my ways. I wouldn't waste your time by telling you." A pause. "I'm calling because I think you deserve better information than either pack is giving you. Or rather, you deserved better information before this call." A pause. "That was not me, was it?""No. And that concerns me more than it should." His voice was calm, but I could practically hear the gears shifting beneath the surface. "I've had twenty years to be patient. Whoever called you tonight, they do not have twenty years. You should be concerned
The Captain's Forbidden Mate CHAPTER 30: NOAH’S FIND
COLEWe left the house close to midnight. Lena didn’t say much on the drive back. I didn’t push her.Noah was still up when we got to the apartment, laptop open, surrounded by printouts. He looked up the second we walked in.“I found something,” he said. “About the number that texted Lena.”“You traced it?” I asked.“Not exactly. But I ran the pattern past my cousin. He says it’s not a Ridgeview burner. Not Silverclaw either. It pings off a tower near the old warehouse district downtown. Nobody from either pack has business down there. Hasn’t for years.”“Thorne,” Lena said.“Maybe. Or someone working with him.” Noah turned the laptop around. On the screen was a grainy photo, clearly pulled from an old newspaper archive. A group of people standing outside a building, dated twenty-two years back. “This is the last known photo of the Corwin alliance leadership before the massacre. I found it buried in an old digitized newspaper archive nobody’s looked at in years.”Lena leaned in close.
The Captain's Forbidden Mate CHAPTER 29: THE TRUTH ABOUT THAT NIGHT
LENAWe walked back into the study without knocking.Cole’s father looked up from his desk, surprised. Then he saw our faces and set his pen down slowly.“What happened?" he said.“Someone called me,” I said. “They said Silverclaw had something to do with my parents’ accident. Is that true?”His face didn’t move. That scared me more than if he’d flinched.“Sit down,” he said.“No.” My voice came out steady, which surprised me. “Just tell me. Yes or no.”He looked at Cole, then back at me. Something in him seemed to give up a little.“It’s not a simple yes or no,” he said. “But there’s truth in it. Sit down, Lena. Please. You deserve the real story, not a phone call from a stranger.”I sat. Cole stood behind my chair, one hand on my shoulder.“Your mother came to me eleven years ago,” his father said. “Not for help. For a warning. She’d heard Ridgeview was closing in on her location. She wanted me to know, in case it ever mattered to Silverclaw’s territory claims down the line. That wa
The Captain's Forbidden Mate CHAPTER 28: UNKNOWN NUMBER
COLEI snatched the phone from her hand before her fingers had completely registered what they were seeing, my entire body tensing at the sight of those three innocuous words blinking on the screen."Who is this?" I said out loud, already dialing the number back before either of us had agreed that it was a good idea.It rang twice before the phone was picked up, the voice on the other end unfamiliar, younger than Elias Thorne, and sharper, with an almost amused edge to it as it greeted me."Cole Arden. I was hoping I'd get you instead of her. Saves us both time.""Who are you? What do you know?""I know your father has been lying to you about the shield clause." The voice said. "It's real, technically, buried deep enough in Silverclaw's old code that most modern pack members have never even heard of it. But it doesn't work like he tells her it does. The shield only holds if both parties enter the bond willingly and with full and complete knowledge of every possible consequence. If you
The Captain's Forbidden Mate CHAPTER 27: THE SHIELD AND THE CAGE
LENAI watched Cole process what I'd just told him, his face unreadable, shifting through some mix of relief, because his father's motives weren't as purely mercenary as he'd feared, but beneath that, something darker, that I couldn't yet name."That's not what he told me," Cole said slowly. "He told me it was leverage, a strategy. He told me not to waste it being sentimental.""Maybe both things are true," I murmured, hugging myself against the night air, processing everything his father had told me over the course of the last hour, the history, the warning, and the strange, complicated grief in the old man's face as he spoke of a woman he'd apparently cared greatly about once upon a time and who he'd never told anyone he'd lost. "Maybe it's a matter of leverage and protection, and he just doesn't know how to talk about either without making it sound weak to someone he spends your entire life training to think in terms of strategy rather than sentiment.""That doesn't make it right."
The Captain's Forbidden Mate CHAPTER 26: THE PATRIARCH
COLEI expected my father to oppose me at every turn. I expected him to rail against the delay, against the deadline, against the ceremony, against my unwillingness to coerce Lena into agreeing to this charade willingly. I did not expect him to ask to speak with her in private, and the fact that he'd done so unsettled something deep in my gut as I drove to his house that night.He greeted us at the door himself, which was not surprising in and of itself but was made so by the fact that my father did not greet us at all. Guests at his home were expected to stand in his study until he summoned them, and the sight of him in the front foyer, standing beneath the soft glow of the porch light, his hands clasped loosely at his back, was enough to make my stomach knot itself into a tight, unhappy ball. "Lena," he said, and there was something in his carefully measured tone that had me wincing even before he'd finished speaking. "Thank you for coming. I know you have little reason to believe a
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