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Todos os capítulos de The Alpha's Greatest Regret: Capítulo 171 - Capítulo 180

234 Capítulos

0167: Treating It As Murder

Benjamin's POVThe clinic door opened before I got my hand to it. John was standing there with the folder already out.He'd been waiting on me."You're early.""I didn't sleep."I took it from him and read it standing up. He stayed by his desk and watched me do it and didn't say a word.Both her wrists were bruised, both of them, all the way around, which means somebody had hold of her.The poison was the same one that killed the child.And nobody puts themselves in a box and buries it.The letter is in her handwriting. The words in it are not hers.And there was a piece of dark blue thread under the nail of her left hand.I read that last line twice and shut the folder."If this was anybody else," I said, "would you call it suicide?""No.""Would you put your name to it?""I haven't, and I won't."I folded the report and put it inside my coat."That's what I came for.""That's it? You've no questions?""I've plenty. None of them are yours this morning." I got the door open and held it

0168:The False Delegate

LISA'S POVI scrubbed the counters twice, then washed the dishes that had been sitting in that sink since the funeral. I wiped down the windowsill where Lily used to line her painted stones up in a row.I left the stones themselves where they were. I couldn't pick them up.The marigolds were out back in that wooden box. She'd planted them three months ago and stood over them for a week waiting for something to happen, and when the first buds came she made me come out and look at them twice. They're going brown at the edges now.I stood out there with the watering can in my hand and didn't water them. Then I came back in and set it down by the door.The house is full of her. Her scarf hangs over the back of a chair. The drawing's still taped to the pantry door — a horse with six legs, because she told me horses run too fast to only have four and she wasn't taking questions on it. Her boots by the step, waiting for feet.I put the can down and went out of that house without locking it b

0169: They Believed The Lie

ALICE’S POVThe waiting room was full before the sun was properly up.I stopped in the doorway with my bag still on my shoulder and looked at it. Mothers with coughing children. Two old men with their sample jars balanced on their knees.A pair of young warriors carrying the same bruises across both sets of knuckles, sitting four feet apart, not looking at each other. A girl with a swollen ankle up on her mother's lap.Every bench taken.Morwen came in at my elbow."Room three wants stitching. Room one's a finger out of its joint. Mrs. Aldern's in two with her hands. And those two can wait."I didn't move."Alice.""They came back."She took the bag off my shoulder and set it behind the front desk. "They never left. They were only frightened." She put a file in my hand. "Three first. That hunter's been going through his bandage for twenty minutes."The boy in room one was about six. His finger sat at an angle that made his mother wince every time she looked at it, and he'd stopped cry

0170: Lavender And Lies

ALICE'S POVI got through the whole morning without saying a word to anybody about that hunter.Twice I nearly did. Once to Morwen, over the appointment page, and once to a warrior on the road who's got no business being told anything. Both times I stopped, because all I've actually got is a man who climbed a fence he didn't need to climb, and if I take that anywhere it turns into the doctor making things up again.So I kept it, and I did the list.John came at about three. He stood in my doorway between patients with his coat creased where he'd slept in it and the skin under his eyes gone the color I write down on other people's charts."You look terrible.""Good afternoon to you too.""I'm not being rude, John. Are you sleeping at all?"He stepped over that question without touching it."Did Cora ever complain to you about her wrists?"I sat back."Her wrists?""Bruising. Swelling. Any pain in them."I thought about it properly, because Cora complained to me about plenty. The draft

0171: They Called It Mercy

BENJAMIN'S POVThe reports were three deep before the light came, and I was already at the desk waiting on them. Border patrol. Harvest requests. Two families still going at each other over eight yards of grazing their grandfathers went at each other over, because in twenty years not one of them has managed to sit in a room together and finish it.My coffee went cold around half five. I drank it anyway. That's the job — a child dies and the grass keeps growing and the fences keep coming down and somebody still has to put his name to eight yards of field.I signed it. Put it on the finished side.The folder with her name on it sat at the corner of the desk, where I'd put it on purpose — close enough to see, far enough that reaching it meant standing up first. There are men on that council waiting on exactly one morning: the one where I stop signing the ordinary work. So I signed all of it. Every harvest request. Pen down.Then I reached for the folder.Callum knocked twice and came in

