All Chapters of Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore: Chapter 141 - Chapter 149

Chapter 141KLAUSLucian needed to tell Bianca about the call with Matthew before she found out from any other direction. She was already planning to go to Silver Moon territory. She was already, I suspected, further along in her decision-making than she'd been willing to say to Lucian on the phone earlier today. If she arrived at that assembly operating on information that didn't include this conversation, if she made decisions based on an incomplete understanding of what groundwork had been laid—My phone buzzed. Elijah.*Lockwood's movements for the past six hours tracked. He left BloodMoon City at fourteen hundred, driving toward Silver Moon territory. Took secondary roads rather than the main route. Arrived at a location seventeen kilometers outside Silver Moon pack boundary approximately two hours ago. Currently stationary.*I read the message twice.Thorne had left the city before I'd even made the call to Matthew. Had been positioning himself in Silver Moon territory for hours

Chapter 143KLAUS"Yes. The full information needs to come from someone he has reason to trust and context to understand. Klaus Blackwood from BloodMoon City is—" I paused. "He has no reason to trust me beyond the fact that I have resources and I called. That's not enough for what he actually needs to know." "Tell me what you know about the preparation work Voss is doing. Specifically what she's building, what it will look like from a magical signature standpoint, and what I'd need to do to counteract it."This was what I'd hoped for and expected. Bianca operating as the resource she was—not as the object of everyone's protective instincts but as the person best equipped to address the specific problem at hand.I pulled up Roy's documentation and began walking her through it.We worked for ninety minutes, until Lucian appeared in the doorway looking like a man who'd also not slept, followed shortly by Elijah and Mikael and Roy in various states of early-morning functionality.By five

Chapter 145BIANCAThe three children sat in their corner of the playground, surrounded by books and dinosaurs, entirely unconcerned with the running and shouting happening around them. The girl had opened one of her books and was reading something aloud—I could tell from the way Theo was listening, head slightly tilted, the posture of someone taking in information. The boy had his book open on the ground in front of all three of them, something with photographs, something they could all look at together.Theo laughed.It was quiet from here—I couldn't hear it through the windows and the distance—but I could see it. The way his shoulders moved, the way his face changed, the brief flash of that grin that was almost his old grin.My eyes burned.He was okay. He was going to be okay. Not perfectly, not without cost, not without the shape of loss remaining in him for a very long time. But he had friends who sat in his corner. He had dino

Chapter 147MATTHEWTheo turned from the window and looked at me directly, and I was struck, as I was regularly struck, by how much of Bianca was in his face. It was almost as if Bianca never left."She said that sometimes I would find things that reminded me of Mama very deeply and it was something to not be afraid or sad about. She also told me that it could come in any shape. Like a familiar smell or a color or someone's voice, or someone who looked like her from far away. And she said that it didn't mean I was having a breakdown, and it didn't mean I was confused about what was real. It meant my heart still knew Mama's shape, and when it found something that matched that shape even a little bit, it noticed." He paused. "She said instead of being scared when that happened, I could acknowledge it. I could say, I notice this, and it makes me think of Mama, and that's because I loved her and she loved me." Another pause, as he was playing with his fingers before he added in a much sm

Chapter 149MATTHEW"I understand," Callahan said. "Children notice more than adults account for. I've worked around children in threat contexts before. The secret about doing this kind of thing in a way that seems mundane and not out of the sudden, so people do not register that something has changed—you don't try to be invisible, you try to be unremarkable. You give them something ordinary to notice so they have no reason to look for what's underneath it.""Explain that.""If I position myself as a man who is simply present in the school pickup area, in the library, at the park—someone who is always doing something ordinary when visible—the child will register me as background. Part of the unremarkable environment. If I try to hide entirely, children are often precisely the ones who notice the absence of something that should be there." He paused. "I'd recommend that I would be using a  cover identity that places me in hi