All Chapters of The Hostile Takeover: Signed, Sealed, and Claimed: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

"Don't move, Ethan."Caleb’s voice was a jagged shard of glass. He stood five feet away, the silver dagger in his hand trembling so hard it blurred. I didn't look at him. I couldn't. My father—or the thing wearing my father’s skin—was pinned to the marble floor beneath me. The Construct’s chest heaved with a mechanical, wet rattle. Grey fluid leaked from its hock, staining the white stone."He’s not your father," Elara Thorne hissed from the shadows of the banquet table. She smoothed her silk dress, her eyes darting between us. "He's a battery. A source. Caleb, do your job. Finish the Alpha.""Shut up!" I roared. I slammed my fist into the Construct’s jaw. The sound was like a sledgehammer hitting a sack of wet gravel. The beast didn't flinch. It just stared at me with those hollow, glowing white orbs. "Caleb, give me the knife. I have to end this. I have to let him go.""I can't," Caleb whispered. He stepped closer. His charcoal suit was shredded, showing the dark, bruised map of the

"Where the hell is he?"I slammed the silver cufflink onto the mahogany desk. The wood didn't just dent; it groaned and split. The heavy grain splintered under the pressure of my palm. My breath came in ragged, hot hitches that smelled of ozone and the charred cedar of the Glass Hall. Behind me, the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Walker-Morgan penthouse showed a city of flickering lights, but all I saw was the grey mountain mist where Caleb had vanished."He’s gone, Ethan." Jonathan Hayes stood by the door, his shadow long and thin against the plush carpet. He didn't come closer. He stayed in the "kill zone" near the exit. "The thermal scans came back negative. He scrubbed his scent with the suppressant we developed for the deep-cover ops. He doesn't want to be found.""I don't give a damn what he wants." I turned. My eyes were still rimmed with that predatory silver, the iris bleeding into the white. "He’s my Anchor. He doesn't get to just drift away because the guilt is too heavy f

"Don't touch the straps, Ethan."Caleb’s voice was a dry rattle, barely audible over the hum of the silver-nitrate pump. I froze. My claws were an inch from the leather binding his left wrist to the cold marble of the altar. The cathedral smelled like a medical ward in hell—antiseptic, burnt sage, and the copper tang of fresh blood. Outside, the rain of Neo-Veridia hammered against the boarded-up stained glass, but inside, the only sound was the frantic, electronic beep of the Dead Man’s Switch."The hell I won't." I kept my voice low, a vibrating growl that made the dust on the floor dance. "I didn't tear through half the Red District to watch you bleed out on a rock. You're coming home.""Look at the display, Alpha."A man stepped out from behind a fluted stone pillar. He wore a white lab coat over a priest’s cassock. Father Miller. He held a tablet in one hand and a silver-tipped scalpel in the other. He didn't look like a holy man. He looked like a butcher who’d gone to med school

"Get the chopper ready."I didn't wait for the council members to stop staring. I stepped off the helipad, my boots clicking against the cold metal. My blood was humming. A low-frequency vibration that skipped across the link I now shared with Caleb. Every time he breathed, I felt his lungs expand. Every time he looked at me, a surge of heat hit my stomach."Ethan, the council is still deliberating," Elara Thorne called out. Her voice was thin. Brittle. She stood near the hangar doors, her hands knotted together. "You can't just leave after what happened at the cathedral. There are protocols for a—""The protocols are dead, Elara." I stopped and turned. My silver eyes caught the morning light, sharp enough to cut. Caleb walked up behind me. He didn't say a word. He didn't have to. The violet tint in his irises made the council elders back away. "I’m not asking for permission to return to my estate. I’m telling you the hierarchy has changed. The old laws? The ones about pure blood and

"You’re three minutes late, Abigail."I didn't look up from the tablet. My thumb swiped through the quarterly projections for the Silver-Oak merger, but the numbers were just static. Noise. The real data was pulsing through the link in my skull. Caleb was a shadow against the floor-to-ceiling glass behind me, his violet eyes tracking the movement of every suit in the room. I could feel his hunger. It was a sharp, jagged thing, tasting of iron and cold mountain air."The mag-lev had a technical hiccup, Mr. Walker." Abigail Moore pulled out a chair at the far end of the long obsidian table. She didn't scurry. She didn't apologize. She sat down and adjusted the cuffs of her silk blazer. "I assume we’re here to discuss the Carpathian Void?""I’m here to discuss why a green-tech startup CEO knows my internal security terminology." I tapped the center of the table.A holographic Void symbol erupted from the obsidian. It pulsed red, casting long, bloody shadows across the faces of the twelve