All Chapters of My Alpha, My Verdict : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

ELI’S POVThe first thing I heard when my father called was the sound of a restaurant in the background, low music, the specific hum of a place that costs too much. He always delivers bad news from somewhere comfortable. I think it's so he has somewhere to look that isn't the conversation."I have something to tell you," he said."Okay.""I got married."I put down my pen. I was in the middle of annotating a treaty clause that I'd been fighting over for three years, red ink everywhere, coffee going cold beside it. I looked at the wall."Congratulations," I said. Because what else do you say?"Her name is Sienna. She's…we've been together for two years, Eli. I should have told you sooner.""Yes.""I know you're angry.""I'm not angry, Dad." And I wasn't. Anger requires surprise as a foundation and my father had spent most of my life preparing me for exactly this kind of phone call, the one where he does the thing and tells me after. I was so unsurprised it almost felt calm. "What's her

ELI'S POV I wore a grey suit to dinner. Drea picked it out, technically, she appeared at my apartment forty minutes before I needed to leave, assessed my open wardrobe with the expression of someone defusing something, and pulled the grey suit from the back where I keep the things I wear when I need to feel like armor."Good choice," I said."I made the choice," she said. "You were standing there in a towel looking at your shoes."This was accurate.She straightened my collar, stepped back, looked at me the way she does when she's checking something that isn't about the clothes. "You okay?""I'm fine.""You've said four words since I got here.""I'm conserving."She handed me my keys. "He's going to be there and it's going to be terrible and you're going to be completely composed and it's going to cost you something. Just — know that I know that."I took the keys. "I'll be fine, Drea.""I know you will," she said. "I just wanted to say it."*******************The house was Sienna's,

ELI'S POV The call came on a Wednesday, seven days after the dinner, while I was in the middle of a deposition I had been waiting three months to conduct.I let it go to voicemail.It rang again.I excused myself from the conference room with the kind of apology that isn't really an apology, stepped into the hallway, and answered."Eli Navarro.""Mr. Navarro." A voice I didn't recognize. Male, measured, the specific register of someone who expects to be listened to. "My name is Cael Draven. I'm the Director of the regional Supernatural Governance Board. I think you know who that makes me."I knew exactly who that made him. The governance board had been the structural resistance behind every major Omega rights case for the last decade. Draven had been its director for six of those years. I had never spoken to him directly. I had read his rulings, annotated his decisions, built arguments specifically designed to go around the walls he constructed. I knew his legal fingerprints better t

KIERAN'S POVI got there first.The place was a small office I kept off pack territory — no staff, no pack insignia, nothing that connected it to the Voss name except the lease. I used it when I needed to think without an audience. I'd been using it more lately.I made coffee. I stood at the window. I watched the street below and told myself I was reviewing what I needed to say, which was partially true.At nine exactly, a car pulled up.Eli got out and he looked exactly like he had at dinner — put together, unhurried, the kind of composed that isn't born, it's built. Dark coat, no tie. He looked up at the building once before he came in, and something in the angle of it reminded me, sharply and without warning, of the boy I'd known at eighteen. The way he used to look at things before he decided what to do about them.I moved away from the window.He knocked twice and I opened the door and we stood in the doorway for a moment doing the thing where two people calculate how much of the

KIERAN'S POVI woke up at three in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep, which had been happening more frequently and which I'd stopped pretending was stress.I lay in the dark and catalogued my body the way Ingrid had taught me to. Chest — tight, manageable. Hands — steady. The deep internal cold that had started six months ago and never fully left — present, but not worse than yesterday. My wolf was somewhere far back, turned inward, barely a presence.That last part was the one that scared me most.I got up at five and worked until Cole arrived at eight with coffee and the expression he used when he had something to say that he'd been organizing overnight."Felix Navarro," he said, and set a folder on the desk.I opened it. Cole had moved faster than I expected — a second connection point between Felix and the junior board member, a text record obtained through a contact Cole had at the governance board's administrative office, and a timestamped sequence that put Felix's info