All Chapters of Accidentally, I Slept With Lycan King!: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The investigation moved faster than Tyson anticipated.He found out through Marcus, who had heard it from someone on the council's administrative staff, who had been told in confidence by someone who should have known better than to say anything at all. By the time the information reached Tyson, it had passed through enough hands that the edges were blurred, but the core of it was clear enough: Vexeon had called a formal session, evidence had been presented, and Tyson's name had been said aloud in the council chamber not as a rumor but as a subject of inquiry.He sat in his apartment that evening, lights off, thinking.He had known this was a possibility. He had built his plan specifically to avoid this outcome — enough distance between himself and each individual action that nothing could be proven, enough intermediaries that any chain of evidence would break before it reached him. But Damien had been faster and more thorough than Tyson had calculated for, and Vexeon had moved on it

Vexeon arrived at the estate on a Tuesday morning, without calling ahead.Layla answered the gate with the expression of someone who has rehearsed remaining calm for exactly this kind of situation, and sent one of the staff to find Damien, who came down the stairs already knowing from the particular way Layla had knocked that whatever waited downstairs was going to require his full attention.He found Vexeon in the front hallway, because Layla was too composed to leave someone like Vexeon outside but too sensible to put him anywhere more comfortable until Damien arrived. The two men looked at each other across the marble floor, in the full light of morning, with no crisis to absorb the sharp edges of the moment."I should have called," Vexeon said. "I didn't.""I noticed." Damien gestured toward the sitting room. "Come in."They sat. Layla appeared with coffee, distributed it with unnerving efficiency, and disappeared again before anyone could ask her to leave."The inquiry against Ty

Giselle's mother came on a Sunday, without calling ahead.Giselle was in the kitchen with Layla, learning to make something with cardamom that she had no practical need for but was finding unexpectedly calming — the measuring, the stirring, the simple reliability of ingredients that did what they were supposed to do — when one of Damien's staff appeared in the doorway and said there was a woman at the gate who would not give her name but had asked, very quietly, if her daughter was home.Giselle went still with her hands still dusted with flour."Go," Layla said, without ceremony, already reaching over to turn the stove off.Mia Primrose stood at the iron gate in the grey wool coat she always wore when she was nervous and wanted to look steadier than she felt, twisting the strap of her bag in slow, unconscious circles. She looked smaller than Giselle remembered, or maybe Giselle had grown into herself in ways that changed the scale of things around her. The shadows under her mother's

Tyson received his formal hearing notice on a Wednesday.He sat at his kitchen table and read it twice, looking for the exact shape of what they had on him — coercion of a witness, interference with a person under pack protection, circumstantial connection to the campus incident through the holding company. They didn't have enough for the campus abduction. Not directly. But the coercion charge through Reverie was solid, and Tyson was experienced enough with pack legal proceedings to know that solid was usually enough.Marcus was gone. Three hired men had scattered. Reverie had turned. Aiden had already cooperated with the council. Tiffany had cooperated more reluctantly but completely.He had, Tyson reflected, built something very intricate and watched it disassemble itself piece by piece, each part that was supposed to protect him becoming instead a thread that led back to him.He thought about his brother, who had warned him once that the difference between a long game and a losing

Layla found her in the library the next morning, which had become one of Giselle's regular places in the way that spaces become yours gradually, through repeated occupation rather than formal claim."He didn't sleep," Layla said, setting a tray down on the reading table with the decisive quality of someone delivering evidence. "He was in his study until four. I know because I checked.""He works too much," Giselle said."He has always worked too much," Layla agreed, settling into the chair across from her with the ease of someone who had long since decided that the formal boundaries between staff and household didn't apply to her in private. "But it's gotten worse lately. He's managing too many things at once — the hearing, the border agreements, the southern packs watching and asking questions, and—" She paused, with the deliberate precision of someone who has decided to say a thing they've been weighing. "And you.""I'm not his responsibility to manage.""No," Layla said. "That's ra