All Chapters of PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

74 Chapters

The amendment signs

"Wolfe arrived early," Maren Voss says.She calls at eight forty-five, fifteen minutes before the scheduled signing, and her voice has the particular note of someone reporting something unexpected that is not necessarily unwelcome.How early, Bastien says.He has the phone on speaker at the kitchen table. I am across from him. Soren is making coffee because this is what Soren does when a day starts with a scheduled event that matters.An hour, Maren says. He is here with Eli. A pause. He asked to speak with Lena before the signing.I look at Bastien.Put him on, I say.A brief shuffle. Then Wolfe's voice, quieter than usual, the specific quality of someone speaking in an unfamiliar building.Your father sent a third contact last night, he says. After the second was turned away. This one was different. It wasn't an intermediary. He pauses. It was one of my own people. Someone on my household staff who has been reporting to your father for at least two months.The kitchen is very still.

Dara

"She's fine," Bastien says.He says it at eleven thirty, two and a half hours after I noticed her silence, and his voice has the quality of someone who has confirmed something and wants to deliver it before the worry goes further.Where is she, I say.My security team located her this morning. She is at a pack-neutral medical facility forty minutes from my father's rented property. He pauses. She was taken there by Gregor Crest's remaining staff contact. The one we missed.I put my coffee down.He got to her, I say.He approached her last night, Bastien says. After the second intermediary was turned away from Wolfe. He reached Dara directly. She didn't message us because she didn't want to lead him to us while he was watching her. He holds my gaze. She was protecting our location by going silent.Is she hurt, I say.No, he says. She is shaken. He didn't threaten her physically. He told her that her cooperation with us constituted interference with a Crest Pack matter and that under th

On the record

"I don't do sympathetic profiles," the journalist says.Her name is Sera Finn, which I noticed when Soren introduced us and which I noticed again when it landed, the name Sera, the same name as my mother, and I decided that was not a sign of anything and also decided I was paying attention to it anyway.She is in the library with a recorder on the table between us and the expression of someone who has been doing this long enough that she does not need to perform professionalism. She is direct and unhurried and she said the sentence about sympathetic profiles before she sat down fully, which I respect because it tells me exactly what kind of interview this is going to be.Good, I say.She looks at me.I don't want a sympathetic profile, I say. I want an accurate one. Those are different things.She sits down fully.Bastien is in the chair by the window. Not beside me. Not at the desk. The chair by the window, which is slightly behind and to the left, present without being positioned as

The vote

"Five to zero," Petra Lund says.She calls at ten fourteen in the morning and her voice has the quality of someone who has been sitting with good news for the length of time it takes to dial a number.I am in the library. Bastien is beside me. Ivy is at the end of the table and she looks up when Petra Lund says the number and her eyes do something that is not quite a smile but is the precursor to one.Unanimous, I say."Unanimous," Petra says. The preservation order statute is repealed in full. Not revised. Repealed. The fifth committee member's dissent position carried the day. They agreed that revision was insufficient given the documented history of the statute's intended application. A pause. The repeal takes effect immediately upon council registration, which will happen this afternoon.I put my hand flat on the table.The statute is gone.Not amended. Not suspended. Gone. The word resource will not appear in pack law in relation to a living individual from this afternoon forward

Ivy's move

"I'm going to respond," Ivy says.She says it the way she has been saying things since the assembly hall, quietly and completely, no wavering in it, and the specific quality of her stillness tells me she has already decided and is informing us rather than asking.I look at the message on her phone.Your sister doesn't understand the full picture. Meet me. I can explain what she's not telling you.It is not my father's number. It is not anyone in our contacts. It is a new number, which is his method, use once and discard, because my father understands that a used number is a traceable number.The amendment names him, Bastien says. Not unnamed third parties acting on his behalf.I know, Ivy says. Which is why he used a third party. She looks at the message. He is testing whether I am reachable. Not trying to convert me to one message. Testing. She looks up at me. I want to respond and let him believe I am considering it.That's a risk, Bastien says.It is also information, Ivy says. She

