All Chapters of Her Alpha’s Kryptonite: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Jasmine’s POVThe message from Garth was addressed to me directly.It came through an official channel, which told me two things before I read a single word. He was confident enough to use my actual name in a formal record. And he believed I was frightened enough that whatever offer he was making would work.I was not frightened, I was interested.I placed the communication face-up on the table and let everyone read it—Tristan, Abe, Wade, Fabian when he arrived from the northern line, Randall on a secure link from the precinct where he was still feeding the human world a version of three districts that would not tear Cresthaven open. Jeff was elsewhere with his arm set and Marc still behind a door none of the zip-tied operatives had reached. The war outside the compound had not paused for correspondence. That did not mean we would answer this one carelessly.“Garth apparently believes I am considerably less intelligent than I am.”For a moment, no one spoke. Then Tristan looked at the

Jasmine’s POVI looked at his face across the conference table and took inventory. THere was something ancient and familiar in the way he carried himself, he had the posture of a man I had somehow been looking at in the mirror my entire life without knowing where it came from.I studied him quietly and softly. Not the soft inventory of reunion. The harder kind, the kind I used on threat assessments and flagged communications and the faces of men who had decided, at various points, that my life was a variable they could manage without my consent. Winton Payne sat in the second chair I had given him and did not fill the silence with charm. That, at least, I respected. Charm would have been another performance, and I had already watched Marshall perform contrition through a door gap. I had no room left for performances that borrowed the shape of family.I asked my questions, and he answered every one.He did not initiate anything. He did not excuse himself. He did not ask me to understa

Marc’s POVI sat across from Winton at the kitchen table and looked at his face. I looked at his eyes, his mouth, the shape of his face, and the way he sat. I did the same thing I always did when I met someone new. I looked until I had enough information. Jeff said that was smart, Mum never told me to stop and Dad watched me do it sometimes and did not interrupt, which meant it was allowed.Winton’s eyes were like Mum’s, not exactly, but close enough that my stomach did a small strange thing, the way it did when something important was true and nobody had explained it yet. His mouth was quiet. He was not smiling to make me comfortable and I liked that better. People who smiled too fast were sometimes the ones who wanted you to get in a car.I already knew who he was. Mum had not made a big speech about it. She told me in the direct way she told me things that mattered. This was Winton, he was her father, and that made him my grandfather in the word way. He had been gone a long time, b

Jasmine’s POVI went to the gym alone, I did not tell anyone where I was going, because I did not want questions, reassurances, or anyone trying to help me make sense of something I was not ready to make sense of yet. The compound could hold without me for a few hours. Marc was safe behind doors Jeff had already bled to keep closed. The trap architecture around Garth’s letter could wait until my hands stopped needing somewhere to put what the origin records had done to the shape of my life. Abe and Winton could sit with their documents. Tristan could sit with the knowledge that his curse and my suppression had been engineered as a matched set by the same man who had tilted a gala night until chance stopped looking like chance.I wrapped my hands and started working the heavy bag.The first few strikes were controlled—the economy Tristan had built into me over months of training, contact points clean, balance under me, nothing wasted. By the time I stopped counting them, control had be

Jasmine’s POVEight people sat around the table, the map had been revised about eight times.I knew because I had watched every revision, questioned every assumption, and made them explain each adjustment until the plan reflected what we knew rather than what we hoped would happen. The position markers had been moved, replaced, and moved again. Every route had been examined for weaknesses, every contingency tested against the information we had gathered, and every decision measured against what Garth was likely to anticipate. Tristan. Fabian. Abe. Wade. Randall on the link. Jeff when his arm allowed him to stand through a full briefing. Winton at the edge of the room, useful and not yet intimate. Me.I walked the perimeter of the table, touching each marker as I went.The eastern approach. The northern perimeter. The positions assigned to our people inside the operation. The routes that remained open if the first line failed. I ran through the logic of each placement, not because I ha