Semua Bab The Alpha's Rare Omega Heir : Bab 161 - Bab 170

Elias Vale PovSomewhere in the outer dark, the authors of the death story were running out of versions that still worked.Rowan woke in pieces through the night. Not fully. Enough to drink, to frown at the lamp, to close a weak hand around my finger and then let go. Each time the suppressant held the bond flat, and each time the faint pull Kael and I had felt returned for a breath and vanished. Halvorsen said that pattern was better than silence. He did not say it was safe.Kael handled the estate. I stayed with Rowan. The suite that had been emptied for mourning took him back without ceremony: the cot, the warmer, the low voices. Outside the door the pack moved through a day that had no script. The rites were suspended. The banners stayed down. People found work and did it because standing still made the whiplash worse.Seraphina brought the first outer reactions after dawn. Two allied packs sent hard questions. One neutral office withdrew its condolence letter and replaced it with

Elias Vale PovThe handler and the woman who had muted our son were moving together on our side of the neutral line. Not fleeing into deep territory. Traveling as if they still had work to finish close to the house that had just taken the live packet back.I read Riven’s line again while Rowan slept against my chest. The bond gave a faint, even pressure under the suppressant, like a bruise being pressed. Not open. Present.Kael was already in the command room when I came down with the baby. He had the west-road map open and the low farms marked in a shallow arc outside our border. The gate-ledger face and the healer’s mark were moving through ground that belonged to no strong pack, only tenants and seasonal workers who answered to money.“They are not running for a far border,” Kael said. “They are staying in reach. That means either a second asset we have not found, or a final order that still applies after recovery.”“The second stage,” I said.He nodded once. “Or something tha

Elias Vale PovRecovery was only another kind of loss if we let the people who built the suppressant finish their work.Rowan slept between us through the first deep stretch of night, and the bond moved under the fading marker in uneven waves. Sometimes I felt the weight of his sleep as clearly as the blanket. Sometimes the mute closed again and left only the ordinary sounds of the room. Kael’s breathing stayed steady at my back. Neither of us chased the link. Halvorsen had been clear: let it surface.By morning the marker was lower. Rowan woke hungry and loud about it. The complaint came through the bond a half-second before the sound, clean enough that Kael laughed once under his breath and then went still, as if the sound of his own laugh had surprised him.We fed him. Walked him. Let him look at the light from the east window without taking him into the open garden yet. The estate outside the suite had settled into a working quiet. Banners still down. Watches doubled. People move

Elias Vale Pov The work of erasing the remaining names had not finished when we took the broker out of his counting room.I sat with the copy of the sealed strip after Kael went back to the command room. Our marker was not alone on the list. Three other bloodline notations sat above and below it, each written in the same careful hand. Two had dates beside them. One did not. The note about the map holding while first-stage residual remained present made every name on that list feel like an open door someone else could still walk through.Rowan slept against my chest. The bond carried his sleep in a low, continuous band. The residual marker still blurred the edges, but the mute no longer dropped the link into nothing. When he shifted, I felt it. When the suppressant tried to close, it failed sooner than the day before.Halvorsen came at first light for the panel. He checked the numbers twice before he spoke.“Marker is falling cleanly. No rebound. If this continues, the residual will

Elias Vale PovSomewhere in the territory marked for the undated reservation, a child not yet born was already priced for the same ending we had just struck from the record.The day after the session the estate finally raised the banners. Not for a festival. For a correction the whole house could see. Rowan was carried through the inner courtyard in the sling so the pack could look at him under open light and put the mourning days where they belonged—behind us, unfinished only in the places the suppressant still touched.The bond held the whole walk. Noise. Faces. The spike of his overload when too many people spoke at once. I turned us back toward the wing before it became too much, and Kael cleared the path without being asked. Inside the suite the link settled again, thinner than before the abduction, steadier than it had been at any point since the under-hill site.Halvorsen’s morning panel put the residual marker at the edge of useless for mapping. “One more day at this rate and