CHAPTER 80

We got married on a Saturday in October.The farmhouse outside Minneapolis was everything Mina had described and Mina had opinions about three things and was right about all of them and my father adjusted the stew recipe at her suggestion and it was better, which neither of them mentioned directly.The weather was exactly what October in Minnesota promised — cool, clear in the morning, uncertain by afternoon, which meant the ceremony happened outside in the morning light and the rest happened inside with the fire going and the windows turning amber as the afternoon came in.Seventy-three people.Not a coalition event. Not a welfare gathering. Not a public statement about anything. Just the people who had chosen toward us and whom we had chosen back, assembled in a farmhouse in Minnesota because Mina had built the space and my father had confirmed the stew and Karl had made the bridge and we had said yes to each other on a Tuesday in November in a kitchen above a bookshop in Seattle.C

CHAPTER 81

Three weeks after the wedding, someone put a bullet through the window of the Pine Street building at six forty-one in the morning.Not a warning shot. It came through the east-facing office window, crossed the room at desk height, and buried itself in the wall twelve inches from where Cam's laptop was sitting open on the table. Cam had gone to the kitchen two minutes before it hit.Two minutes.I heard the glass break from upstairs. Karl was already moving before I was fully awake — off the bed, out of the room, down the hall in the specific way he moved when instinct had already made the calculation and his body was executing it.I followed.Cam was in the kitchen doorway, very still, looking at the hole in the wall."Don't go near the window," Karl said. He was already flat against the interior wall, head angled to see the street without being in the sight line. "Where were you standing.""Kitchen," Cam said. His voice was steady. "I went for coffee. The machine was slow." He looke

CHAPTER 82

They found Graham Hale at eleven forty-three AM in a parking garage four blocks from the Pine Street building.He had not left. Cam had been right — he was sitting in a grey sedan on the third level with the engine off, a second rifle case on the back seat, and a sight line to the building's front entrance through the garage's open east side.He had been waiting for someone to come out.Decker spotted the car first. He was doing a vehicle sweep of the surrounding blocks on foot and he called Karl with the plate and the level and the specific flat tone of someone who had found what he was looking for and was not making any unnecessary moves.Karl said: "Hold position. Don't approach."Then he looked at me."I'm coming," I said."I know," he said.We took the stairs. Decker met us on level two and pointed up and said quietly: "He hasn't moved in forty minutes. Engine is off. He's watching the entrance on a phone screen — he has a camera on the building front, small, probably placed last

CHAPTER 83

The oversight body suspended three more officers by Friday.Graham Hale had not worked alone. That was what Adrian found when he pulled the full access log audit — three other junior officers who had been on the same ideological channel Hale used, a private encrypted forum that the oversight body's security team had not flagged because it was technically external infrastructure, not internal comms.Adrian came to the Pine Street building on Thursday evening and sat at the kitchen table and put four personnel files down."Hale recruited them," he said. "Or they recruited him. The forum predates his appointment by eight months, which means the ideology was already inside the building before he arrived." He looked at my father, then at me. "This is not an isolated actor problem. There is an organized internal faction inside the oversight body that believes high-range supernatural bonded pairs represent an unacceptable consolidation of influence.""How large," my father said."The forum h

CHAPTER 84

Felix had the pulled names by midnight.Eleven people. Out of three hundred and twelve, the four suspended officers had specifically accessed eleven files. Not random — targeted. High-range Lures, Were-line individuals with documented alpha characteristics, and one name that made my stomach drop when I saw it on the list.Cam.His file had been accessed seven times over fourteen months. More than anyone else in the database.Felix put the list on the table at twelve-fifteen AM and pointed at Cam's name without saying anything.Cam looked at it."Seven times," he said."The most accessed file in the entire database," Felix said. "By three of the four officers. Not Hale — the other three.""They weren't watching Hale's target," Karl said. "They were building their own.""Cam is twenty years old," Rea said from the doorway. She had been awake since the garage. Her voice was completely flat. "He's twenty years old and four oversight officers have been reading his file for over a year.""T

All Chapters of Caught Between Two Alpha's : Chapter 81 - Chapter 85

CHAPTER 80

CHAPTER 81

CHAPTER 82

CHAPTER 83

CHAPTER 84