บททั้งหมดของ Her Alpha’s Kryptonite: บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 60

Jeff’s POV Marc saved me a seat on the low wall outside school every afternoon. He never asked if I wanted it. He simply sat down on the same stretch of concrete, left a clear space beside him, and waited with the quiet certainty of a child who had already decided the arrangement was settled. I took the seat. The first day I remained standing because standing felt like the proper distance for the work. The second day I sat because remaining on my feet had started to feel like a refusal of something the boy was offering without words. By the third day the seat belonged to both of us in a kind of way. He brought out half a granola bar without from his bag, broke it cleanly down the middle, held one piece out to me, and kept the other for himself. I took it and ate it without protest. The bar was usually a little crushed from the bottom of his backpack and tasted of oats, it has a faint sweetness, and the dry texture of something that had been sitting in a lunchbox too long, but I ate

Tristan’s POV Jeff’s report was three paragraphs long. I read it standing at my office window, my back to the room. I did not turn around. I held the report at my side without looking at it again and fixed my gaze on the Cresthaven skyline. The silence in the room expanded past the comfortable range before I spoke. “Get me a full background on Marshall Pearce,” I said. “Professional. Financial. Social. Everything.” I did not qualify the request. I did not ask why Marshall had come back, what he had wanted from Jasmine, or how Jasmine had responded. I already knew the relevant information, which was that a man who had abandoned her during a trying time was now standing at her door. Behind me, Jeff remained in the doorway. I could feel the weight of his attention without turning. He had been on this job long enough to read the specific quality of stillness that preceded a decision. This particular stillness was the kind that meant I was working out exactly what degree of consequen

Tristan’s POV Abe spread the photographs across the restaurant table with the quick, precise motions of a man who had been holding the information too long and could finally set it down. His energy was bright, focused, and almost restless. We sat in the same spot we did during our last meeting. Each image landed in sequence, and he talked through them without pause, voice low enough that the surrounding tables remained undisturbed. “The suppression artifact is in a sealed vault beneath a Prague cathedral,” he said. “Not the tourist sections. The sub-levels the Church stopped acknowledging about two centuries ago. It was used to bind a cursed alpha bloodline in the 1700s. The binding held, and the alpha in question lived out the rest of his life stable enough to die of ordinary age instead of the fracture. The artifact has been sitting there ever since, waiting for someone to remember it exists.” I studied each photograph with careful attention, the stone corridor showed water dama

Jasmine’s POV An email was already sitting in my work inbox when I opened it after lunch. It had no subject line that screamed urgency. It was just a clean, professional header, with Fabian Clay’s name at the bottom. It was a personal training invitation, promising bloodline techniques that no Winthrop trainer would know. An address for his new office thirty blocks from Apex. The language was careful, respectful, technical, and framed as an offer between specialists rather than a personal approach. I recognized it for what it was immediately, both a legitimate training offer and a direct approach from someone who had been thinking about me since the resort and had chosen the most justifiable vehicle available. I sat back in my chair and let the cursor hover over the reply button without clicking. The cracked amulet under my blouse warmed against my skin, a low steady heat that had become almost familiar. Fabian’s icy eyes from the resort dining hall rose in my memory—the way they

Jasmine’s POV I ended up accepting Fabian’s offer for the training. His training methods were older than anything Tristan used. They were more precise and calibrated to rare bloodlines in a way that felt less like combat instruction and more like someone carefully turning the dials on a lock that had been sealed for years. I stood in the center of his private training room thirty blocks from Apex, bare feet on a smooth wooden floor that held the faint scent of cedar and something herbal I couldn’t name. The space was quieter than Tristan’s gym, and the interiors looked nothing like Tristan’s, they had no mirrored walls designed to show every flaw in a stance. Just open floor, soft light, and the low hum of wards I could feel at the edges of my awareness even through the amulet. Fabian moved around me with the same patient calm he had always carried. No sudden strikes. No pressure designed to force a reaction. He watched the way I held my shoulders, the way my weight settled, the s