The article

"It's up," Soren says.He says it at seven twelve in the morning, standing in the kitchen doorway with his phone, and his voice is the voice of someone who has been watching a screen for the last twenty minutes waiting for a timestamp.I am at the table. Bastien is across from me. The coffee between us is the second pot of the morning because neither of us slept past five.I pick up my own phone.The Pack Observer, front section, published at seven ten.The headline reads: A Volana Wolf, A Tribunal, and the Law That Changed: Lena Crest Speaks First.I read it.Sera Finn wrote it the way she said she would. Not sympathetic. Real. The contract is in there, described accurately, neither vilified nor excused. The rejection is in there, described as a mistake made by a man who was afraid and who has spent six weeks proving the opposite of that fear through action. The staircase. The lobby chair. The pregnancy test.The scan image is in there, reproduced with permission, my daughter's face

Twenty- four weeks

"She's running out of room," Nadia says.She says it with the dry affection she reserves for observations that are technically clinical and actually just fond, and she shows me the scan where my daughter is arranged with her feet up and her arms crossed in the specific posture of someone who has strong opinions about spatial planning.Twenty-four weeks today.I am on the examination table in the medical room with the afternoon light coming through the window and Bastien in the chair to my left because he comes to every scan now, which he started doing at twenty weeks without announcing it and which I have not commented on because I do not want to comment on things that are good in case commenting makes them self-conscious.Everything looks correct, Nadia says. She is measuring exactly where she should. The wolf bond markers are strong. She pauses. The Volana indicators are becoming more visible as she develops. At birth they will be fully present.What does fully present mean, Bastien

Moving again

"Where is he going," Bastien says.He is not asking anyone specifically. He is thinking out loud, which I have learned is how he processes the transition from observing a situation to acting on it. The question is already running through the calculation.He terminated early, I say. Not at the end of the lease. Early. Which means something changed.The article, Soren says. He has Dara's message on his own screen now, the same text, and he is looking at the map alongside it. The article ran three weeks ago. He sat with it for three weeks. He looks up. What has changed in the last three weeks.The inter-pack governance conference invitation, Ivy says.We all look at her.The Northern Highland Alpha contacted us two days ago, she says. His office generates public correspondence logs. Anyone who monitors his outgoing communications knows he invited a Volana wolf to speak at a spring conference. She holds my gaze. If my father saw that invitation, he knows I am becoming visible. Not just in

Marta

The youngest pack members, I type back to Marta. People who have been here their whole lives and want to stand. He will present himself as the bridge between the old framework and the new one. He will say he understands both sides.Her response comes in seconds: I know two candidates he will target. Both are twenty-six. Both ambitious. One of them already asked me last week when the formal Alpha selection begins.I showed it to Bastien.He reads it and looks at Ivy.Can you get me Marta's call number, he says.Ivy sends it.Bastien calls.Marta answers in one ring. Her voice is the same as the assembly, deliberate and without performance.Alpha Rourke, she says. I expected this call.You said you know who he will approach, Bastien says. Do you know what he will say to them?He will tell them the suspension is temporary, Marta says. He will tell them the tribunal finding was a political decision driven by Iron Fang pressure, not by genuine misconduct. He will say the documents were tak

The night before

"Tell me something that has nothing to do with my father," I say.It is eleven at night. The library is quiet. Soren has gone to bed. Ivy packed a small bag earlier and told me she was going to the compound tomorrow, not waiting for the nomination period, because Marta asked and because she has decided waiting is something she is done with.Bastien looks up from his book.What kind of something, he says.Anything, I say. Tell me about something that happened before any of this.He thinks for a moment.When I was seventeen, he says, I drove three hours to attend a pack governance session in the Eastern Ridge territory. I was not invited. My father did not know I had gone. I sat in the back of the session hall for six hours and took notes on everything the senior arbitrators said and drove home and rewrote the notes from memory to see how much I had retained.I look at him.You were seventeen, I say.I was serious at seventeen, he says.You are serious now, I say.I am less serious than

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