Chapter 141

The third day of Killian’s recovery began with him awake before me, which I discovered when I opened my eyes and found him sitting up against the headboard with his tablet in his hands and the particular expression of someone who had decided that the night’s sleep had been sufficient rest and was now prepared to return to the world.“No,” I said, before he spoke.He looked at me. “I have not said anything yet.”“You were about to tell me you feel significantly better and that you would like to attend the morning briefing,” I said, sitting up and pushing my hair back. “The answer is no.”“The briefing covers the post-summit intelligence review,” he said. “There are elements of the review that directly concern the Beta’s responsibilities for pack security going forward.”“Tyler sent me the briefing agenda last night,” I said. “I am covering your responsibilities until Rose clears you. Tyler is aware and has confirmed the arrangement.”He looked at me with the expression of a man who had

Chapter 142

My father called the morning of the fourth day of Killian’s recovery and asked if he and Lydia could come to the pack house.Not neutral ground. Not the coffee shop where we had met in the early months of my integration. Not the park where he had sat across from me with cold tea between us while I explained what I was and what my life had become. The pack house itself, which was the place I lived and worked and had built everything the past year had built, and which he had not yet agreed to enter.I said yes before he finished asking.They arrived at midmorning, and I met them at the pack house entrance and the first thing I noticed was that my stepmother came through the door with the ease of someone returning to a familiar space rather than entering a new one, her coat already being removed before she had fully crossed the threshold, and that my father came through the same door two steps behind her with the careful attentiveness of someone who had been preparing for this in a way t

Chapter 143

My parents left at four in the afternoon, and I walked them to the pack house entrance and stood in the doorway while Lydia organized their coats with the efficient care she brought to practical things, and my father turned to me before they went down the steps and looked at me for a moment with the expression he had been wearing in smaller versions throughout the visit, the careful open expression of a man who was still building something but was further along in the building than he had been that morning.“Next time,” he said, “you do not need to introduce us to everyone. We can find our own way around a little.”I looked at him and the thing his words contained reached me in the place it was intended to reach. “Next time,” I said.He nodded once and went down the steps, and Lydia squeezed my hand at the door and followed him, and I stood and watched the car until it had turned through the pack house gates and was gone, and then I went back inside and down the corridor to the sittin

Chapter 144

Selene sent a message through the pack’s internal communication system on the morning of the fifth day, asking if I was available for a private meeting that afternoon.I read the message twice before I responded to it, and what I was reading for was not the words, which were simple and direct, but the register underneath them, because register carried information that words were designed to conceal when concealment was the intention, and what I read in those two sentences was something that was not the register of the previous private meeting requests.The training room conversation had carried the register of a challenge, the contained aggression of someone who had decided that direct confrontation was the tool the situation required. The procedural queries had carried the register of a campaign, the careful administrative language of someone working through channels to accomplish something they could not accomplish directly. This message carried neither of those things. It was plain

All Chapters of Mated To My Beta Stepbrother: Chapter 141 - Chapter 144

Chapter 141

Chapter 142

Chapter 143

Chapter 144