CLAIMED BY THE FOUR ALPHA BROTHERS のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 71 - チャプター 80

Calla's POVRonan's voice had gone completely flat, stripped of every ounce of composure he'd carried all night, and that flatness scared me worse than the darkness pressing in around us ever could have."Ronan." I gripped the folder tighter against my chest, my other hand reaching for anything solid in the black. "Talk to me. What is that sound?""It followed something." His voice came out low, careful, each word placed like it might set off whatever was moving toward us. "This estate has wards, old ones, built generations ago to keep certain things out of Duskmoor territory entirely. Something's crossed them. Something the wards were built specifically to contain.""Contain from where?""The forest." He said it as the word itself cost him something. "Your forest, Calla. Whatever attacked you that night, whatever's been circling since. It followed a trail here, and I don't know what that trail actually is, but I know it isn't good that it exists at all.""Why would it follow a trail

Calla's POVKnox hit the floor like something had been poured out of him, and the sound of his body landing broke something loose in my chest that I didn't have words fast enough to name."Knox!" I dropped to my knees beside him, hands hovering over his chest, terrified to touch him and terrified not to. His eyes had rolled half-closed, his skin gone gray in a way that had nothing to do with blood loss, because there was no blood. No wound I could find anywhere on him, nothing torn, nothing broken. Just cold, radiating off his skin like he'd been standing in snow for hours instead of seconds."That's not a normal injury," Soren said, already crouched on Knox's other side, pressing two fingers to his throat, his medical training clearly fighting through his own fear. "His pulse is there, but it's slow. Too slow.""What did it do to him?" Daven demanded, voice cracking, his hands hovering uselessly like mine."We need to move him now," Calix said, already reaching under Knox's shoulders

Ronan's POVFour Alpha brothers rallied around one woman in the middle of my own family's estate, and watching it happen, I understood exactly what it meant and exactly what it was about to cost me."How's he doing tonight?" I asked, stepping back into the doorway of the room where Knox lay recovering, his color returned, his brothers crowded close enough around him that I felt like an intruder standing in my own house."Stable." Soren didn't look up from his brother's chest, still monitoring, still careful. "Whatever she did, it held. His pulse hasn't dropped again."I looked over at Calla, kneeling beside Knox, her hand still on his shoulder, and at Daven, just hovering close enough to touch her but not; and at Calix, pacing a narrow line, like a guard dog of a perimeter at the foot of the bed. Four men, orbiting the only stable point in a room that refused to stand still.My father had wasted forty years of his life trying to find someone like her. Not her in particular, but the

Calla's POVMonday morning demanded I walk into that office and act like my biggest concern was a project deadline, not two rival packs and a conspiracy that reached into both of them.“You look like you wrestled a badger,” Priya said. She slid in, sloshing one of her coffee cups to my desk without asking. “Bad weekend?”“You have absolutely no idea.” I cupped the ceramic gratefully, both hands wrapping against the warmth. I appreciated the background noise of normal, keyboards tapping, phone going off three desks away, neither of it asking me to leap and bound and solve impossibilities."Let's not talk about it. I need one normal conversation before this day gets complicated.""Deal." Priya took a slow sip of her own coffee, eyeing me carefully over the rim. "Then let's talk about the fact that legal cleared the review entirely. Whoever filed that manufactured onboarding flag just had their whole case thrown out. No further action, no black mark on your file."Something in my chest

Calla's POVJade physically took the mug right out of my hands, set it down hard enough to make a point, and planted herself directly in front of the couch like she was blocking an exit."Sit down," she told me. "Not with your butt-cheeks inches away from the chair, as if you will spring up and vanish the moment another email comes through.""I still have emails to-""You have six entire weeks of your life where you really haven't sat with it. Two fighting packs, a conspiracy, a creature that branded Knox, a plan for an apartment, and a fake job review. I'm pretty sure you haven't sat for even one consecutive hour yet just to let yourself feel something. You are going to now." She sat back in her chair, arms crossed and unmoving.I sank back against the cushions, some tension I hadn't noticed I was carrying finally loosening in my shoulders. "I don't even know where to start.""Start with what you want. Not what Daven wants, not what Calix keeps trying to fix, not what any of the four