Semua Bab ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE: Bab 41 - Bab 50

I read it twice.The name sits on the screen in plain text, no punctuation around it, just the name. The way Rosamund delivers everything. Direct and without apology for what it costs.Nora Reyes.I put the phone face down on the counter.Dominic has read it. I felt him read it the same moment I did, the slight change in the air beside me that happens when he absorbs something significant. He doesn't speak. He's doing the thing he does, taking it apart, running the structure of it, finding where it fits and where it breaks.I pick the phone back up.I look at the name again, totally speechless.Nora Reyes, who came to me in a coffee shop with a folder and information and the particular credibility of someone who had been building a case for three years. Nora Reyes, who found the Mira Seca records and the Castillo genealogy and handed me my mother's origin like a gift. Nora Reyes, who has been in this estate for five days, in every room, at every table, present for every plan we made.

I call Isobel.She answers in one ring. "Already on it," she says, which means she's been monitoring Judith's communications or Dominic told her or she simply arrived at the same question through her own channels. With Isobel the explanation is usually the third option."The technician," I say. "What do you have?""Name is Reid Carver," she says. "Been at the clinic seven years. Clean public record. No obvious pack affiliation in any database I have access to." She pauses. "But he took an unscheduled personal day today. Called in at six-fifteen."Forty-five minutes after he edited the access log."He knows we'll trace it," I say."He expected to be gone before we did," she says. "He underestimated the morning.""Can you find him?""I'm working on it." A pause. "Ella. There's something else on the log edit. When Carver inserted Dominic's name he was logged in under his own credential, which was sloppy. But the IP address he used to log in doesn't trace to the clinic's internal network.

Camila Reyes doesn't move from the doorway.She stands exactly where she is, not crowding, not retreating, just occupying the space with a stillness as if thinking carefully about where to put herself and has chosen this spot deliberately. The morning light is behind her and I can see her clearly and I take the full thirty seconds I need.She looks like Nora the way sisters always look like each other. Not identical. The shared facial features underneath different expressions. Same jaw. Same way of holding the shoulders. But where Nora's face has the worn, careful quality of someone who has been running toward something for three years, Camila's has the different quality of someone who has been inside something and is carrying the weight of that.Behind me I can feel Nora.I don't turn around."Two minutes," I say again.Camila nods. She looks past me briefly, just once, at her sister. Something moves across her face that is too complicated to name and too fast to fully read. Then she

I look at the text under the table.Seven words. Unknown number. Sent at the exact moment the session opened.Someone is in this building.Someone who knows Theodore withdrew and believes the reason matters enough to interrupt the opening of a formal Conclave session to tell me so.Rosamund is still speaking. The formal opening language, procedural and measured, the kind of words that establish record and context before anything substantive begins. She hasn't looked at me yet. The panel members are settling. Gareth is to my left in his chair. Aldric two seats down, straight-backed and contained.I look at the text again.*You forgot to ask why Theodore really withdrew.*I think about Theodore in his hospital chair this morning. The expression on his face when Dominic told him Hadrian was gone. The specific quality of a man who has spent fifty years being the brother who holds things together and has just understood there is nothing left to hold.That was real. I read it and it was rea

We eat lunch.This is Petra's decision and it is the right one. She finds a restaurant two blocks from the session building, a small Italian place with tables close together and bread that arrives without asking for it, and she herds everyone into it with the authority of a woman who has decided that the most essential thing available right now is a hot meal.Everyone comes.Dominic and Callum. Nora and Camila, who sit side by side for the first time properly, their shoulders almost touching as if reclaiming proximity they lost. I smiled and looked at Gareth, who is still in the chair but has the color back in his face and eats an entire bowl of soup without pausing. Orlan, who sits at the end of the table quietly and pays for his own meal when the bill comes, which I notice and don't comment on.Aldric Vane does not come.He left the building after his testimony with the contained, forward-facing energy of a man executing the next phase of a plan. He shook Dominic's hand in the corri