Todos os capítulos de The Alpha Who Threw Me Away: Capítulo 121 - Capítulo 130

Selene’s POVWe leave Vress at four.The drive back to the eastern territories is four hours, which means we arrive at Edrin’s in the dark, which means Talia has dinner waiting and the lights on and the specific quality of a house that has been expecting people and has prepared itself accordingly.Edrin is awake.He is in the sitting room with a book he has not been reading, which I know because the bookmark has not moved from where it was this morning, and he looks up when we come in with the expression of someone who has been tracking the time for hours and has decided not to admit it.“Well,” he says.“Well,” I say.I sit across from him.“The western archive,” he says.“Yes,” I say.“Both documents,” he says.“Both,” I say. “The three-hundred-year-old and Ayla’s.” I pause. “I added a note to the provenance file.”He looks at me.“What did it say,” he says.I tell him.He listens.When I finish he is quiet for a moment.“The chain continues,” he says.“Yes,” I say.“You wrote that,

Selene’s POVCorvin arrives on a Saturday.Mid-May, the territory fully itself now, green in every direction and the mountains wearing it the way they wear all seasons, which is without comment, simply present inside whatever the year is doing.He comes through the front gate at eleven in the morning with his bag and the expression he has developed over five visits, which is the expression of someone who has stopped arriving and has started simply coming home, the specific ease of a person who knows where things are and does not need to orient himself before he begins.He goes directly to the kitchen.He makes tea without asking if anyone wants any.He puts a mug in front of me and one in front of Mara and one in front of Bowen and then he sits down and says, “Tell me what happened in April.”He has had the summary. I sent it, the week we came back, a message that covered the archive and the documents and Ayla’s notation and the provenance file. He acknowledged it and said he wanted t

Selene’s POVI look at the message.Her name was Bren.I look at the woman across the table.At her silver hair and her upright posture and the bag she carried in with the folder inside it and the forty years she has been keeping things that did not belong to her to destroy.She is looking at me.She reads something in my face.“What,” she says.I show her the phone.She reads it.She reads it again.She sets the phone on the table carefully, the way you set something down when your hands need to be empty for a moment.“Nara,” I say. “The historian. Caden’s partner. She has been tracing the Avery genealogy since April.” I pause. “She found Ayla’s parents’ records in the western territories.” I pause. “Her mother’s name.”“Bren,” the woman across the table says.“Yes,” I say.She looks at the folder on the table.She looks at her hands.She looks at me.“I did not know,” she says. “When I came here. I did not know about the genealogical records. I did not know there was an Ayla Avery i

Selene’s POVI read the three messages.Then I hand the phone to Lucian so he can read them.Then I look at Nara’s name on the screen and I call her before I have fully decided to, because the three parts of that message and the word intact sitting at the end of the third one require a voice rather than a screen.She picks up immediately.“The names are intact,” I say.“Yes,” she says.“Show me,” I say.“I am sending a photograph now,” she says.I wait.The photograph arrives.An old document. Much older than the fifty-year record. Older than the three-hundred-year record. The paper has the specific quality of something that has survived by being kept well in a place that understood what it was keeping, the amber-brown of extreme age but intact, the ink faded but legible.In the center.A bond filing.Four hundred years old.And the names.Not removed.Not partial.Full names.I read them.I read them again.I look at Lucian.He has read them on my screen.He looks back at me.“Nara,”

Selene’s POVI wake at five.Not because of the alarm. Because the morning has something in it that requires being awake for, the specific quality of a day that knows what it contains and is waiting for the people inside it to catch up.I lie still for a moment.Then I get up.I dress quietly. I go downstairs. I make tea, not coffee, because this morning feels like a tea morning in the way that some mornings announce their specific requirements without being asked.Two mugs.I carry them through the side entrance and out into the May morning.The grounds are wet with dew. The mountains are doing their five-fifteen thing, which is being the deep blue of something that is about to become itself, the colour that exists for only twenty minutes before the sky commits to morning.I go to the bench.I sit.I put the second mug beside me.I wait.Bren comes at five-thirty.I did not tell her I would be here. I did not need to. She came through the side entrance the way people come through doo