All Chapters of The Alpha's Hidden Heir: Chapter 31 - Chapter 36

Finn watches Everett Stone from the shadowed entrance of a closed laundromat and feels the world shrink to the width of the street between them.Rainwater drips from the cracked awning above his head. The laundromat window beside him is covered with old paper notices, most of them curled at the edges, advertising broken machines, missing hours, and a landlord who no longer answers calls. Inside, the place is dark. Outside, Lark Street looks the way it always does: tired brick, rusted fire escapes, overflowing bins, broken lights, and narrow alleys where people learn to disappear before they learn to hope.Everett does not belong here.That is the first thought that strikes Finn, sharp and almost ridiculous in the middle of fear. Everett stands across the street beside a black car, tall and controlled in a dark coat that probably costs more than Finn’s rent for months. Even without the polished glass of Stone Tower behind him, power clings to him. It sits i

Stone Tower is too quiet when Everett returns.The upper floors always have a controlled kind of silence, the kind money buys with thick glass, private elevators, and assistants trained to speak softly before powerful men. Today, the quiet grates against him. It feels polished over something rotten, like the Harborline Club after sunrise, like Lawson House behind its perfect windows.Everett crosses his office without removing his coat.Dean follows, rain darkening the shoulders of his jacket. He closes the glass door behind them and waits until the lock clicks before speaking.“He lives near Lark Street,” Dean says.Everett stops beside his desk.The words should bring relief. They do not. They only sharpen the danger because close is not found, and found is not safe.“How certain?”“High. Not complete.” Dean takes out his phone and brings up a map of East Alder, Lark Street, the pharmacy ro

Finn wakes with his skin too hot and his stomach already turning.For a moment, he lies still on the thin mattress near the sofa and listens to Owen moving quietly in the kitchen. A spoon taps against a mug. The kettle clicks. The refrigerator hums with its usual uneven rhythm. Everything sounds ordinary, and that makes the sickness inside him feel even more frightening.Ordinary things should not continue when his body is becoming impossible to trust.He presses one hand against his throat and breathes through his mouth. The fever is not as violent as the forced heat at Harborline, but it has teeth. It comes in slow, dirty waves, making his muscles weak and his scent unstable beneath his skin. One moment, he feels almost hidden. The next, warmth rises from him before he can stop it, soft and exposed and wrong.He knows what caused it.The suppressants.The same pills that used to keep him invisible now leave him nauseous, dizzy, and sweatin