All Chapters of The Alpha's Lost Mate.: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

Lena woke to the smell of coffee already made, which was, she'd discovered over the past several weeks, one of the small, specific pleasures of no longer living quite so carefully alone, and she found Rowan in the kitchen, sleeves pushed up, attempting something that looked, from the doorway, considerably more ambitious than his usual competence with breakfast suggested."What is that?" she asked, leaning against the doorframe."An omelet," Rowan said, with the particular confidence of a man who had not yet checked whether the pan was actually hot enough. "I watched a video.""You watched a video," Lena repeated, amused."Miriam was busy," Rowan said, as though this explained everything. "I wanted to surprise you.""You've succeeded," Lena said, watching the eggs stick stubbornly to the pan despite his best efforts. "Though perhaps not in the way you intended."He laughed, unbothered, and scraped the mess onto two plates anyway, and they sat together at the small kitchen table, eating

"I’ll see you shortly, then,” Caius said, gently setting the receiver back onto its cradle.He gathered the heavy manila folder, now thick with the weight of every closed file, sealed testimony, and legal draft it contained. Standing, Caius buttoned his suit jacket and retrieved his leather briefcase.As he walked down the grand marble steps of the archival building and stepped into the crisp autumn air, he realized something that brought a rare smile to his face.Driving out toward the Steele villa, a route he had once traveled under the most grim, life-or-death urgency, was now something he was genuinely looking forward to.The afternoon drive through the winding mountain roads was calm and scenic, the trees displaying brilliant shades of amber and deep crimson along the highway.When Caius pulled his sedan up to the grand wrought-iron front gates of the Steele estate just past midday, the heavy barriers swung open smoothly without delay.Dominic was already standing outside on the

Sophie had agreed to the visit cautiously, on the condition that Vera come to the villa itself rather than meet them somewhere unfamiliar, and that Rowan remain nearby, not because she still distrusted Vera completely, but because a year of careful vigilance had taught her that even good intentions were sometimes better handled with a witness close at hand.Vera arrived precisely on time, dressed considerably more plainly than Sophie remembered from the council sessions, with none of the composed professional detachment she had once carried into every conversation. She stood in the entrance hall with the particular stiffness of someone who had rehearsed what she wanted to say several times and had still found herself unprepared for the moment when she would actually have to say it.“Thank you for allowing this,” Vera said. “I know I have no right to ask anything further from this family.”“You said you had something to say in person,” Sophie replied, neither warm nor cold as she waite

Sophie sat with Dominic and the whole family crowded around Lena's laptop the evening the draft finally arrived, and the unexpected section, when they reached it, turned out to be nothing more alarming than a photograph the magazine had sourced independently, an old regional archive image of Richard as a young man, standing in front of the villa decades before any of them had been born, included, the editor's note explained, because their research had turned up the original blueprint filings for "an unnamed private renovation" in the east wing, dated to the same year Sophie turned fifteen, and they'd wanted to honor the man who'd quietly started it all. Sophie cried reading the accompanying paragraph, and asked for exactly one change, a line correcting "unnamed renovation" to read, simply, "a father's patient love, built one board at a time." The magazine agreed without argument. The piece went to print two weeks later, and life at the villa settled, gratefully, back into its own ordi

Sophie was curled against Dominic on the couch, the house quiet with Ethan long asleep, when she found herself, without quite planning to, asking the question that had been circling gently at the edges of her thoughts for weeks."Do you ever think about more children?"Dominic went still beside her, and for a moment she wondered if she'd surprised him too much to answer, but when he spoke, his voice carried none of the hesitation she'd half expected, only genuine consideration."I do," he admitted. "More than I've said out loud, actually. I've been careful not to bring it up, because I didn't want you to feel any pressure, given everything you already gave up rebuilding your relationship with this family, and everything Ethan's already been through.""I appreciate that carefulness," Sophie said. "But I've been thinking about it too, and I wanted to actually talk it through honestly, rather than let it sit unspoken between us.""Tell me what you're thinking," Dominic said, shifting sli