Lahat ng Kabanata ng CLAIMED BY THE FOUR ALPHA BROTHERS: Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

Knox's POVI'd carried this particular truth so long it had stopped feeling like a secret and started feeling like a permanent piece of furniture inside my chest, something I'd stopped noticing until Calla's question knocked it loose.Not tonight, I'd told her. But sitting alone in the workshop after she left, sawdust settling in the quiet, I understood I'd have to say the rest of it eventually, and putting it off any longer felt like just another version of the cowardice I'd watched Soren confess to weeks ago.I found her the next evening, back in the same workshop, back on the same stool, and this time I didn't let myself hesitate before starting."I felt the bond too," I said, before she'd even fully sat down. "The same year Daven did. The same year Soren did."Calla went very still, her eyes fixed on me, something careful and guarded settling over her face."You never said anything," she said, disbelief threading through her voice. "This entire time. Three years of marriage, three

Calix's POVAshgrove's gala put Calla in a room full of pack money, human money, and every unresolved thread of her life at once, and I stood near the bar watching all three collide before the night had even properly started."You clean up well," Jade said, appearing suddenly at my elbow with two glasses of champagne, handing me one without asking if I wanted it. "Though you've been staring at that door for ten minutes instead of enjoying the open bar.""Habit." I accepted the glass, not drinking from it. "I like knowing who's coming in before they're already in the room.""And who exactly are you expecting?"Before I could answer, the answer walked in himself. Daven, in a suit that hadn't been tailored for tonight specifically, scanning the room with the same restless attention I recognized because I'd been doing it too. He hadn't been invited. Neither had I, not officially; both of us here on Calla's plus-one line that Ashgrove's events team had apparently decided to interpret loose

Daven's POVEvery instinct I owned screamed at me to cross that ballroom the second Mara approached her, and I stood rooted to the floor instead, hands clenched at my sides, doing the hardest thing anyone had ever asked me to do."Don't intervene tonight. Whatever happens, whoever approaches me. I need to handle it myself." Calla had said it plainly, an hour before the gala started, standing in her kitchen with her arms crossed, daring me to argue. "If you step in the second things get uncomfortable, I'll never actually learn what I can handle on my own."I'd agreed. Standing here now, watching Mara's mouth move, watching Calla's spine stay perfectly straight through whatever was being said to her, I understood exactly how much that agreement was going to cost me."You're not moving," Knox said quietly, appearing at my shoulder, his own eyes fixed on the same exchange across the room."She asked me not to.""That's not usually stopped you before.""I know." My jaw ached from how hard

Calla's POVThe weight of what Soren had just told me settled differently than I expected, not as an excuse handed to me to swallow, but as a truth heavy enough that I needed a moment just to hold it properly."I'm not going to tell you I forgive you," I said finally, watching his face carefully as I said it, needing him to understand I meant it as honesty and not as punishment. "Not tonight. Maybe not for a while yet. What Corvin told you doesn't erase three years of silence, even if I understand now why the silence happened.""I know." He nodded slowly, no defensiveness in it at all. "I wasn't asking for forgiveness. I told you that already.""I heard you." I studied him a moment longer, something shifting quietly in my chest, some old, careful distance thinning without fully disappearing. "But I think something's different now, between us. I don't know exactly what to call it yet. It's not resolution. It's just... less locked than it was an hour ago.""I'll take less locked." A gho

Soren's POVI woke up on cold, hard pavement with blood drying at my temple and Calla gone entirely, and before my vision had even fully cleared, my hands were already dialing, three separate calls stacking on top of each other before I'd managed to sit fully upright."Daven, pick up, pick up!" I hauled myself to my knees, the street spinning around me, my whole body screaming from a fight I'd apparently lost badly enough to lose consciousness in the middle of it. "She's gone. They took her. Right off the street, right in front of me, and I couldn't stop them."He answered on the second ring, already moving; I could hear it in his voice, footsteps fast against a hard floor. "Where. Tell me exactly where you are right now.""Outside the gala. The valet stand. Four of them, coordinated, briefed on exactly who I was before they even got out of the vehicle." My voice cracked, exhaustion and horror tangling together into something barely coherent. "I fought two of them off long enough, but