Semua Bab The Alpha's Regret: His Secret Hybrid Heir: Bab 51 - Bab 60

The photo was small—grainy, the way facility shots always were, like whoever took them was working fast and praying their hands would stop shaking long enough to get something usable.Dr. Aris held it closer to the lamp.Garrett watched him. He'd been watching him for the past three minutes, waiting for the moment the old man's composure slipped. It was taking longer than expected."Aris.""Give me a second.""You've had six seconds.""Garrett." The doctor's voice was quiet. Final. The kind of tone that killed whatever you were about to say next.Garrett shut up.Aris set the photo down on the desk between them. His hand didn't shake, which Garrett found almost unsettling. The man was seventy-something, had been a field medic during two territorial wars, and had once reset his own dislocated shoulder mid-surgery because the other doctor had passed out. Steady hands were basically his personality.But his face—"His name is Colm Reyes," Aris said. "He was a geneticist. One of the best t

Dane checked his watch.Not because he needed to know the time. Because it was the kind of gesture that said I'm giving you sixty seconds and I want you to feel every single one of them."The Blood-Hound's signal constitutes probable cause under Emergency Statute 7, Article 4," he said. His voice had dropped the conversational quality entirely. This was his working voice. Flat. Practiced. "Territorial sovereignty is suspended in the presence of confirmed Silver lineage. You have sixty seconds to step aside, Alpha Blackwood, before I add obstruction and high treason to your evening."Xander looked at him."Sixty seconds," he said."Fifty-seven now.""Right." Xander tucked his hands into his pockets. "I'm going to need you to explain something to me."Dane blinked. Just once. "I'm not here to explain—""The Blood-Hound howled. That's the signal, correct? That's your probable cause." Xander tilted his head slightly. "But a howl isn't a blood test. A howl is an animal reacting to a scent.

The decision took about four minutes.That was how long Xander and Elena stood in the corridor outside Lena's room, speaking in low voices while Garrett waited at the end of the hall with the particular patience of someone who already knew what the answer was going to be and was just giving them the space to arrive at it themselves."If the Silent Sisters are moving tonight—" Elena started."We don't know it's tonight.""Sarah sent that message twenty minutes ago, which means she sent it the moment she knew. Which means she didn't have much lead time." Elena kept her voice level. "We stay, we're gambling on how fast they move. We go now, we control the window."Xander looked at the closed door. "Maya's asleep.""I know.""She just got there.""I know, Xander." Elena met his eyes. "I know."He was quiet for a moment. Not hesitating — processing. There was a difference. She'd learned that about him."Garrett," he said, without raising his voice.Garrett was already walking toward them. "

Sarah moved fast for someone who'd been living in a tunnel for three days.She had the schematic half-folded in one hand and a flashlight in the other, and she took the secondary passage without slowing down to explain it, which meant everyone else had to decide in about half a second whether they trusted her enough to follow.They followed.The secondary tunnel was narrower — shoulder-width in some sections, the ceiling low enough that Xander had to tilt his head forward to clear it. The floor was uneven, old stone worn into shallow dips by water that had long since rerouted somewhere else. It smelled damper in here. Older."How far?" Xander said."Far enough," Sarah said."That's not a number.""No, it isn't."Behind them, from the main chamber they'd just vacated, came a sound that wasn't quite a sound. More like the memory of sound — the steel door continuing its slow dissolution, the particular quiet of something being unmade at a frequency most of them could feel in their back te

The trapdoor opened into darkness, and then Sarah got her flashlight through the gap, and the darkness turned into something else entirely.Stone floor. High ceiling. The particular quality of cold air that had been undisturbed for a very long time. And statues — rows of them along the walls, carved from pale stone, each one a woman in varying degrees of erosion. Some had faces. Some had lost them to time and damp and whatever else happened to stone that got left alone for decades."Old Silver sanctuary," Sarah said, climbing through and reaching back for Lena's hand. "Pre-Council. There are maybe twelve of these still intact across the region. Most people don't know they exist.""Most people don't need to," Garrett said, following her up.Elena came through last, and Xander caught her elbow on the other side because her legs were still doing the thing where they technically worked but weren't fully committed to the project. She didn't argue about it. She stood for a moment, hand on th