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Home / Werewolf / Divorcing the Blind Alpha / Chapter 191 - Chapter 200

All Chapters of Divorcing the Blind Alpha: Chapter 191 - Chapter 200

226 Chapters

Chapter 191

Penelope's POV"Thomas." I was moving before I even finished saying his name, closing the distance across the yard.He looked wrong. Pale, unsteady, one hand pressed to his side. Axton reached him first, catching him under the arm before his knees gave out."Miss Penelope," Thomas rasped. "You need to hear this before anyone else does.""You are meant to be inside," I said, my heart hammering. "Resting. Why are you out here.""Because I saw her," Thomas said. "An hour ago. Through the office window. A woman, moving along the tree line with two men I did not recognise. I followed far enough to hear them.""Hazel," Kael said.Thomas nodded weakly. "She was not talking to smugglers. She was talking to someone about a shipment. Not goods. A person."The yard went very still."What person," I said, though some cold, certain part of me already knew."She said a name," Thomas said. "Hazel did. She said, once the girl from the Ashcombe line crosses tonight, everything falls into place."My st

Chapter 192

Penelope's POVThomas's hand was shaking too hard to hold the phone steady, so I took it from him and answered."You should not have picked that up," a woman's voice said. Calm. Amused. Nothing like the voice I had heard threatening Julian's finances hours earlier, and yet unmistakably the same person."Marguerite," I said. "Or Hazel. I am told you answer to both."A soft laugh. "Clever girl. I always did like that about you, even before we met properly.""We have never met.""Not properly," she agreed. "Though I have been closer to your family than you realise, Penelope. Longer than you have been alive, in fact."Beside me, Kael had gone rigid, every muscle in his body locked tight, his eyes fixed on the phone like it might bite him."You have got a girl from the Ashcombe line crossing that ridge tonight," I said. "I want her name.""You want a great many things tonight," Marguerite said. "Your mother's line back. Your ex husband's dignity. My son's forgiveness, though that one is no

Chapter 193

Penelope's POVThe clearing at the top of the quarry path opened up all at once, moonlight spilling across broken stone, and there she was.A girl. Younger than I expected, sixteen at most, chained at the wrist to a post driven into the rock, her eyes wide and wet in the low light."Do not move," a man's voice said from the tree line, and two figures stepped out flanking the girl, both armed, both watching us with the flat, practised calm of men who had done this before."Where is your mother," I said to the dark, though I already knew she was close. I could feel it, the same way Aria had felt her blood on the wind an hour earlier."Right here." Marguerite stepped out from behind the largest boulder, unhurried, dressed plainly, nothing about her marking her as the woman who had spent a decade building a smuggling network under a dead woman's silence. "You came faster than I expected.""Let her go," Kael said. His voice did not shake this time."You still have not asked me the only que

Chapter 194

Penelope's POV"Fine," Marguerite said.The word hung in the clearing, too easy, too calm, and every instinct in me screamed that it was wrong before the man beside the girl even moved.He did not release her. He drew a blade.I did not think. I moved.Aria tore loose the second my feet left the ground, the world narrowing to fur and moonlight and the animal certainty of distance closing fast. I heard Kael shout something behind me, heard the second guard shift to intercept, and then there was no more room for hearing anything except the girl's scream and my own pulse hammering in my ears.I hit the first guard before the blade finished its arc, the impact driving us both into the stone, his knife skittering off into the dark. He was strong, stronger than I expected, but fear makes men clumsy, and he was afraid of exactly the right thing.Behind me, I heard Kael's wolf answer mine, a second snarl joining the first, and the second guard's shout turned into something closer to a scream.

