Semua Bab The Alpha's Lost Mate.: Bab 91 - Bab 100

Gerald SteeleGerald had been sitting with the phone in his hand for the better part of twenty minutes, staring at a number he hadn't dialed in nearly fifteen years, and it was only the sound of Vivienne's raised voice from down the hallway, relaying some fragment of news about Dominic crossing the boundary line without authorization, that finally pushed him to press call.The man who answered had a voice considerably rougher than Gerald remembered, gravel worn into it by years Gerald hadn't been present to witness. "Whoever this is, it's late.""It's Gerald Steele."The silence that followed stretched long enough that Gerald wondered if the call had simply been dropped, and then the voice came back, wary and considerably more alert. "Gerald Steele. I haven't heard that name in fifteen years. I assumed you'd have the sense never to call me again, given everything.""I wouldn't be calling if it weren't urgent," Gerald said. "Marcus, I need to call in what you ow

Ethan SteeleEthan had been sitting on the cold concrete floor for what felt like a very long time, hands tied loosely in front of him with something that pinched whenever he moved, and he had decided, somewhere in that stretch of frightened waiting, that crying wasn't going to help him the way it might have helped a smaller kid, so he made himself stop and think instead, the way his father had told him to at the birthday dinner, only weeks ago, though it already felt like a very long time ago.The two men guarding the room didn't talk to him much. One of them checked his phone every few minutes, glancing up at Ethan with an expression that wasn't exactly unkind, just tired, like a man doing a job he didn't especially want to be doing. The other paced near the door, restless, his hand resting on something at his hip that Ethan understood, without needing anyone to explain it, was a weapon."They're not coming for a while yet," the pacing one said, mostly to hi

Sophie and DominicThe villa was quiet when they finally came through the front doors, quieter than either of them expected after everything the night had thrown at them, and it was that quiet, more than anything else, that seemed to be the thing that finally let both of them stop holding themselves together.Ethan had fallen asleep in the car somewhere past the boundary line, curled against Sophie's side with the wolf shaped rock still clutched in one fist, and Miriam had taken him upstairs the moment they arrived, murmuring something soft about a warm bath and clean sheets, leaving Sophie and Dominic standing alone in the entrance hall with nothing left to do and nowhere left to run.Sophie was the one who broke first. She simply folded, right there on the cold stone floor, her knees giving out beneath her the way they hadn't been allowed to give out at the warehouse, in the car, in any of the hours where staying upright had felt like the only thing keeping Etha

The regional hall had never held this many people at once, not in living memory, and Caius Holt stood at the head of the long council table with the ransom letter in his hand, watching every Alpha and council representative in the room go silent the moment he began to read Draven's own words aloud."A bloodline this unstable belongs under someone equipped to properly contain it," Caius read, his voice carrying to every corner of the packed hall. "Those are Alpha Draven's own words, written and signed, demanding the permanent removal of a six year old child from his family's succession, following what this office can now confirm was a coordinated abduction carried out on Steele territory two nights ago."A ripple of low, furious murmuring moved through the assembled council, and Caius let it settle before continuing, his expression grim and unflinching."I intend, in this session, to lay out the full record of events leading to this letter, in order, without omission, so that every rep

“This session will now address the matter of Vera Kessler,” Caius said, moving briskly to the next item on the docket the moment the heavy double doors closed behind Draven’s retreating form.Vera stood up smoothly from her bench in the second row when her name was called. Vivienne noted the particular, stark steadiness in the woman’s posture. Vera moved like someone who had already calculated the exact cost of her actions weeks ago, someone who had made full peace with whatever judgment was about to be rendered against her.“Ms. Kessler,” Caius said, leaning over his notes and peering down at her. “You have already provided this council with a full accounting of your role in nearly completing a transaction that would have delivered sensitive security information about a minor’s schedule and vulnerabilities directly to Alpha Draven’s operatives. You have also cooperated fully in the investigation that followed. I want the record to clearly reflect that cooperation, even as this counci