All Chapters of The Alpha’s Unwanted Mate: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

Cassandra's POV"You are doing it again," I said, not looking up from the map on the desk because I had learned that looking up gave him too much to work with."Doing what," Sebastian said, from directly behind me, close enough that I could feel the heat of him along my back without him touching me, which was somehow worse than being touched."Standing that close without actually doing anything about it," I said. "It is deliberate and it is effective and I need you to either step back or commit to something because I cannot read this map properly with you breathing on my neck."A pause. Then his hands came down on the desk on either side of mine, caging me against it without touching me, and he leaned in until his mouth was at my ear. "Commit to something," he said, low and unhurried, the Alpha in his voice sitting underneath the words like something that lived there permanently. "Is that what you want?"My pen stopped moving. "I want to read the map," I said."No you do not," he said

Sebastian's POV"Stop thinking about the network map," I said."I am not thinking about the network map," Cassandra said, from her side of the bed where she was lying on her back looking at the ceiling with the specific quality of someone who was absolutely thinking about the network map."You have that look," I said."I do not have a look," she said."You have many looks," I said. "This one is the strategy look. Your eyes go slightly unfocused and you breathe through your nose and your left hand does the thing where it moves like you are writing something." I looked at her hand, which was in fact doing the thing. "You are planning."She looked at her hand. Looked at me. "I was thinking about the order of contact," she said. "Which of the seventeen we approach first makes a significant difference to how the information spreads through the network.""Tomorrow," I said."It is a valid strategic consideration," she said."Tomorrow," I said again. I turned toward her and she looked at me

Sebastian's POV"She fell asleep in the east sitting room," Mira said softly, appearing at my study door at midnight with the expression of someone delivering news they consider both concerning and endearing. "Sitting up. With the network map in her hands. Davan put a blanket over her and came to find you."I set down the border report I had been working through and stood without comment. Mira moved aside and I went down the corridor to the east sitting room and opened the door quietly.She was exactly as described, curled into the corner of the settee with the map still loosely in one hand and her head at an angle that was going to give her a stiff neck in the morning, and the blanket Davan had draped over her had slipped slightly. Kaden and Senna had retired an hour ago. The house was quiet. The fire had burned down to embers.I crossed the room and crouched in front of her and looked at her face in the low light. In sleep she looked younger, which was not a diminishment, it was sim

Sebastian's POV"She is not coming out of that room," River said, from beside me in the corridor outside the south wing sitting room where Cassandra had placed her parents together forty minutes ago with tea and the specific instruction that she would be nearby and they should take the time they needed."No," I said. "She is not." I held the bond and felt through it the quality of Cassandra in the sitting room, not distressed, something more layered than that, the particular weight of watching something long broken begin to be examined. "She will stay until she has heard what she needs to hear.""And you are going to stand in this corridor," River said."Yes," I said.River looked at me with the expression he used when he was not going to say something and was very clearly not saying it. I looked back at him. "River," I said."I did not say anything," he said."You were about to say that standing in corridors outside rooms where my mate is having significant personal moments is not an

Sebastian's POV"She is at the gate," River said, appearing in my study at seven in the morning with the specific expression that meant the news was significant and was not bad. "With her father. They have been walking the south boundary for an hour."I looked up from the desk. "Together," I said."Together," he confirmed. "Talking. I do not know what about. The wolves on the south patrol gave them space." He paused. "She did not tell you she was going.""No," I said. "She went before I was awake." I felt through the bond, the quality of her, something that was moving through something difficult and finding something on the other side of it, not resolution exactly, but the beginning of the thing that resolution is made of. "She is alright.""She looked alright," River said. "More than alright." He paused. "Her father looked—smaller than yesterday. In the way people look smaller when they have put something down that they have been carrying for a long time."I set down the report and l