All Chapters of Dumped By The Alpha, I Married His Stepbrother: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Chloe.She stood between the shelves, her expression calm in a way that made my blood run cold, nothing like the frightened, guilt-ridden woman who had sat across from me in that teahouse only a day earlier."You," I said, stepping back instinctively. "Aldridge said someone on the council. I thought.""You thought it would be someone with a seat and a title," Chloe said, moving closer, her voice steady and unhurried. "Titles are easy to watch. I learned that a long time ago.""You're not on the council," I said."No," Chloe agreed. "But I've been feeding information to someone who is, for years. Long before any of this began unraveling."Aldridge rose from her chair slowly, her expression a mixture of fear and something like vindication. "This is what I wanted you to see. She's the one studying the deterioration. Not to help. To understand its full potential.""You lied to me," I said to Chloe, disbelief and fury tangling together. "In that teahouse. You told me you'd changed, that yo

A medical consultation request.I stared at Marcus's phone, the words refusing to fully register."Approved by whom," I said. "Who signs off on something like that.""The physician," Marcus said grimly. "Or rather, someone in her research network she trusted enough to grant limited access without realizing what that access would eventually be used for.""Then this person has already seen my resistance readings," I said. "Already knows exactly what makes my bloodline different.""It appears so," Marcus said.Lucien's jaw tightened. "We need to find the physician immediately. If she granted this access unknowingly, she may not even realize how compromised her own research has become."We reached her makeshift laboratory within the hour, the physician looking up from her desk with visible confusion at our sudden, urgent arrival."What's happened," she said, alarm creeping into her voice at our expressions."Someone using the name Cornelius requested and received formal access to Elena's

"Augustin Ashford."I said the name aloud, testing its weight, and the room went completely still around me."Bartholomew never mentioned a brother," Isolde said. "Not once, in everything he confessed to this council.""Because he believed him dead," Marcus said, scrolling further through the message. "There's more here.""Read it," Lucien said.Marcus's voice remained steady despite the tension radiating off every one of us. "He says he faked his own death forty years ago, after a disagreement with Cornelius over how the arrangement should be handled. He says Cornelius believed in careful, gradual dilution through marriage. Augustin believed in something faster.""Faster how," I asked."He doesn't say directly," Marcus said. "Only that he's spent four decades developing an alternative approach, one he believes will finally resolve the deterioration permanently, rather than simply delaying it across generations

"There's a problem." The physician's voice cut through the fragile hope that had settled over Martha's room only minutes earlier. "What kind of problem," Lucien asked. "Comparing Elena's readings against Martha's requires a level of testing I'm not equipped to perform here," the physician said. "Proper analysis of this scale needs equipment only available at a handful of specialized facilities, and given everything Augustin's facility represented, I'm reluctant to suggest using anywhere connected to the founding families at all." "There has to be somewhere neutral," Marcus said. "Somewhere with no history tangled up in this conspiracy." "There's a research hospital two territories east," the physician said. "Independent, respected, no connection to any pack politics I'm aware of. I trained there years ago. If they're willing to assist, it could give us exactly the kind of clean environment this work actually needs." "Then we contact them," I said. "Today." Martha's grip on my

The words hung in the room, and for a long moment nobody spoke."That's not possible," I said. "I would remember something like that happening to me.""Not necessarily," Marcus said carefully. "If it happened when you were very young, or without your knowledge entirely.""The surgery," Lucien said slowly. "Corinne's reconstruction. Could something have been introduced then, without her realizing it.""I already thought of that," Marcus said, reading further. "Doctor Anwei says the marker predates the surgery. Based on how deeply it's integrated into your cellular structure, she estimates it's been present since childhood, possibly since infancy.""Since birth," Isolde said slowly. "Elena, that's around the same time Agnes delivered us. The same window Bartholomew's family was already manipulating everything about our early lives."The realization settled cold and immediate. "You think someone did something to me during the birth itself. Before I was ever separated from Isolde, before