LOGINChapter 28
ANNALISAThe Greenwood estate appeared through the car window exactly as I remembered it.I had spent years living within these walls like a ghost.I looked at it now through the glass and felt almost nothing, which was progress.Dominic was beside me, his attention moving over the grounds with the calm assessment of an Alpha arriving in another pack's territory. He did not comment on what he saw. He did not need to.The car slowed as we came through the maiI took Louis from the staff member and I held him. He pressed his face against my shoulder and I felt him breathing in the fast shallow way of someone who was holding something very large very tightly and trying to process it."She's being helped," I said. The words came out because they were the words available. "They're helping her. She's being helped."He didn't say anything but his hands gripped on tightly to my shirt wrinkling it as he refused to look away.I held him and watched the medical teams work and thought about Bianca in a room somewhere in the dark and James Wright unconscious on the pavement and the necklace on the woman they were lifting onto a stretcher, visible at her throat, the dark stone catching the early morning light.---They took them inside.The crowd reorganized itself around the aftermath, the specific second act of a public emergency where the immediate crisis had passed and the commentary began. I heard pieces of it without trying to.Someone said she j
Chapter 46ANNALISA"Yes," Dominic said.Advisor Brenn, who had been quiet until this point, spoke up with the slightly stunned quality of someone who was doing the math in real time. "Overlord of the Crimson Valley, I should say. Forgive me, Alpha Vael, I did not expect—" He stopped and started again with more composure. "We were not aware you were part of the visiting delegation.""I'm here with Dr. Voss," Dominic said. He said it simply, without elaboration, which was the most effective way to say it because the simplicity itself carried the implication that the two facts, him being here and him being with me, were not separate things that required individual explanation but one single thing that explained itself.Councilor Drey looked between us.I could see the question forming and I answered it before it fully arrived."Dominic is my partner," I said.I said it in the tone of someone providing a straightforward piece of information. Not a performance, not a declaration, just a f
Chapter 45ANNALISAI saw him before he saw me.That gave me approximately three seconds to arrange myself, which was enough time to mentally prepare myself. I was walking beside Dominic in the corridor of an estate I had been invited to for legitimate professional reasons and I had nothing to adjust or manage or make presentable because i was not caring for whether my actions would hurt Antonio anymore i cared for Christina's pricky attitude towards me.I was already exactly what I was.Antonio was coming from the direction of the east wing with a small group around him, three men in the formal attire of people who had arrived for official business, advisors or visiting officials of some kind, as they were coming towards us.Then he looked up.Our eyes met for a half second before he adjusted his expression into the controlled version, the one he wore when he was being watched and knew it, where he had to remain professional. His gaze moved briefly to Dominic beside me and then back
Chapter 44ANNALISAThe second day in Greenwood territory started earlier than the first.I was up before six, dressed and at the small desk in our room by half past, going through the notes I had made the previous evening before the corridor had happened and derailed the last part of my night. I had lain awake longer than I wanted to after we got back from the cafeteria, not thinking about Antonio, or trying not to, which amounted to the same thing in practice.What I had landed on, somewhere around two in the morning when the ceiling had stopped offering anything useful, was a decision.Antonio was preparing to mate Christiana.The invitations were out. The date was fixed. The fittings were arranged and the planners were on the grounds and the entire estate was moving with the particular momentum of something that had been decided and was now simply being executed. He had stood in a corridor and said things to me and the ceremony was still happening regardless of what he said to me
Chapter 43CHRISTIANAIt was a small structure set back from a narrow road, unremarkable from the outside, the kind of building that looked like it was simply there and had always been there and saw no reason to explain itself.I got out of the car.The door opened before I knocked.She was older than I had expected, small and contained in the way of something that had compressed itself into a very dense form over a long time. Her eyes were the part that stopped me, they bore into mine,, like they were capable of seeing my soul.I came in.The interior was warm and smelled of things I could not identify individually, layered and complex, not unpleasant but not entirely comfortable either.I told her what I wanted without the preamble of pretending I was there for something else, because I had the sense that preamble would have been insulting to both of us. I needed something that would make a person more compliant. More manageable. Something that would take the edge off resistance wit
CHapter 42CHRISTINAThe sound of it was sharp and clean and the shock on his face afterward was genuine, which meant he had not seen it coming despite everything, which meant he still did not fully understand what three years of patience and positioning and waiting had built in me. He thought that it was only him who had performed sucha huge sacrfice by resigning himself to marry me out of misgplaced priorities, he doesn't know the mockery they make behind my back, about me being a placeholder and unloved, and had chased a broken woman away, only to take her place."Christina......" he started as i shook my head refusing to listen to a word from his mouth, knowing whatever came from his mouth was lies and deceit and i was done hearing them."I can't even look at you right now, Antonio. You disgust me." i spat out in anger as I turned and walked out of his study and down the corridor and into my own quarters and I locked the door behind me.And then I stood in the middle of my room a







