All Chapters of Rejected and Pregnant with Alpha Twins: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

~Selene's POV~The morning of the birthday, I'm awake before the household stirs, standing at the kitchen window watching the light come up over the garden, thinking about who's coming today and what it means that all of them are coming.Miriam arrives first, earlier than anyone else, carrying something she made in Silvermere and has clearly carried all this way with considerable care, wrapped in cloth she's kept intact since before we left the city. She doesn't tell me what it is yet. She simply sets it on the kitchen table and says, "For later," and busies herself with the kettle as though this is any other morning.Dax is at the entrance, as always, present in the position he's held since Silvermere, watching the road with the same unhurried vigilance he's brought to every entrance he's ever guarded. But today I've told him specifically that he's allowed inside, not simply positioned at the door managing who comes and goes, but inside, present, part of the gathering rather than its

~Caden's POV~He watches the gathering from the edge of the room, the way he's learned to watch most things now, without needing to manage or direct any of it.Selene stands near the center of it without performing anything, without the particular effort he remembers from Cresthaven functions years ago, when even her ease had to be maintained deliberately for an audience that was always assessing her, always looking for the crack beneath the composure. There's none of that today. She simply exists in the room, talking with Miriam near the window, checking on Lior without hovering over him, letting the gathering happen around her rather than orchestrating it the way she once would have, out of necessity, when nothing in her life was safe enough to leave unmanaged.Lior is handling the cake situation with the efficiency of someone who has correctly calculated that today, of all days, he will be accommodated regardless of what he attempts. Caden watches Petra intercept him twice, Dax onc

~Selene's POV~Councilwoman Vera arranges the meeting herself, which tells me before anything else is said that it matters more than the plain wording of her invitation suggests."Two women," she tells me, in her office at Pack Hall, the morning light coming through the narrow windows at the same angle it always does at this hour. "Both Silverborn. Both known to the elder council for some years, though not widely known beyond it. I think it's time the three of you met.""You've known about them the whole time," I say. It isn't quite a question."I've known about them for longer than I've known about you," Vera says, without apology, the plain factual delivery she brings to most things. "The council has maintained quiet contact with scattered Silverborn lines for decades, in case any of them required support, or in case the bloodline ever needed to be gathered for some purpose none of us could yet name. We did not force contact. We waited until it seemed useful, or necessary, or simply

~Third-Person Close, Patrol Captain Ferran~Ferran has served as senior patrol captain under two Alphas now, long enough to have watched Cresthaven change shape more than once, though never quite like this.He remembers the pack under the old Alpha, Caden's father, a place that ran on discipline and distance, respected because it was strong and obeyed because obedience was simply how things worked, not because anyone particularly loved the arrangement. He remembers the early years of Caden's own tenure, competent and controlled, a pack that functioned well enough but held itself at a certain remove even from its own members, the specific coldness of an Alpha who had never been taught any other way to lead.He remembers, too, the year everything nearly came apart. The rejection. The strange months afterward when Caden moved through Pack Hall like a man carrying something he refused to name. The border trouble with Ironmere escalating past the point anyone comfortable could ignore. He r

~Caden's POV~Conrad's final summary arrives with the same formal thoroughness that has characterized every report he's sent over the past year, though this one carries a different weight, being explicitly the last.Caden reads it at his desk in the late afternoon, the report itself unremarkable in structure, a professional closing document of the kind Conrad's firm apparently produces for every completed engagement, summarizing the arc of the investigation from its earliest findings through to its current state of resolution. The shell company traced to Vivienne's father's network. The timeline confirmed and reconfirmed against every available record. Dorian's involvement documented in full. The eventual exposure, the Council session, the collapse of Vivienne's credibility at the inter-pack level, all of it laid out in the plain factual register Conrad has used throughout, no embellishment, no unnecessary editorializing.It's the final line that stops him.*The subject demonstrated t