All Chapters of Alpha Draco And His Omega Luna : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

SofiaThe morning of my formal introduction to the pack, Kara braided my hair and didn't say a word.This was how I knew she was nervous. Kara's natural state was commentary a running, affectionate, frequently accurate narration of whatever was happening around her. Silence from Kara meant she was thinking something she had decided, for once, not to say."Just say it," I told her.Her hands paused in my hair. "I'm not saying anything.""That's how I know something needs saying."She resumed braiding. A long moment passed. "Some of them are going to be horrible to you," she said. "Today. In that room. And you're going to have to just stand there.""I know.""And you can't react.""I know that too.""Because any reaction gives them something to use and you're better than all of them and I need you to remember that when the horrible ones are..""Kara."" being horrible, which they will be, because people are..""Kara."She tied off the braid. "What?""I've been handling horrible people s

SofiaHe left within the hour, no preamble, no lengthy explanation just Draco moving through the house with that particular focused quality that I was learning meant something had shifted from consideration to action, and Xavier two steps behind him already reaching for his phone, and the whole estate recalibrating around them the way it always did when the Alpha moved with purpose.I caught Draco at the foot of the stairs."I'm coming," I said.He stopped. Turned and looked at me with an expression that was already assembling the argument against it."Don't," I said, before he could. "You told me everything. I told you everything. Whatever she is to you, whatever this is, I'm not waiting here while you go find her. I'm coming.""It may not be safe," he said."I know.""The location is, it's one of my father's holdings. He may have people there.""I know that too."He looked at me for a long moment. Xavier, behind him, was examining the ceiling with enormous interest."You stay close,

SofiaDraco said no, not loudly. Not with anger just a flat, absolute, two-letter refusal that closed the subject the way a door closes complete and final and not inviting further discussion.Except that Rocco, apparently, had never been interested in what was and wasn't being invited.The message came back within minutes. Xavier read it, said nothing, and handed the phone to Draco, who read it and set it down on the library table with a precision that suggested he was controlling the force he applied to it."What does it say?" I asked."That if I won't arrange a meeting he'll find his own way to one," Draco said.Elara, from the armchair, said nothing. She was watching her sons with the expression of a woman who had been thinking about this moment for a very long time."We have to talk to him," Xavier said."We don't have to do anything.""Draco..""He bit me, Xavier." His voice sill flat, still controlled. "He walked into my territory uninvited, made himself comfortable in my house,

SofiaTwelve faces, I counted them automatically the habit of reading rooms, of knowing exactly how many people were in a space and where they were positioned relative to exits. Twelve faces, twelve sets of eyes, arranged around a long table that had the particular weight of furniture that had witnessed important things for a very long time.Aldric was at the far end.He was a large man not in the way Draco was large, which was presence as much as physicality, but in the way of a man who had spent decades being the biggest person in most rooms and had built his identity around it. He had the look of someone who had prepared for this, who had arranged the room and the people in it and the timing of everything with care.He had not prepared for Elara.I watched it happen the moment his eyes moved from me to the woman beside me, and the particular sequence of expressions that crossed his face in rapid, involuntary succession. Recognition, surprise and something that might, in better ligh

SofiaI stood on the terrace for exactly ten seconds.Ten seconds to look at my grandmother's face on a phone screen. Ten seconds to feel the cold of the railing under my hands and the cold of the night air and the colder thing moving through me that was not fear and was not grief and was not anything I had a clean name for yet.Then I moved.Not toward the secure wing. Not toward the central rooms where I had been told to stay. Toward the east gate, because Rocco had said watch for what no one is watching and everyone was watching the main gate and the east gate was where my grandmother was standing on the wrong side of it with a figure behind her in the dark.I took the back stairs, the ones the staff used, narrow and fast, and came out through the kitchen into the cold night air and crossed the grounds at a pace that was not quite running because running attracted attention and I did not want attention, not yet, not until I understood what I was walking into.The east gate was at t