Lahat ng Kabanata ng Hunted By Alphas, Claimed By The Alpha King: Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

I wake up and he is watching me.Not in a strange way. In the way of someone who got there first and has been deciding whether to wake the other person or let them sleep and landed on let them sleep and is now being caught not doing that.I look at him.He looks at me."Hi," I say."Hi," he says.We are in his room. I don't fully remember the transition from the main room to here except that at some point the four am became five am and the standing became sitting and the sitting became lying down and his arm came around me and that was the last thing I registered before sleep took me somewhere I didn't argue with.The city outside is doing the early morning thing, that specific grey gold that belongs to the hour before the world gets loud, and his room is warm and quiet and his arm is still around me and my wolf is so settled he is practically furniture."How long have you been awake?" I ask."A while," he says."Were you watching me sleep?" I ask."I was thinking," he says."About wh

The planning session takes four hours.Thalrion runs it the way he runs everything, methodically and without wasted movement, and by the time it is over, there are three printed floor plans of the Malvane Foundation gala venue on the table, two exit strategies, one contingency for each of those, a cover story for my attendance, and Soren looking at the ceiling with the expression of a man who has accepted something he does not entirely love."The cover story needs to hold under pressure," Caius says. He is at the table with his laptop, sharper today than yesterday, the careful rebuilding of his place in this circle visible in the way he contributes, precise and useful and not overclaiming. "Noctyros will have people asking questions within ten minutes of you walking in.""Then we give them something to find," I say. "Not the bond filing, something older. A history that predates the last two weeks.""We can build a paper trail," Caius says. "Business connection. Thalrion acquires compa

Six days before the gala, Thalrion takes me somewhere I don't expect.Not the building. Not a house. A bakery.He doesn't announce it. He just appears in the book room at seven in the morning and says, "Come with me," and I follow him down to the car and we drive for twelve minutes through the waking city and he parks on a street I don't recognise and gets out and I get out and there it is.A bakery.Small. Old. The kind with steamed up windows and a display case that has been in the same position since before either of us was born. There is a step at the door, wide and flat and worn smooth in the middle from years of people standing on it, and the smell coming through the door is the kind that reaches somewhere in your chest before your brain has processed it.I stop on the pavement.I look at it.I look at him.He is watching me with those silver eyes and his hands in his pockets and his expression is doing the quiet thing, the one that is not performing anything, and he says, "They

I find him at two in the morning.Not through the bond this time, though the bond is there, warm and directional as always. I find him because I cannot sleep and the building is quiet and I follow the only light still on, which is under the door of his office, and I push it open without knocking because knocking at two in the morning in a place that has started to feel like home feels unnecessary.He is at the desk.Jacket off. Sleeves rolled. The reading glasses that I now know about and that still do something to my brain that I have accepted I will never fully manage.Papers spread in front of him and a coffee that has been cold for a while judging by the way he is not drinking it.He looks up."You can't sleep?" "Neither can you," I say.He looks at the papers.I come in and sit in the chair across from the desk and pull my knees up and look at him and wait because I have learned that Thalrion at two in the morning with cold coffee and reading glasses is a specific version of him

The car pulls up at eight fifteen and the building is lit from the inside like something that knows it is being watched.The Malvane Foundation event space is four stories of glass and old stone that Noctyros bought fifteen years ago and has been renovating ever since, slow and deliberate, the way he does everything, until it became exactly the kind of place that makes people feel like they were invited into something exclusive and important and should behave accordingly.That is the point.Everything Noctyros does has a point.I look at it through the car window and feel my wolf go sharp and alert in the way he goes when something requires full attention, not fear, just presence, and I breathe through it and settle him and think about exits and service corridors and eighty seconds through a kitchen.Thalrion's hand finds mine in the dark of the back seat.I look at him.He is looking at the building.Dressed in black, which is what Thalrion always wears and which he wears the way he