All Chapters of The Royal Alphas’ Captive Maid: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

She waited until two AM.She lay in bed fully dressed and listened to the estate go quiet around her, the corridor emptying out, the building settling into itself, that particular silence that only came when everything large had finally stopped pretending it was still awake. Then she got up.She'd been planning this for three days. New route, new timing, the sentinel rotation mapped down to the minute....when they switched, which direction they moved, how long each gap lasted. Forty seconds at the east corner. Forty seconds to cross from the outer wall to the greenhouse path.She could do forty seconds.She pulled her dark jacket on and checked her tools and looked at herself in the mirror once, then looked away, then went out of her room.The grounds were cold.She moved along the outer wall with her back against the stone, slow and flat and silent, one hand trailing the surface, eyes forward, counting steps the way her father had taught her. The first sentinel passed the north corne

Edmund arrived in thirty-eight minutes.Aiden knew because he'd been watching the clock in the way he watched things when he was waiting for information he didn't have yet and the not having it was sitting uncomfortably. He heard the car on the gravel from two floors up....wolf hearing doing what it did....and by the time Edmund was through the front door Aiden was already at the top of the stairs.His grandfather looked exactly the same as he always looked. That was the thing about Edmund Howlington....he had the particular quality of a man who had decided some time ago exactly who he was and saw no reason to present himself differently depending on circumstances. White hair, broad through the shoulders still, moving through the estate entrance with the unhurried deliberateness of someone who had walked these floors longer than anyone else alive and felt every inch of that in his bones.He looked up at Aiden at the top of the stairs."Where's your mother," he said."Already in the si

Edmund looked at him with the expression he reserved for moments when one of them had gotten ahead of him slightly and he found it more pleasing than inconvenient. "You were always the most efficient one," he said."Grandfather."Edmund reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and produced a small glass vial. He set it on the low table between them. The liquid inside was pale, almost colorless, catching the firelight slightly.Everyone looked at it."It's not a sedative," Edmund said, before anyone could ask. "I want to be clear about that. It won't knock her out, it won't disorient her, it won't do anything to her that she hasn't already been experiencing from the partial bond exposure." He looked at the vial. "What it will do is work with what's already happening in her body....the bond that's been building since she arrived, the symptoms she's been attributing to stress and proximity and things she doesn't have names for yet. It will deepen that. Make her body feel the pull mor

She watched Lillith move through the kitchen. She moved through it the way she'd moved through the garden....with the ease of someone completely at home in their own space, unhurried, taking her time. She reached into the cabinet above the counter and produced a small tin that didn't look like the standard kitchen stock. She opened it and the smell that came from it was warm and faintly herbal and underneath it something else that Melina couldn't identify but that her body responded to immediately....a loosening in her chest, like something that had been braced relaxing slightly without her permission."What is that," Melina said."Something for the fever." Lillith was already measuring it into the cup. "I've used it for years. It helps with temperature and with the particular kind of exhaustion that comes from a body that's been working harder than it should." She glanced at Melina. "It will make you feel better.""I'm really fine, Your Majesty.""You said that already." She poured t

It started slow.Alaric's mouth on her throat....unhurried, thorough, like he had made a decision and was seeing it through completely. His hands moving down her sides, finding the hem of the thin shirt she'd fallen asleep in, sliding underneath. Her skin responded like it had been waiting....lit up everywhere he touched, hypersensitive from the bond and the fever and the particular accumulated weight of weeks of wanting something she'd been telling herself she wasn't wanting.Aiden pulled her shirt over her head.She let him. Didn't think about letting him....just lifted her arms and it was gone and his hands were on her and she stopped thinking about much at all."Still think this isn't real?" Alaric said against her throat."Shut up," she breathed.He bit down lightly and she gasped.Archer's hands found her hips. He pulled her toward him and she went....fully, without resistance, her body making decisions her brain was no longer being consulted about. He kissed her the way she'd k