Lahat ng Kabanata ng Hunted By Alphas, Claimed By The Alpha King: Kabanata 61 - Kabanata 70

He is nothing like his father.That is the first thing I notice when he walks through the door of the house three days later, and I notice it before he has said a single word, before he has done anything except exist in the room, because his presence through the ability is warm where Noctyros is cold and uncertain where Noctyros is patient and twenty three years old in a way that has nothing to do with age and everything to do with someone who has been kept deliberately unknowing about the shape of their own life.He is tall. Dark haired. His mother's eyes, Thalrion told me, brown and direct, nothing of the Malvane silver in them. He carries himself like someone who learned early that taking up too much space had consequences and has been managing his footprint ever since.I recognise that too.He sees me before he sees Thalrion.Something moves across his face. Recognition, not of me personally, but of what I am, and I feel the Alpha in him register the Omega in me and then register s

Caius works through the night.I know because I feel the light under his door at two am and again at four and when I come downstairs at six he is at the kitchen table with three empty coffee cups and the specific quality of a man who has found something and is deciding in what order to say it.Lena brings him a fourth coffee without being asked.He looks at her like she just saved his life.She probably did.I sit across from him."Tell me," I say."Thalrion should be here," he replies."Thalrion is sleeping," I say. "Tell me first and we tell him together."He looks at me for a moment.Then he tells me.The Veyrath leverage is a death.Seventeen years ago the Veyrath patriarch's eldest son was involved in an incident that was covered up at significant expense and with significant help from Noctyros Malvane who was at that point a young head of house with ambitions and very specific information about who to acquire debts from. The eldest son has been dead for fifteen years. The offici

Caius finds the metadata at nine that night.We are in the main room of the house when he comes in with his laptop and sets it on the table and sits down and his expression is the specific one that means what he found is significant and he is deciding how to frame it."Just say it," Thalrion tells him."The metadata narrows the field to three people," Caius says. "Three people who had access to the Bloodryn family archive during your father's time and who are still alive and operating in this world." He turns the laptop toward Thalrion. "Two of them I can account for. Their movements, their communications, their current positions. Neither of them fits the Architect's profile."Thalrion looks at the screen.Something happens in his expression.Fast and controlled and buried immediately but I am sitting beside him and I feel it the way I feel everything from him now, directly and physically, a cold thing moving through the bond that he does not intend to send."The third name," he says.

The briefing takes two hours.By the end of it, the table is covered in maps and Caius has filled three pages of notes and Soren has the expression of a man who has been through enough of these to know exactly which variables are manageable and which ones require prayer, and Thalrion has been standing at the head of the table for two hours without sitting down which is what he does when something requires his full authority and not just his attention.Bryn's team will approach from the eastern ridge.Our core group comes in from the valley road.Dorian and two of Bryn's people stay at a secondary position three kilometres back with communications open.I stay within Thalrion's direct reach.The ability is the early warning system. The moment I feel something unexpected, I communicate it immediately and the approach adjusts in real time.Clean. Specific. Every variable mapped.I have learned that Thalrion's plans are like this, thorough to the point where the thoroughness itself become

I find him at midnight.He is at the desk in the study and he looks up when I come in and whatever is on my face makes him put his pen down and push the chair back and say, "Come here," without hesitation.I cross the room and sit on his lap facing him, my knees either side of his thighs, and his hands come to my waist immediately, warm and certain, and we look at each other in the low light with tomorrow sitting between us like a third person in the room."I need to say something," I tell him."Say it," he replies."If something goes wrong tomorrow...""Nothing is going...""Thalrion." I put my hand flat on his chest. "Let me say it."His mouth closes. His jaw is tight but his eyes are open and waiting and I look at him and I say, "The last six weeks are the first six weeks of my life where I have felt like a person rather than something being hunted. You did that. The bakery. The way you say things and meant them. The way you find me when I need finding." I hold his gaze. "You made