Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 31 - Chapitre 40

ALTHEA'S POV The dreams were still coming. It was less frequent now but was still there formless and dissolving, leaving behind only a vague unsettled feeling that faded by midmorning. I had stopped mentioning them and life continued to be extraordinary. Leo came to breakfast yesterday with the particular energy of someone who had been awake since before dawn for reasons that had nothing to do with insomnia. I noticed it the moment he walked in. His dark circles were clearly visible. The way he moved was different from his usual easy morning pace. It was too deliberate and too contained, like a man keeping something carefully between his ribs while he went through the ordinary motions of pouring coffee and pulling out his chair. His eyes went to Xavier first, which they always did when he was carrying something he needed to put down, and then briefly to me with an expression that was working very hard to be neutral and not entirely succeeding. Xavier noticed it too. He set down

ALTHEA’S POVPatricia reached into the bag beside her and placed a folded piece of paper on the table. She did not unfold it. Just laid her hand flat on top of it."I found the doctor's personal notes from that night. The ones he kept outside of the official record. The ones he was not supposed to keep." Her eyes came to me and stayed there with a steadiness that felt like something being held in place by effort. "He wrote about you, Althea. Extensively. About your condition. About how long he had been watching for a match. About what he felt when Emerald arrived that night and he ran her blood type and saw what it was."I sat very still and felt sick. The dinner noise continued around us, the clink of cutlery, the low murmur of other conversations, the waitress calling an order through to the kitchen. Ordinary sounds. Completely indifferent. But all I could hear was the beating of this heart. I thought about Dr. Aron's office. The way he had always made time for me regardless of

ALTHEA’S POV He had asked for two days and I had given them to him and they were the longest two days of my life. Dr. Chen had looked at me with troubled eyes when he came to check on me the morning after the dinner and had said very carefully that the bond rejection was beginning to cause physical stress on the heart. That I should avoid anything that might accelerate it. I had not told him that the thing most likely to accelerate it was walking around the compound thirty feet away from me and refusing to look in my direction. Xavier had gone cold. Colder than before actually. This was the cold of a man who had shut every window and every door and pulled all the warmth inward and was sitting with it alone in the dark. He moved through the compound with that Alpha authority that never left him regardless of anything else, attending to pack business, running the morning circuit and appearing at meals. He would only speak when spoken to and answering questions with the exact

ALTHEA’S P.O.V The morning of the rejection came grey and still. The kind of grey that made the world look as if it had already given up trying to be beautiful. I had slept badly. Sleep had come in pieces, thin and broken, slipping away every time the pain in my chest pulled me back to the dark room. By dawn, I stopped pretending I could rest. I lay on the narrow bed with both hands pressed flat over the transplant scar beneath my clothes and stared at the ceiling while the first pale light crept through the curtains. The pain had settled into something constant overnight. It sat behind my sternum like a tight fist, pulling with every breath, tightening whenever I moved, refusing to ease no matter how still I stayed. I closed my eyes and I told the heart beneath my hands to hold on a little longer. For a moment, there was only silence. Then it pushed back against my palm. A small, broken breath left me. “All right.” I whispered to the empty room. “Then we fight.” The words s

THIRD PERSON'S P.O.V Xavier had not moved from his desk in over an hour. Marla stood in the open doorway of his office and watched him sit there with eyes fixed on nothing. He looked like a man who had returned from war. Even worse. He looked like a man who had won a battle he should never have fought. The papers on his desk had not been touched. The cup of coffee Riley had brought him sat near his hand, untouched and going cold. The fire in the hearth burned low, throwing quiet orange light across the room, but it did nothing to warm the space. Xavier had been like this since he walked back from the courtyard. Silent and still. Stillness that did not come from peace, but from a man holding himself together by force because if he moved, if he breathed too deeply, if he allowed even one thought to settle fully, he would crack. He looked up when he sensed Marla. “Marla.” He acknowledged her with a rough and hollow voice. “Alpha.” She stepped into the office and