Chapter 195

Kael's POV"You let her go," my father said, when I finally reached him by phone an hour later, the quarry still swarming with regional enforcers behind me."I did not let her do anything," I said. "She left before we could stop her. That is different.""Is it," he said. "Or did some part of you want her to walk away clean."I did not answer right away, because the honest answer sat uncomfortably close to yes."She raised a valid question," I said instead. "About the treaty. About which families it actually protects."Silence on the line, long enough to tell me I had struck something true."That treaty is older than you," my father said finally."That is not an answer.""The Ashcombe line was never formally included," he admitted, quiet now, none of his earlier fury left in his voice. "There were negotiations. Complications. It never made the final draft.""So she was right.""She was right about the paperwork," my father said. "She is still a woman who chained a child to a rock to pr

Chapter 196

Penelope's POVThe depot office smelled like burnt coffee and old paper, and I had never been so grateful for anything ordinary in my life.Rosalind was asleep on the small cot in the back room, finally, a proper doctor having checked her over twice before agreeing to let the rest of us breathe. Axton stood by the window with his phone pressed to his ear, coordinating with the regional enforcers about the quarry. Zaria had gone to make tea nobody particularly wanted but everybody needed the ritual of."You should sit down," Kael said, appearing beside me with two mugs, handing one over. "You have been standing for four hours straight.""I do not think I know how to stop yet," I admitted, but I took the mug, and I did sit, and the exhaustion hit me all at once the second my body allowed it.Kael sat beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched, and for a long moment neither of us said anything at all."She was right about one thing," I said eventually. "The treaty. My father is g

Chapter 197

Penelope's POV"Your father wants to see you," Zaria said, setting a fresh cup of coffee in front of me before I had even finished blinking the sleep out of my eyes. "He heard about the treaty gap before the council session even started.""Of course he did." I rubbed my face. Three hours of sleep on Axton's office cot had done almost nothing. "How angry.""Hard to say over the phone. He used the word disappointed twice, which from your father usually means furious."I pulled myself upright, every muscle protesting. "Get the car."The Hastings estate looked exactly the same as it always did, grand and grey and utterly indifferent to the fact that I had spent the night chasing a smuggler through a quarry. My father was waiting in his study, standing at the window with his back to the door."You could have called me before wading into a hostage situation," he said, without turning around."There was not exactly time for a phone call.""There is always time," he said, finally facing me. H

Chapter 198

Julian's POV"Three names," Khalani said, spreading the printouts across my desk. "All linked to shell companies that funnelled money through the same Geneva account Hazel exposed two nights ago.""So the article was real," I said. "Even if she used it as a weapon against me, the money trail underneath it was true.""Looks that way," Khalani said. "Which means somewhere in your own financial mess, there might be a thread that leads straight to Marguerite's operation."I sat back in my chair, exhaustion pressing down harder than it had all week. The board meeting that morning had been brutal, three hours of enforcers and investors demanding answers I did not fully have, all while I tried to explain that yes, I had funded sabotage against a rival pack out of jealousy, and yes, I understood exactly how that looked."Send everything to Axton," I said. "All three names. Let Penelope's people cross reference it against what they already have.""You are just handing over intelligence. No con

Chapter 199

Kael's POV"Your father's records go back further than his," Eliora said, sliding a dusty ledger across the kitchen table. "I found these in the old archive room while you were busy losing your inheritance for a good cause.""I did not lose my inheritance," I said, pulling the ledger toward me. "I am just going to spend the rest of my life earning it back on different terms.""Poetic," Eliora said. "Also possibly delusional, but I support it. Look at page forty."I flipped through brittle pages filled with my grandfather's cramped handwriting, shipping manifests and border crossing logs decades old. Page forty stopped me cold.A property deed. A cabin, listed under a false name, deep in the forest along the old quarry road. Purchased the same year my mother supposedly died."That is her," I said quietly. "That has to be her.""I thought so too," Eliora said. "Your grandfather must have known. Or at least suspected. Why else would a random cabin purchase end up buried in the family arc

Chapter 200

Kael's POV"Put it down," Marguerite said quietly, nodding toward the photograph still trembling in my hand."You kept all of this," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "Every year. You built an entire wall of me and then let me believe you were dead.""I never stopped being your mother," she said. "I simply stopped being safe to be near.""That is not the same as loving someone.""Is it not?" Something raw broke through her composure, the mask I had watched her wear at the quarry finally cracking entirely. "I stood outside your school for your ninth birthday, Kael. I watched you blow out candles through a window because I could not risk your father recognising me in a crowd. Tell me again that is not love. Tell me it is easier to believe I simply did not care."My phone was still pressed to my ear, Penelope's voice tight with urgency. "Kael, is she there. Are you safe.""I am safe," I said, not taking my eyes off my mother. "For now.""I am not here to hurt you," Marguerite said

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