0172: Hidden Identity

LISA'S POVThe market was going strong by the time I got down there, and that suited me fine, because a crowded row is the safest place to ask a question nobody's supposed to notice you asking. The council was sitting at two o'clock to shut the investigation for good, and every row down there knew it before I did, which had them all talking.I didn't ask anybody about Cole. I asked about visitors. Who'd come through this year. Whether anybody new had turned up in the weeks before my daughter died. Most of them just shrugged at me — travelers come and go, and nobody keeps track of them unless they stay.He stayed.The woman at the candle stall actually gave it some thought, which was more than most of them managed."Quiet fellow. Very polite. Pays what you ask him and doesn't argue about it." She wrapped a taper for the woman ahead of me and passed it over the counter without looking up. "That's about all I've got.""Where's he come in from?""East, I suppose. They all come down the ea

0173: Somebody Knew

BENJAMIN’S POVWe reached the marker at half past nine at night, and I wasn't putting one man on that track until there was light to see it by.Callum said his mind in front of the others. He doesn't do that often, so I let him."Four days of rain, Alpha. Another eight hours isn't going to hurt it any more than the weather already has.""Eight hours of dark with four sets of boots in it will."So we waited by the vehicles until the sky went pale, the two who'd drawn the night watch waiting with us. One of them kept both hands wrapped around a flask of coffee for the better part of an hour and never once opened it. Then we brought the horses off the trailer, because nothing with wheels was getting down that game trail.The eastern woods are cold before sunrise. Four days of rain had left the ground soft and the whole place smelling of wet bark."About thirty paces in, Alpha." The younger one pointed between two old oaks. "Snagged on a branch by the dry creek bed."I got down and put my

0174: Justice Can Wait

BENJAMIN'S POVCallum didn't knock. He was through the door before I'd got my jacket back on the hook, shoulders still wet from the woods."Children from the northern quarters. Six of them are down with the same thing since midnight.""What do you mean?""High fever. Vomiting. Can't keep down food or water. One of the toddlers almost died around three."I took the jacket back off."Has John seen them?""He's at the clinic. Same as doctor Watson."Six children sick in one night, in one row of houses, three weeks after somebody in this territory measured out a poison for a grown woman and a nine-year-old drank it instead. I carried that thought as far as the vehicle and made myself put it down there. A man who's spent three weeks hunting a poisoner will find one in a rainstorm if nobody stops him."Get me John first. Before anything else."The waiting room was full past the walls. Every bench gone, parents standing down both sides with children over their shoulders, a baby going hard ag

0175: Cole Doesn't Exist

LISA'S POVI went up to the Alpha House before noon. The guards had the door open before I made the top step, and they know better than to ask what I want. Nobody's asked me what I want since the day my daughter died.Somebody said he was in a meeting, so I sat on the bench by the window and waited.Benjamin came through a few minutes later, ink on two fingers, a stack of reports wedged under one arm. He set them down on the side table before he turned to me. He wouldn't have done that for most people. He looked tired. I'd bet he hasn't slept since they found Cora's body."I'm sorry to interrupt," I said. "I just wanted to see you.""You're not interrupting."I looked down at my hands and let a moment go by before I went on. "I need a favor. I can't pack Lily's room. I get as far as the door and then I stop." A breath got away from me. "Four times now."I didn't ask him to sit with me, or hold my hand, or tell me it would pass. I let it sit there instead, and let him look at me while

0176: The Mother Lied

JOHN'S POVI was the first one in the building. Nobody had come for the crates yet, so two of them still sat by the back door, empty electrolyte bottles from the northern quarters waiting to go back to the supply house.Twelve children sick, and every one of them home in their own bed. First week in a month where the work had done what work's supposed to do.I went past my desk, past the morning's files, and unlocked the cabinet with her name on it.Lily Scott.The investigation had stopped moving. Cora was dead. Alice was back at work and the pack wanted her back. The council wanted the file shut. Out in the waiting room people were talking about ordinary things again — weather, roofs, whose son was getting married. Nobody had mentioned Lily Scott's name to me in a week.And something in that file wouldn't sit still.So I took it all out and laid it across the desk in order. The toxicology. Every witness statement. My own notes from that afternoon, in handwriting I could barely read b

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