The Captain's Forbidden Mate のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 41 - チャプター 50

COLELena fell asleep on my couch before noon, still in yesterday's clothes, one hand curled loosely around a mug of tea that has long since gone cold.I did not wake her. She had earned the rest, and so had I but the sleep was not coming easy for me like it seemed to be coming for her. Instead, I sat on the floor by the couch, back against the cushions close enough to hear the steady rhythm of her breathing, and let myself watch her for a while. Newly claimed. Newly mine, in whatever way the word actually meant when the ceremony and torches were stripped away and got down to the plain fact of it.It meant this. Her safe, asleep and trusting me enough to let her guard down completely in my apartment while half the council might be hunting for reasons to tear us apart. It meant wanting to be the kind of mate who deserved that trust.My phone buzzed against the coffee table, low, and I caught it before the sound could wake her.Damien. Can we talk? Alone. Not about the council. About my

COLEAstra called before sunrise."Get to the training field," she said, the only greeting I heard out of any number of times she'd called in the few years we'd known each other. Her voice was tense, only a handful of occasions in the years that she'd called me had been like this. "Bring Lena. Now, Cole, not after coffee."She hung up before I could press and ask why. Lena was already stirring beside me as I called, blinking awake to hear my voice."Astra," I said, answering the question that hadn't left her lips. "She wants us at the field. It sounded serious."She was already out of the bed pulling at clothes by the time I'd finished the sentence. It was the two weeks of training that she had apparently learned that she needed to act quickly. We reached the field before even fifteen minutes had passed. It was still gray with early light, the mist curled low against the grass.Astra was there, pacing, something she seldom did."What happened?" Lena asked from the walk in, breathless.

COLEMy mother called it a mating gift, though Lena would call it an ambush"She wants to meet you properly," I said, at breakfast, watching as Lena's fork paused, halfway to her mouth. "Not council business. Not ceremony. Just tea, at her place, this afternoon.""Your mother wasn't even present at the claiming.""She doesn't do crowds, never has. Doesn't mean she's not curious about the woman her son bonded his life to, in front of two packs." I reached across the table and stole a piece of toast off her plate, mostly to enjoy watching her bat at my hand. "She'll like you. Probably more than she likes me, most days.""Should I be nervous?""Only if you're planning on lying to her. She can smell a lie before you finish the sentence, comes from raising me, most likely. I gave her a decent amount of practice."Lena narrowed her eyes at me but kept her tongue in her cheek (a talent that would likely come in handy later), and spent the better part of an hour in front of her closet agonizi

COLEWe spent three days staring at Aiden's empty house, and by the end of it I knew why he'd been able to stay sane after twenty-two years of this. Whatever patience it took to do what he was doing had a price, and it was one he'd only paid for once.Noah was following Elder Okafor's every move, as he did for everyone, recording the relevant information on a growing spreadsheet on his laptop that detailed where she was at any given time of the day and told us very little at all. Council building in the mornings, a small house on the edge of Corwin territory in the afternoons where she spent hours alone, with no visitors discernable from the outside, and evenings that varied in location but never later than nine o'clock.“She’s either innocent,” Noah said, pushing his laptop aside to slide it across the table to my side where Lena was waiting. "Or she's better at this than anyone we've ever dealt with.“Or she’s scared,” Lena said. "People who are afraid tend to have small lives. Small

COLEThe rink was louder than I expected, possibly because I was having trouble distinguishing between normal noise and the silence of the council chambers.I strapped on my skates in the locker room as my teammates chattered over me, mundane stories about stats and rankings interspersed with gossip concerning a certain sophomore boy's disastrous date last weekend, and I exhaled the first breath I'd taken in a week. No matter what was going on in my personal life, at least I knew this part of it. Skates, ice, a puck, and eleven other men who trusted me to lead them through a game of sixty minutes of simplicity."You good, Captain?" Marsh, my line member, wandered into the stall next to me, assessing me more than I liked to be assessed at a time like this."I'm good.""You've been a ghost for the last month.""Family matters. This is the last weekend I was gone." I thumped him on the shoulder, cutting off whatever else he wanted to say on the matter. "Let's just win tonight."Lena was