All Chapters of Dumped By The Alpha, I Married His Stepbrother: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

"Who." The word barely left my mouth before Marcus was already scrolling further, his expression tight with concentration. "Doctor Corinne," he said finally, and the name landed like a physical blow. "That's not possible," I said, my voice shaking. "Corinne rebuilt my face. She's protected me since the moment I woke up in that hospital bed. She wouldn't." "Bartholomew's statement claims she was working for Cornelius decades before any of this began," Marcus said. "That her presence in your recovery wasn't coincidence at all, that she was positioned deliberately, the same way Chloe and Regina and everyone else in this conspiracy was positioned." "She saved my life," I said. "Multiple times. She was taken hostage, beaten, nearly killed protecting information about me." "I know," Marcus said gently. "None of this makes sense yet. That's why we need to hear the rest of what Bartholomew actually said, not simply the summary Isolde managed to send." Lucien's jaw had tightened into s

"Are you certain her death was ever as final as everyone assumed."Corinne's words hung heavy in the recovery room, and Lucien's face had gone pale in a way I hadn't seen since the night he first learned the truth about his own birth."My father grieved her for years," he said slowly. "I watched it break something in him that never fully healed. That grief wasn't performance.""Grief for what he believed happened," Corinne said gently. "Not necessarily grief for what actually occurred.""If she's alive," I said, "if she's the one who ordered Corinne attacked, then she's not simply a victim this family failed to protect. She's become part of whatever's still hunting us.""Or she's been forced into that role," Isolde said quietly, having arrived just in time to catch the tail end of the revelation. "The same way so many of us were forced into roles we never chose.""We need to find her," Lucien said, his voice tight with a complicated mixture of hope and dread. "If she's alive after all

"A location."The words landed heavier than anything else Marcus had told us this endless week, and for a moment none of us moved."Where," Mireille demanded, stepping forward with an intensity that revealed exactly how many years she'd spent waiting for this exact confirmation."The council is still processing the full letter," Marcus said, scrolling further. "But the preliminary summary mentions a location three territories north, past the border most packs consider the edge of civilized land. An estate Bartholomew apparently only learned about himself in the final years of his own leadership, hidden even from him until he was deemed trustworthy enough to know.""That's consistent with everything I've theorized," Mireille said, something fierce and vindicated flashing across her face. "Cornelius wouldn't have trusted even his own grandson with that information until he'd proven himself useful enough to warrant it.""Why would Bartholomew leave this information behind now," Lucien as

"Unless every single person in this room agrees to exactly what I require."Cornelius's voice carried no urgency, no threat in the way most dangerous men delivered their demands. Simply certainty, the kind that came from a century of never once being told no and meaning it."We're not agreeing to anything," Lucien said, "until you explain what you actually want.""Direct," Cornelius said, something like approval flickering across his ancient face. "Your mother had that same quality, before she decided disappearing suited her better than confronting me directly."Mireille stepped forward, her composure cracking for the first time since we'd arrived. "You knew I was alive.""Of course," Cornelius said. "I've known everything about everyone in this room for years, Mireille. Watching you build your quiet investigation from that cottage was, frankly, the most entertaining development I've observed in decades.""Then why let it continue," she demanded. "Why let me gather everything I gather

My own eyes stared back at me, wrong in a way that made my chest seize with something colder than fear. "Lucien," I said, my voice sounding distant even to myself. "My eyes." "I see them," he said, holding my face steady between his hands, his own expression carrying a terror I'd rarely seen from him. "Stay with me. Whatever's happening, stay with me." Cornelius pushed himself upright from the floor, his exhaustion visible but his attention locked entirely on me, something between horror and fascination twisting his ancient features. "That's not supposed to happen this fast," he said, almost to himself. "The reaction should take hours, days even, not minutes." "What did you give her," Isolde demanded, gripping my shoulder as Lucien and Marcus helped lower me carefully against the wall. "A concentrated extraction compound," Cornelius said, his voice unsteady now. "Designed to draw out and isolate the specific genetic markers I required. It was never meant for direct injection in