Todos los capítulos de THE ALPHA’S QUIET TEMPTATION : Capítulo 121 - Capítulo 130

LUCAS’S POVThe council meeting had been scheduled for two hours and was running into its third.I sat at the head of the table and looked at the assembled faces and exercised the patience that the position required, which was considerable and which I had been exercising for long enough that I could do it without it showing.“The pack has not celebrated a full moon festival in four years,” the senior council member was saying. He was a man who had been making arguments in this room for longer than most of the other men at the table had held their positions, and he made them with the practiced confidence of someone who had learned that repetition and volume were reliable substitutes for novelty. “The morale implications alone justify a full celebration. People need this.”“People need functional infrastructure and consistent leadership,” I said. “Those things do not require three days of organized festivity.”“With respect, my lord, they require both.” He looked at the table with the e

LIORA’S POVThey sent me out of my own room.The royal physician arrived within minutes of Byron’s summons, which told me something about the speed at which certain instructions moved through this palace when the right person gave them, and he looked at Myra and then looked at me with the professional assessment of someone determining who in the room required management first.“Wait outside,” he said.“I’ll stay…”“You’ll wait outside.” His voice was not unkind. It had the specific quality of a request that was going to become a requirement if the request was not honored. “I need the space and I need to work without someone I’m also worried about standing in my peripheral vision.”I looked at Myra.“Go,” he said. “I will come to you when I know what I’m dealing with.”I went into the corridor.Byron was already there. He had positioned himself against the wall with the settled patience of someone who had been outside many doors over the course of a career and had made his peace with i

LIORA’S POVThree hours before the festival.Elora came into my room without knocking.She looked at Myra on the pallet and then at me and then she held out a folded piece of fabric.“You’re dancing tonight,” she said.I looked at the fabric. “No.”“It wasn’t a question.”“I understand that. My answer is still no.” I turned back to Myra. “I’m spending the evening here. Myra needs..”“Myra needs a keeper who is in a position to keep her.” Elora set the fabric on the table with the precise placement of someone who had decided the item was already accepted. “Which requires you to not be in a position where I can arrange for her care to become considerably worse than it was three days ago.”I turned around fully.Elora looked at me with the composed expression of someone who had made a calculation before entering the room and was confident in the result.“You wouldn’t,” I said.“You’ve been in this palace long enough to know whether that sentence is accurate.”I looked at her. At the spec

LIORA’S POVThe walk back to my chambers felt longer than it should have. My legs carried me forward but my mind stayed behind, stuck on the moment I couldn't explain, turning it over and over like a stone I kept hoping would look different the next time I picked it up.It didn't. It just cut deeper.I pushed through my door and the warmth of the room hit me strange, too bright, too normal, like nothing had happened at all. But something had happened. I knew it in my chest, in the place where my wolf lived even though she never answered me, in the tightness that hadn't loosened since I'd woken from that dream three nights ago.The dream. I kept circling back to it, trying to convince myself it meant nothing. A coincidence. Just a trick of a tired mind. But coincidences didn't leave marks like this one had."There you are," Sena said, already crossing the room with a bundle of silk draped over her arm. "We were starting to worry. Come, sit, there's so much to go over before tonight."P

LIORA’S POV"A game," Darren repeated, testing the word like he wasn't sure he trusted it. "What kind of game do you have in mind?"I let my fingers twist together in my lap, the picture of nerves I wanted him to see. "Something silly. My father used to play it with me when I was small, before he died. You guess a number I'm thinking of, and whoever loses drinks."It wasn't true. I didn't remember my father well enough to know if he'd ever played anything with me. But Darren didn't need to know that.He laughed, the sound loose now, edges softened by the wine already in him. "That's a child's game.""Then it should be easy for you," I said, tilting my head, letting a smile touch my mouth. "Unless you're afraid you'll lose."That did it, the way I knew it would. Men like Darren couldn't stand the suggestion that something might beat them, especially not something as small as a number between one and ten.We played. I guessed wrong every time, or claimed to, watching him toss back anoth