Alle Kapitel von The Rejected Plump Mate Was Pregnant : Kapitel 111 – Kapitel 120

Alaric's POV I was in the kitchen going over the evidence files when I heard Raven's voice from upstairs. It was not a normal voice. It was the kind of voice that makes you push your chair back before your brain has fully caught up. I was at the bottom of the stairs before she finished the sentence. "The baby," she said from the top of the stairs. "He's not in his room." I went past her and into the small room off the hallway. The crib was empty and the blanket was gone. The back door was slightly open and I stood there for exactly two seconds before I turned and said, "Stay here." I went out the back and across the field. I called the lead warrior on the perimeter and reported what had happened. He started moving immediately and I kept walking fast across the field, pulling up the tracking application my father's security team had installed on the device I carried. This was because three weeks ago, I had put a small tracker in the lining of the baby's primary blanket. The thick

Alaric's POV The fight had not started yet, and already the hall felt different from when we walked in. This was because the evidence presentation had done something to the room that no amount of ceremony preparation could undo. I could feel it in the way people were standing and the way nobody was talking. I stood in the center of the cleared space and watched Dante roll his sleeves up. I used that time to breathe steadily and settle into myself because going into a fight with anything other than a clear head was the fastest way to lose it. Before Dante could move toward me, the Valkhor Alpha held up a hand and said, "Before this proceeds, I want the record to reflect the full extent of the charges being made so that whatever happens in this fight takes place with complete transparency." He looked at Lord Thorne, and he stood and addressed the hall directly. "Jake Bramwell," he said. "You are formally charged with fabricating council evidence, bribing pack warriors, coercing a

Raven's POV The hall was still buzzing when the warriors took Dante out. I stood there watching the doors close behind him and felt something settle in my chest that had not been settled in a long time. Lord Thorne was speaking with the Valkhor Alpha on the platform and the crowd was breaking into smaller groups. Everyone was talking at once, and I just stood in the middle of it all, holding my son, letting the noise wash around me without trying to follow any particular thread. Alaric came to stand beside me. I looked at his leg and said, "How does it feel?" "Better than twenty minutes ago," he said. "That is not a real answer," I said. "It's sore but it's fine," he said. "Luella knew what she was doing." I looked toward the side entrance where Luella had walked out with the warrior behind her, and I said, "I need to go after her." Alaric looked at me. "Are you sure?" "Yes," I said. I passed the baby to him carefully and he took him. I went toward the side entrance and the w

Alaric's POV I got the message from my father's contact on a Wednesday morning while Raven was feeding Cael. It said the council had opened a formal investigation into Gilma Ebonis and that my testimony would be requested within the week. I put my phone down and told Raven. She looked up from Cael and said, "About time." "You're not surprised?" I said. "Gilma spent years pushing Luella into everything that happened," she said. "She helped her slip the pack arrest too, so no, I am not surprised at all." I went to the council building two days later and gave my testimony to a panel of three members. I told them everything I knew about Gilma's role, the visit to Luella while she was under pack arrest, the contact that helped Luella get out of the house on the night she took Cael and the years of documented pressure on her daughter, which the psychiatric ward's intake assessment had already flagged as a contributing factor to Luella's condition. The panel asked clear questions and I

Alaric's POV Jake's sentencing was three days after Dante's. I went alone because I did not want Raven sitting through another council hearing so soon after the last one. She did not argue with me about it which told me she was more drained from Dante's trial than she was letting on. I got to the council hall early and took a seat in the witness section. The chamber filled up slowly around me. When Jake was brought in, he looked different from the last time I had seen him in the pack hall during the ceremony, not different in a way that suggested anything had humbled him, just different in the way that people look when they have spent weeks in a holding facility with nothing to plan and no one to maneuver around. That kind of stillness has gotten into them whether they wanted it to or not. He sat at the front with his legal representative. He did not look around the room the way Dante had and he did not look at me at all, he just stared into the middle distance like he was alread