All Chapters of Divorced Heiress Pregnant with the Alpha CEO's Secret : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Nyx came back at dawn.Elara heard the vehicles before she saw them, the low rumble of engines coming up the estate's back road, the one that ran through the tree line and connected to a service entrance that didn't appear on public maps. She was already at the window when the headlights appeared between the trees.She went downstairs.The first thing she noticed was how quiet everyone was.Nyx's team had gone out as four people. They came back as four people plus eleven survivors from Ashford Creek, which meant the extraction had worked, which meant she should have felt relief. She did feel it, a thin, immediate flash of it when she counted the figures climbing out of the vehicles.Then she looked closer and the relief became something else entirely.The eleven survivors were in bad shape. Not just tired, not just shaken. The kind of bad shape that had a specific quality to it, the particular stillness of people whose bodies had been through something that their minds were still proc

The first death threat arrived the morning after the press conference.It came through the Sterling-Moonborne Industries public contact form, which meant whoever sent it either didn't know how to be subtle or didn't care. The message was short and ugly and specific in the way that separated it from the general noise of angry people saying angry things online. It named her children.Petra flagged it within minutes and forwarded it to Nyx without showing Elara first. Nyx showed Elara anyway because Nyx understood that keeping information from Elara to protect her was both ineffective and disrespectful.Elara read it once. Set her phone face down on the desk. Picked it up again and forwarded it to Okafor with a single line: This is what your government's denial created.Then she went to breakfast because her children were waiting and they didn't know anything was wrong and she intended to keep it that way for as long as possible.By the end of the second day after the press conference th

The Moonborne estate sat on forty acres of land outside the city, tucked behind a tree line thick enough to make the highway invisible from the main house. It was older than the Blackwood estate, less polished, built from dark stone that had absorbed two centuries of weather and come out looking more permanent for it. The grounds had the particular wildness of land that had been deliberately left alone, grass that grew long at the edges, trees that had not been shaped or trimmed into submission.Elara had not been here before.But the moment she stepped out of the car she felt something she recognized. The land had a pull to it. A deep, settled quality that her wolf registered before her conscious mind did, the specific feeling of old pack territory that had been held and protected for a very long time.Lyanna Moonborne was waiting on the front steps.Elara knew her biological history now. She had known it since the summit, when the DNA evidence Nyx had compiled was presented before t

The announcement went out on a Wednesday.Not a press conference this time. A simple statement, clean and direct, released simultaneously through Sterling-Moonborne's official channels and the contact networks of every species representative who had attended the summit. Two paragraphs describing the institute, its purpose, its location, its governing structure. A third paragraph listing the initial research focus. A fourth paragraph with Elara's name and Sera Nakamura's name side by side as co-founding directors.No dramatic staging. No cameras pointed at a podium. Just information, released into the world and left to be what it was.The response was immediate and loud and, for the first time in weeks, not primarily frightening.The research wing of the Moonborne estate had required three weeks of work before it was usable.Lyanna's description of the bones being good had been accurate and her description of the infrastructure being old had been an understatement. The plumbing in the

The attacks happened at 11:47 pm on a Friday.Not one attack. Five. Coordinated across three cities and two states, timed to land within minutes of each other, clearly planned by people who understood that the response to a single incident could be managed but the response to five simultaneous ones would fracture into chaos and leave every target exposed in the window before anyone understood the full picture.Elara learned about it the way she learned about most things that happened after ten pm. Her phone, buzzing on the nightstand, pulling her from the shallow sleep she had been managing lately. Nyx's name on the screen.She answered.Nyx's voice was controlled in the way it was when things were very bad and control was the only tool available."There have been coordinated attacks tonight on peace advocates. Human and supernatural. I need you to stay exactly where you are and not move until I tell you otherwise."Elara sat up. "Who was hit.""James Okafor's residence. His security