All Chapters of The Royal Alphas’ Captive Maid: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

POV: MelinaThe delegation arrived at ten AM in three separate cars.Melina was already in position when they pulled through the gates....east wing entrance, clipboard in hand, Lucy two steps behind her with the room assignment list. She'd been up since six. Had the corridor walked twice, the room checks done, the linen confirmed, the welcome trays laid out in the right rooms in the right order.Marcus had looked at the setup when he did his sweep at eight and said nothing, which she'd learned meant it was right.She worked.That was the thing about having a real job to do....it demanded her full attention and she gave it, because Melina Voss did not do things halfway even when the thing she was doing was a cover for something else entirely. The Veldthorn representative needed his room adjusted because his beta had a sensitivity to a particular cleaning product and nobody had mentioned that in the file. She sorted it in ten minutes. The fey emissary's welcome tray had the wrong tea...

POV: MelinaShe sat on her bed with her notebook open and her pen in her hand and for the first time in three weeks the route made sense.Not almost made sense. Not close enough with one problem she hadn't solved yet. Actually made sense, start to finish, every step accounted for.The second floor east corridor window. The maintenance ledge running along the outside of the building.....eight inches wide, enough to move along if you were careful and didn't think too hard about what was below you. The garden wall at the east side, lower than the north, maybe seven feet from the ledge at the closest point. From the wall to the greenhouse was open ground, thirty feet, no cover, but the sentinel gap on the east side was longer than the north....she'd timed it four times from different windows over the past two days without appearing to time it.Ninety seconds.She had ninety seconds of open ground.She'd done harder things in less time.She wrote it all out in her neat small handwriting, s

POV: MelinaShe went out at one AM.Not to the greenhouse. Not yet. Just to test it....the ledge, the timing, the distance from the garden wall. She needed to know it held before she committed to it fully and she needed to know it at night, in the dark, under real conditions and not daylight approximations from a second floor window.She dressed in dark clothes. Tied her hair back. Put her phone on silent and left it on the bed because if something went wrong she didn't want it on her.She went out through the east wing side door.***The ledge was eight inches wide.She'd estimated that from the window and she'd estimated right, which was a small relief. She found the access point where the maintenance ladder was bolted to the exterior wall, half hidden behind a drainpipe, exactly where she'd calculated it would be from the building's original layout diagrams she'd found in the delegation resource files.She climbed up.Tested her weight on the ledge.It held.She moved along it slow

POV: MelinaShe made it to the greenhouse path.Ten steps from the door. Container in her bag, tool in her pocket, forty seconds of sentinel gap still ahead of her.She was so close she could see the silver leaves through the glass.Then the lights came on.Not gradually. All at once....every floodlight on the estate grounds blazing to life simultaneously, turning the dark into something that felt like midday, and half a second later the sound of boots on gravel, fast and organised, coming from the north perimeter.She was already moving.She didn't think about it. Didn't decide. Her body just went....flat against the greenhouse wall, using the shadow the floodlights couldn't reach, moving back the way she came with everything her father had ever taught her about staying small and staying quiet and staying alive.The sentinel gap was gone.She could hear wolves. Not human footsteps....the specific sound of something larger moving fast through the outer grounds, the estate's security s

POV: MelinaThe delegation was gone by four.Three cars pulling out through the main gates, the Veldthorn representative's driver going first, the fey emissary last, and then the estate exhaled in that specific way it did when something demanding had finally ended and everyone could stop performing.Melina kept working.Post delegation checks. East wing rooms stripped and reset, linen counted, the council room returned to its normal configuration. She had a list and she was moving through it and she was fine.She was tired but she was fine.She was on the last room when she heard him.Not footsteps exactly. Just a shift in the air behind her that she'd learned to recognise over three weeks of Archer appearing in doorways without announcing himself.She didn't turn around."Delegation's gone," he said."I know. I'm doing the post checks.""You've been working since six AM.""So have you probably.""I took a break at lunch.""Good for you," she said.She heard him come into the room. Cr