All Chapters of The Alpha's Lost Mate.: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Sophie Steele"Mummy, does this house have a pool?""There's a fountain," I said, distracted, the phone still in my hand, the message still on the screen.Ethan's voice faded back into the villa behind me, already moving toward his next inspection target, Miriam's footsteps following. Rowan took the bags inside. The car reversed down the drive.Dominic had not moved from beside me.I turned the screen toward him without speaking.He read it without rushing as this has always been his custom. His face did nothing, not the controlled nothing of a man suppressing a reaction. The genuine nothing of a man processing information before deciding what to do with it.He handed the phone back.We stood in the entrance, the villa behind us, the drive ahead, the gate at the far end sitting in the late afternoon light.“Not for Gerald….for you.”I had been turning those five words over since the message arrived. Every version of what Helena was ran through my head in quick su

Sophie Steele"Lena," I said, before I'd even sat down, phone to my ear, the envelope on the bed in front of me. "I need you to tell me what fully completed marriage documentation looks like under pack law. What it requires to be legally binding."A brief pause on her end. "Witnesses, signatures from both parties, a registered date, plus filing confirmation from either the civil registry or pack council administration." Another pause. "Why?” "I'll send you photographs in five minutes," I said. "Tell me if what I'm looking at is what I think it is."I ended the call.Then I sat on the edge of the bed.The envelope was a standard white envelope, nothing to announce itself, the kind you could buy from any stationery shop. My name was not on it. Nothing was on it. Helena had simply handed it through the gate bars and it had sat in my coat pocket the entire walk up the drive, the entire process of going inside, checking on Ethan, confirming with Miriam he was settled, g

Ethan Steele "Hello," I said to the ceiling.The ceiling did not answer, which was fine, because I was not really talking to it. I was testing the acoustics. Every room had different acoustics and you had to test them in the morning when it was quiet, because that was when you could hear the room properly, before all the adults filled it up with their noise.This room had excellent acoustics. My voice came back to me clean, with a slight depth to it that the ceiling being so high produced. I approved of this.I lay in bed for approximately thirty more seconds, which was my standard assessment period after the acoustic test, and then I got up.The floor was cold through my socks, which I had kept on because Miriam always said cold floors were the enemy of good mornings and I had no reason to disagree. I went to the window first.The garden below was empty. Early light, the kind that was pale and not fully committed yet, lay across the hedges, across the path, across t

Sophie Steele"He came to my office," Caius said. "Personally. No representative, no solicitor. Just Richard."I was still sitting with the envelope against my chest. I put it down on my lap because I needed my hands. Not to do anything with them. I just needed to not be gripping something so tightly."When exactly?" I asked."Twenty-two days before his death," Caius replied. "He called ahead, which surprised me. Richard Steele was not someone who called ahead for things. He was someone who appeared, which meant he had considered this visit carefully enough to want me to be prepared for it.""What was he like though?” I asked. "When he came."Caius paused at the question. The kind of pause that was genuinely considering, not performing consideration."Clear," he said finally. "He was ill, visibly, in the way that people in the final stages carry it without entirely managing to conceal it. But mentally he was completely clear. He had notes. Two pages, handwritten, ever

Lena"Done," I said to no one in particular, setting the last folder in its correct position on the shelf.The small office had been, for the past two weeks, the most active room in the villa that no one officially acknowledged. Files in, files out, evidence assembled, council records cross-referenced, payment trails constructed into something coherent enough to put in front of people who made decisions. All of it passing through this room, through my hands, through the particular efficient machinery of a job I had been doing for ten years without ever quite stopping to consider what it cost.Now the cost could be counted. The folders were filed. The documents were with Caius Holt's office. The petition was dismissed.I sat in the chair, pulled the last stack of materials toward me, and began the final reorganisation. Not because it was urgent. Because the alternative was sitting with the specific feeling that arrived when something you had been running t