All Chapters of HIS SURROGATE, HER ALPHA KING : Chapter 21 - Chapter 25

We can't go before the hearing, l Cael said.I know that, I said.Ella.I know, Cael. I set my phone down on the table and pressed both palms flat against the surface and breathed. I'm not suggesting we go today. I'm saying we know where he might be and that changes the shape of everything after the hearing.He watched me for a moment and then pulled out the chair beside me and sat. Not across, beside, which was different and I registered it without commenting.Tell me what you're thinking, he said.I'm thinking that if my father is in Bend and the hearing goes the way we need it to go, Aldric loses his political base. His packs dissolve from him. His ability to maintain a secure facility with loyal staff disappears. I looked at Cael. Which means after the hearing, assuming it goes our way, whatever infrastructure he's been using to hold my father starts to collapse. We have a window. A short one.And if we move on the Bend property before the hearing, we tip him off and he moves your

I knocked on Cael's door at eleven forty-three at night.He opened it in thirty seconds, which meant he hadn't been asleep. He was still dressed, shirt untucked, phone in his hand, and the expression he had when he was mid-thought. He took one look at my face and stepped back without asking.I handed him my phone.He looked at the photograph. Something moved through his face that was not the usual controlled stillness, something with heat underneath it, brief and then gone, replaced by the particular focus he used when something required immediate clear thinking."Sit down," he said.I'm fine standing.Ella. He said it quietly. Sit down.I sat on the edge of the chair near the window and held my own hands in my lap because they were trying to shake again and I was not going to let them.He sat across from me and looked at the photo again.The jaw, I said. The way he holds his hands. I don't have memories of him exactly, I was four, but I have a photograph my mother kept in a box under

I played the voicemail for Cael at six thirty in the morning, standing in the kitchen with my coat still on from the cold corridor and my hair not yet done and a cup of tea going untouched on the counter.He listened with his eyes on me instead of the phone, which I had learned was how he received serious information. Not the source. The person it affected.When it finished he said nothing for a moment.He knows about the hearing, I said. Which means either he has access to information inside Aldric's operation or someone got a message to him from outside. I picked up my tea. Either way he's more aware of the situation than I expected. He's not broken.No, Cael said. He's not.He told me not to come before the hearing. He said it's what Aldric wants. I held the mug in both hands and felt the warmth of it against my palms. He's been held for sixteen years and his first move was a tactical instruction.He's his daughter's father, Cael said.I looked at him.You do the same thing, he sai