All Chapters of Too Late To Love: I'm Gone Alpha: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Chapter 11 ANTONIO The Vael estate was nothing like I had expected. I had built a picture of it during the drive, as a way to keep myself occupied mentally with something. I had expected something that matched Dominic Vael's reputation. Large, deliberate, the kind of architecture that announced itself with one glance, showing everyone just what Dom's pack was all about.. Power made visible in stone and aura. What I found instead was a house that felt lived in. Dominic didn't keep me waiting long. He came down to meet me in the grand foyer, making it blindingly clear within the first forty seconds that my presence was an infection he couldn't wait to purge. It was a masterclass in hostile efficiency. Fortunately for him, I hadn't expected a welcome mat. The Coalition Council knows I'm here," I said, leaning back slightly, letting my own Alpha aura bleed into the room to counter his. Something shifted in his expression. Not much but enough for me to work on it. "The proposed med

Chapter 13 ANTONIO The first meeting lasted twenty-three minutes. I knew because I checked my watch when it ended, partly out of habit and also because i wanted to know just how long it lasted before i was shut down by Dominic, getting a no on all the proposals that i had made. Dominic sat across from me, wearing the same impenetrable, iron-carved expression he’d worn since my boots first crossed his border. Sitting beside him was Priya. I had traveled here expecting to negotiate directly with the lead scientist, a Dr. Voss. Instead, Dominic had coldly informed me that Dr. Voss was unavailable, and that Priya was more than qualified to act as her proxy. I had accepted the substitution without outward comment. I had no legal grounds to object, but I noted it. I had traveled across territories specifically to look this mysterious Dr. Voss in the eye. Being handed an assistant felt like a calculated insult, but raising a diplomatic fit would only make me look volatile. So, I bit my t

Chapter 15 ANNALISA I looked at Dominic. He was already looking at me, and his expression was going through a lot of changes in seconds. Surprise, confusion, alarm, anger, happiness, guilt.... I tore my eyes away from him and faced Dominic. His knuckles were white, his fists clenched so tightly they were trembling. He was less than a breath away from hurling Antonio through the clinic wall. "Take Eli," I said, my voice barely above a whisper, yet carrying absolute authority. "Anna—" "Please." I kept my voice low and steady. Eli was still, watching all three adults in the room, seeing the tension without having any idea what it was about. "I need you to take him." Dominic stepped closer to me, and for a moment I thought he was going to argue. His hand came to my arm, a firm pressure that gave me support as he lowered his voice and whispered in my ears. "I am not leaving you in a room alone with that piece of trash." "I'm fine." "That's not—" "Dominic." I held his gaze and ke

Chapter 17 ANTONIO I could not let it end like that. The door had closed in my face and I had stood there in the corridor for a full minute, maybe longer, just staring at the closed door like it was going to give me something. Like if I stayed still long enough the conversation would rewind and I would get another version of it, one where I said the right things instead of the wrong ones. But the door stayed closed and the corridor stayed quiet and eventually I walked back to my quarters because there was nothing else to do. I did not sleep. I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about the child's eyes. That was the thing I could not get past. I had looked at that boy in the garden, that small serious child blowing careful puffs of air onto his own scraped knees, and I had felt something drop out from under me. Because those eyes were mine. I knew my own eyes. I had looked at them in a mirror for thirty four years and I knew exactly what they looked like and that

Chapter 19 ANNALISA Eli was breathing. That was the first thing Nurse Dael told me when I came through the door of the medical wing, and I held onto those three words and did not let go of them for a long time. He was breathing. He was stable. He was sitting up against the pillows with the small pulse monitor clipped to his finger and he looked tired in the way he always did after an episode, wrung out and quieter than usual, but his eyes found me the moment I walked in and that was enough. I crossed the room and sat on the edge of his bed and put my arms around him carefully and he leaned into me without saying anything, his small hands clutching my lab coat. We stayed like that for a while. Dominic stood near the door, giving us the space, which was something he always understood without being told. Dr. Faen came in twenty minutes later. She was one of the selected specailaist who had been involved on Eli's heart condition for the past year. She pulled up his latest readings