Hunted By Alphas, Claimed By The Alpha King のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

We leave at eight the next morning.Three vehicles, underground garage of exotic cars, a team that moves with the quiet efficiency of people who drill for exactly this. I have my one bag. Soren has a duffel the size of a small country. Caius arrives exactly three minutes late with coffee for everyone and an apology that sounds genuine and probably is.Thalrion is in the vehicle with me.Of course he is.The city slides past the windows and he is close, his shoulder near mine in the back seat, and the bond hums between us low and warm and continuous and I look out the window and think about not thinking about his shoulder.His hand moves from his knee to the seat between us.Palm up. Easy. Not reaching. Just... there.I look at it.I look at the window.I look at it again.I put my hand in it.His fingers close around mine and he doesn't make anything of it and I don't make anything of it and we ride like that for forty minutes while the city becomes outskirts and the outskirts become t

He arrives the next morning at eleven.Nobody called him. Nobody told him to come. He just appears at the front door with his hands in his pockets and whatever easy manner he usually carries packed away somewhere, and what's left is just a man who has been holding something very heavy for a very long time and has finally decided to put it down.Soren opens the door.They look at each other and something passes between them that belongs only to them and I look away from it because some things deserve privacy.I am in the study doorway.I watch through the gap.Thalrion is standing by the fireplace and he looks at Caius and says nothing and Caius crosses the room and stops a few feet away and looks at the fire and says, "I know you know.""Yes," Thalrion says."How long?""Six weeks of suspicion. Yesterday for confirmation."Caius nods. Slow. "The location. You moved here knowing I'd see the filing." He almost smiles but it doesn't reach anything. "You gave me the rope.""I gave you the

We leave at seven.Thalrion is up before me and that is new, or maybe it isn't, maybe he is always up before everyone and I am only now in a position to notice, and when I come into the kitchen he already has coffee and he hands me a cup without turning around and says, "Twenty minutes.""Good morning to you too," I say.He turns around then.He looks at me in yesterday's clothes with my hair not sorted and his eyes do a slow sweep that is not clinical and is not nothing and then he looks at his coffee and says, "Good morning."My face is warm.It is seven in the morning and my face is already warm and we have not even left the house yet.We load the vehicles in the pale early light and Soren appears with his country-sized duffel and Caius is quiet and the security team moves in their efficient silence and I stand on the gravel and look at the house one more time.The book room window.The wide porch.The tree line gold in the early light.I think about a bakery and a step and twenty m

I wake up and the first thing I notice is that I am warm.Not the kind of warm that comes from blankets or a well heated room... but the kind that has a source, specific and directional, and the source is the arm around me and the chest my head is on and the heartbeat under my ear that my own heartbeat has apparently decided to sync with sometime in the night without consulting me.My wolf is unbothered by this.My wolf is so comfortable that he might actually be purring and I would like to state for the record that wolves do not purr and he needs to get himself together.I lie there for a moment and look at the ceiling and take stock.Bond mark on my neck that is warm and present in a way that is impossible to ignore. Bond mark on his. Legal claim on record. Designation court hearing in less than seventy two hours. Noctyros Malvane somewhere in this city making calculations. My scent blocker completely and utterly irrelevant at this point.And the Alpha King's arm around me like it li

He is perfectly fine at dinner.That is somehow worse than if he weren't.He sits at the head of the table and he is operational and present and he asks Caius about the source trace results and talks through the court strategy with Soren and answers everything directed at him and he is, by every observable metric, completely fine.He just doesn't look at me.Not in the way he has been looking at me. Not with the silver eyes doing the warm specific thing. He looks at me when I speak the way he looks at everyone when they speak, which is attentive and appropriate and has absolutely nothing in it that makes my face warm.My face is not warm.My face is deeply confused and slightly furious and trying not to show either.Soren notices.I see it happen... the flick of his eyes between me and Thalrion, the small recalibration, the careful neutral expression he puts on over whatever he is actually thinking. He doesn't say anything. He eats his food and contributes to the conversation and watch