Todos os capítulos de The Alpha Secret Obsession : Capítulo 51 - Capítulo 56

"You're the one they're all arguing about."The voice came from behind Seraphina as she stood alone in the east courtyard the next morning, and she turned to find a woman she didn't recognize, young but carrying herself older, dressed in deep green rather than any color she'd learned to associate with Draven's Hollow or Ashveil."And you are.""Vesper Thorne. Thornwood sends its own representatives, not delegations six deep in formal colors." A faint, dry amusement touched her mouth. "We find smaller numbers draw less attention and gather more truth.""You're the witness territory.""One of them." Vesper's eyes moved over her, assessing, nothing hostile in it but nothing warm either. "I was told to expect a frightened girl hiding behind an Alpha heir's authority. I find myself revising that assessment already.""Where is everyone," Seraphina asked, glancing toward the courtyard's edges, half expecting Caden or Marcus to appear and take over the conversation the way they usually did."

"It's been sitting in a bookbinder's cellar for seventeen years."Rowan set a waxed canvas tube on the table and didn't let go of it. Mud streaked his boots to the ankle. He hadn't slept, and he'd ridden through the night to be back before first bell.Dene's reading room off the main archive was small enough that six people made it crowded. Vesper had pressed a green wax seal over the lock and called it a Thornwood ward. Seraphina stood in her academy uniform, tie crooked again, because she meant to go straight from here to Wren's seminar and be seen doing it. Isadora stood beside her in her own uniform, hair pinned, an arm's length from the table."Seventeen years," Seraphina said. "Where.""Harrow's Ford. A man named Teague Marlowe binds ledgers for the river merchants. He's one of mine." Rowan finally let go of the tube. "Your father walked into his shop the week before he vanished. Paid him to seal something in the bottom of a book press. Told him it was for me or for his daughter

"Say that again."Caden had come off the wall without seeming to move. He stood across the table from his father, and his voice was very quiet."I said he may have known.""Don't give me *may*." Caden's hands curled at his sides. "You just told us he recited the altered clause from memory. You told us he sat you down the week Elias vanished. That isn't *may*. That's a man who was ready.""I don't have proof.""Then we find proof," Seraphina said.Both of them turned. She hadn't planned to speak, but the words were already out, and the room had gone quiet enough to hear them."Your father kept records," she said to Marcus. "Men like that always do."Marcus was silent a long moment. Then he said, "A ledger."Dene's head came up from the vellum. Rowan went still by the door."He kept it in a locked case in his study," Marcus said. "I saw it once. He caught me looking and told me it was household a