The Captain's Forbidden Mate のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 21 - チャプター 30

COLEI had caught the scent almost a minute before I said anything, some old pack sense telling me to double check before raising an alarm that could get someone hurt if I'd misjudged the situation. But there was no mistaking it now, a wolf scent unfamiliar and underneath it something else that made the hairs on my arms prickle up. Silver polish. The kind pack trackers used to mask their own scent from prey that they were stalking.Someone had been hunting us."Astra, get her to the car." I said, already scanning the tree line. "Now.""Cole-" Lena began."Now, Lena. Please." I didn't look away from the tree line long enough to see her reaction but I heard her footsteps retreat with Astra's, faster than I expected, some new wolf-quick reflex already serving her well even hours into having it.I stood alone in the clearing, waiting, every sense straining towards the tree line where that scent kept circling, closer and then farther as if whoever it belonged to was deciding if tonight was

COLENoah's cousin turned out to be younger than I expected, maybe twenty-five, with the nervous energy to spare, as he stood at Noah's kitchen table, eyes flicking towards the windows like he expected someone to be watching over his shoulder. His jacket was still up, even inside the warm kitchen, the hood pulled up over his head like he never expected to sit down in a place where he wasn't instantly on edge."You shouldn't have called me here," he said, before any hellos. "If Ridgeview finds out I'm talking to you about this, I'm as good as dead. You understand that, right? That what I'm about to tell you could get me killed.""Then why are you here?" I asked.He looked at Lena for a long moment, some sort of guilt flickering across his face. "Because I've been quietly digging into something that never sat right with me for the last three years, and I think she should know what I found before it's too late to matter," he said, pulling a worn folder out of his jacket and setting it do

COLEI expected my father to oppose me at every turn. I expected him to rail against the delay, against the deadline, against the ceremony, against my unwillingness to coerce Lena into agreeing to this charade willingly. I did not expect him to ask to speak with her in private, and the fact that he'd done so unsettled something deep in my gut as I drove to his house that night.He greeted us at the door himself, which was not surprising in and of itself but was made so by the fact that my father did not greet us at all. Guests at his home were expected to stand in his study until he summoned them, and the sight of him in the front foyer, standing beneath the soft glow of the porch light, his hands clasped loosely at his back, was enough to make my stomach knot itself into a tight, unhappy ball. "Lena," he said, and there was something in his carefully measured tone that had me wincing even before he'd finished speaking. "Thank you for coming. I know you have little reason to believe a

COLEI snatched the phone from her hand before her fingers had completely registered what they were seeing, my entire body tensing at the sight of those three innocuous words blinking on the screen."Who is this?" I said out loud, already dialing the number back before either of us had agreed that it was a good idea.It rang twice before the phone was picked up, the voice on the other end unfamiliar, younger than Elias Thorne, and sharper, with an almost amused edge to it as it greeted me."Cole Arden. I was hoping I'd get you instead of her. Saves us both time.""Who are you? What do you know?""I know your father has been lying to you about the shield clause." The voice said. "It's real, technically, buried deep enough in Silverclaw's old code that most modern pack members have never even heard of it. But it doesn't work like he tells her it does. The shield only holds if both parties enter the bond willingly and with full and complete knowledge of every possible consequence. If you

COLEWe left the house close to midnight. Lena didn’t say much on the drive back. I didn’t push her.Noah was still up when we got to the apartment, laptop open, surrounded by printouts. He looked up the second we walked in.“I found something,” he said. “About the number that texted Lena.”“You traced it?” I asked.“Not exactly. But I ran the pattern past my cousin. He says it’s not a Ridgeview burner. Not Silverclaw either. It pings off a tower near the old warehouse district downtown. Nobody from either pack has business down there. Hasn’t for years.”“Thorne,” Lena said.“Maybe. Or someone working with him.” Noah turned the laptop around. On the screen was a grainy photo, clearly pulled from an old newspaper archive. A group of people standing outside a building, dated twenty-two years back. “This is the last known photo of the Corwin alliance leadership before the massacre. I found it buried in an old digitized newspaper archive nobody’s looked at in years.”Lena leaned in close.