All Chapters of The Alpha's Hidden Debts: Chapter 71

Sera's PovWe sat in his room, the three of us, and he talked for two hours.Riven pulled the second chair close to the bed, and I sat on the edge of it nearest my father, and the morning light came up slowly through the window while he gave us pieces of a story he had been carrying alone for thirty years."My name is Cael," he said, near the start, as if that was the first true thing he wanted me to have. "I should have said it sooner. In the room, I only thought of you.""Cael," I said, trying it out. It fit him the way a name fit someone who had grown into it over a long life."I was never a wolf," he said. "I want you to understand that clearly, because it matters for everything that comes after." He folded his hands on the blanket, the same careful posture he had held in the facility chair, though here it looked less like survival and more like simple habit. "I am something older. A remnant, the old texts would call it. The hybrid bloodline was never new. It only became visible a