All Chapters of The Alpha Who Threw Me Away: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Selene’s POVShe steps away from me to take the call.Not far. Three feet, maybe four, which is enough to lower her voice but not enough to be private, and I stand in the corridor and watch her face because her face is doing something I have not seen it do in two days of proximity and four months of intermittent contact.It is doing something it cannot quite control.Her responses are short. Yes. When. How certain. She asks that last question twice, which tells me the answer the first time was not definitive and she needed it confirmed.Then she hangs up.She stands with her back to me for a moment.When she turns around she has most of the composure back. Most of it. There is a layer underneath it that is not composed and she knows I can see it and she does not try to hide the fact that I can see it.“Tell me,” I say.“That was the northern council’s administrative office,” she says. “Specifically the director of internal affairs.” She pauses. “There has been a complaint filed. Again

Lucian’s POVReth has not left yet.He is standing in the entrance hall with his coat on and his phone in his hand when I come downstairs, and the expression on his face is the one I have seen on people who have just received information they were not expecting and are deciding what to do with it before anyone else sees their reaction.I called Selene’s name because she was the one who spoke to Reth and she needs to hear this before it spreads further than the two of us, which it will, given enough time.She appears from the corridor with Halsey two steps behind her.She reads my face the way she reads things, immediately and without requiring it explained.“Reth,” she says. Not a question.“He went to the administrative office,” I say. “He called me because you told him to call you directly and I was closer.”She looks at Reth.“Tell me,” she says.Reth looks between us both.“The access log,” he says. “For Halsey’s commendation filing.” He pauses. “It was accessed four times within

Selene’s POV“Ms. Avery.”Male voice. Older than middle-aged, carrying the specific weight of someone who has been in authority long enough that it has become his natural register rather than something he puts on. Calm. Deliberate.“Yes,” I say. “Who is this.”“My name is Director Crane,” he says. “I chair the Northern Council’s internal affairs committee.” A pause. “I apologise for the hour. I would not call on a Friday evening unless the matter was time sensitive.”I look at Lucian.He is already watching my face.“What is the matter,” I say.“The complaint filed against Observer Halsey,” Crane says. “I am calling because the administrative flag filed this afternoon by Senior Officer Reth has triggered an expedited review of the complaint’s origins.” He pauses. “We move quickly when there is evidence of a process breach, Ms. Avery. Whatever else the council’s reputation may suggest.”“I appreciate that,” I say. “What do you need from me.”“Nothing tonight,” he says. “I am calling as

Lucian’s POVThe room looks at me.Selene. Halsey. Bowen, with his tea and his expression of a man who has just passed a significant weight to someone else and is monitoring how they are carrying it.I come into the room and sit in the remaining chair because standing in the doorway while three people look at me is not a position I intend to maintain.“Since January,” I say. “Bowen told me in January.”Selene is looking at me with the specific quality she has when she is deciding whether something is a breach of honesty or a decision made for reasons she has not yet heard. She does not speak. She waits. This is one of the things I have learned about her — she gives space for the explanation before she decides what to do with the action.“He came to me because he needed to tell someone,” I say. “And because he wanted to understand it before he told you.” I look at her steadily. “He was not certain how you would receive it and he wanted to think it through with someone who was already i

Lucian’s POVSaturday morning arrives quietly.This is what mornings do after days that have given everything they have — they arrive without announcement, almost apologetically, as if aware that what came before them was significant and they are just the ordinary thing that follows.I am at the window at five-thirty.Not the desk. The window. The mountains are grey and close in the pre-dawn the way they always are, and the grounds are still dark, and somewhere below me the pack house is in its deepest quiet, the hour before anyone else is awake.I think about January.I think about Selene’s face last night when I told her the real reason. The way she listened without interrupting and without performing patience, just actually patient, taking in what I said and deciding what to do with it rather than reacting to it immediately.She said before the day. From now on.I said yes.I meant it the way I have been trying to mean things this year, which is without qualification, without the m