Marked By The Rogue Alpha의 모든 챕터: 챕터 91 - 챕터 100

Alarick"The western farm road's gone at the culvert," Owen said. "Second wash-out this year. The families out there are carrying feed in by hand.""Then send the work crew today, not Monday." I signed the patrol sheet he'd put in front of me and pushed it back. "And put two of the pack's trucks on the run until it's fixed. They shouldn't be carrying anything by hand.""Yes, Alpha."The computer at my elbow sat dark, and I'd checked it four times since he came in.Owen had noticed. He was good enough not to say so, and he went on to the trade agreements, one for the northern timber and one renewing the tannery contract, both of which had been sitting three weeks because I'd been busy building a sworn statement for a King instead of running my own pack.I read them properly. I signed them properly. Then the computer chimed, and I had it open before the sound finished.The crown's seal came up at the top.The petition of Alpha Alarick Holt of Bloodmoon is answered as follows. The petiti

Meredith"Nothing on the eastern crossings," Silas said. "Nothing on the water road. Every gate between here and the coast has the case described down to the hinges, and not one wolf has seen it.""Then he's gone to ground somewhere," Castien said."Men don't go to ground with a case that valuable." I pushed the map back across the table. "Think about what he actually needs. Money, first, and a great deal of it, because he can't go home again. Then protection, because Benic wants him and the crown wants him and one of them will get him if he's standing alone.""So he's looking for a house to stand behind," Silas said."He's looking for a buyer." I looked round at them. "And not just anyone with money. Half the packs in the coalition would take those letters straight to the King and trade them for favour, so he can't go near them. He needs somebody who'd rather keep the truth in a drawer than hand it over."Silas started listing. Two of Silverthorn's old trade rivals, the Ostmark famil

Meredith"You asked me what I wanted.""This isn't the same.""It is." I turned the phone face down on the table. "It's just harder now."Kieran's mouth opened and then didn't do anything with itself. He stood there a moment with that answer sitting on him, and then he looked away from me, at Castien, and I watched him make himself change direction."Explain it to me properly," he said. "If she walks through that door and into your protection, what is she standing in?""She's standing under my authority, and only mine, for as long as she's inside the receiving house." Castien didn't soften it or dress it up. "That cuts both ways, Alpha. You can't order her out of it, and neither can Holt. No armed wolf of either pack gets past the inner doors, mine included, and any instruction given to her by anybody who isn't me carries no weight in that building.""And the custody the King wanted?""Is a separate matter entirely, and this doesn't begin it. She's not entering royal custody, no annul

MeredithFor half a second, it was only his voice.Five years of hearing it call my name from the kitchen or up the stairs, and something in me turned toward it before I could stop myself.Then the last hours caught up with me.He had changed his shirt. Fixed his hair. He stood at the top of the steps with the document case angled where I couldn’t miss it. He had prepared for this moment. To him, I hadn’t come all this way for the truth he was holding.I had come back to him.Kieran was still there at the far end of the bond, faint as a thread but open, exactly as he had promised. He could have been sitting in the empty seat behind me. He wasn’t because I had asked him to stay, and he had listened.Alarick hadn’t won anything.I looked at the case and not at his face."I came for the letter."Something moved through his expression and he put it away fast."It's safe." He gestured at the doors. "Come inside, Meredith. There are things you need to understand before he takes it off me."

MeredithHe closed the empty case and set it square on the table in front of him, and then he waited.I knew what he was waiting for. He wanted me to ask what it had cost him to carry that page three hours across coalition roads and place it in another man’s hands—and beneath that, what the sacrifice meant for us.The officer at the near end of the table didn't move. The recorder's light stayed red beside his elbow. Alarick's eyes went to him once and came back, but he didn't say a word about it, because a witness in the room had been my condition and he'd signed it in writing that morning.So I let the quiet sit and I didn't fill it."You saw what I just gave up," he said finally. "I could have burned that page in my own yard. There isn't a wolf alive who'd have known there was ever a page to burn.""I know."He waited for the rest of it, and the rest of it didn't come. His thumb moved once along the edge of the case."Meredith—""What did you think would happen," I said, "When you c