Lahat ng Kabanata ng ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE: Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

Nobody moves at first.We all look at Petra's phone. The blue dot moves steadily along a street on the north side, slow enough to be on foot or in slow traffic, labeled with Orlan's name like someone decided to gift wrap him and deliver him to us."Who sent this?" Dominic asks.Petra checks the number. "Same one that sent the warehouse warning last night.""The cancel tomorrow message," I say."Yes."I look at Rosamund. She is looking at the phone with an expression I haven't seen on her before. Not surprise. Something closer to recognition."You know who this is," I say.She looks at me. "I have a suspicion.""Share it.""There's a woman in Hadrian's inner circle," she says carefully. "She's been there for eight years. She handles his private communications and his schedule." She pauses. "Her name is Delia Marsh."The name hits me before the connection does. Then the connection arrives."Declan Marsh," I say. "The investigator.""His wife," Rosamund says.Nora makes a sound that is n

Nobody moves.The room still carries the specific weight of someone who believes they've already won. Everything stops. Not from fear exactly. From the particular recalibration of people who understood the shape of the day and are now understanding it differently.Hadrian Voss stands in the doorway of the reading room at the Meridian Club on a Thursday morning and he looks exactly like what he is. A man who has been patient for a very long time and has decided that patience is finished.He is accompanied by the broad man who opened the door and one other, standing slightly behind, whose stillness has the specific quality of someone whose job is to be the last resort.I stay seated.This is a choice. Standing would be reactive. Staying seated is its own kind of statement and I make it deliberately, both hands on the table, spine straight, looking at him the way I look at difficult family members in the ER who've decided their emergency is bigger than everyone else's.Dominic is standin

"Petra," I say. "Where is he now?""Still at the table across from me," she says. Her voice is calm. Like someone who has decided that calm is the only available option. "He ordered coffee. He's just sitting there.""Don't move. Don't go anywhere he can't be seen from the main floor.""I'm at a table by the window," she says. "There are twelve other people in this room.""Good. Stay there."I look at Dominic. He's already reading my face and reaching for his own phone. How does he always do that."Aldric's man has Petra," I say.Not grabbed, not threatened. Just watched, and made sure she knew she was being watched. Which is its own kind of threat because it says: I know where your people are. I know how to reach them. I know what matters to you.Dominic is already on the phone to Isobel.I look at Gareth in his hospital bed. "I have to go.""Go," he says. "I'll be here.""You'll testify tomorrow.""I said I would," he says.I believe him.The drive back to the Meridian is seven minu

Dominic reads the message over my shoulder.I feel him go still beside me in the way that means the thing underneath the control has just gotten significantly closer to the surface. His hand doesn't move from mine. If anything it holds more firmly for one second before he releases it and leans back."Two blocks," he says."Yes.""If he has eyes on the building from that range he has a significant surveillance operation running in River North on two hours notice.""Or he had it running already," Nora says. "In anticipation of exactly this."I look at the address on Petra's phone. A commercial building, unremarkable from the street view I pull up, the kind of building that could hold twenty different businesses and gives nothing away about any of them."I'm going," I say."I know," Dominic says. He says it evenly. Not resigned, not happy, just honest about what the situation requires."Isobel," I say."Four blocks," he says. "She stays four blocks out. If you're not out in forty-five mi

"Say that again," I say.Delia's voice on the phone is careful and low. "Your mother didn't just carry a Lunare bloodline. She was something more specific within that lineage. Something that hasn't existed in the documented pack world for over two hundred years.""What specifically?""I need to show you the document," she says. "Not read it over a phone. Show you. Tonight if possible. Before the session tomorrow changes the public record in ways that make certain information harder to control."I look at Dominic across the kitchen island.He is reading my face the way he reads everything that matters. Completely and without missing anything."Where are you?" I ask Delia."A hotel on the north side. The Alderton on Clark. Room 614." A pause. "I've been here since yesterday. I left Hadrian's house the morning after I sent you the warehouse warning. I couldn't go back after that.""Is it safe?""I paid cash. The room isn't under my name." Another pause. "I've been careful for eight years