All Chapters of Rejected, Then Wanted by My Triplet Alphas: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Neva's POVI gave myself exactly one hour to grieve, sitting frozen in that cramped crawlspace with Wren trembling against my chest, before the grief hardened into something colder and considerably more useful. Three years ago I would not have known how to transform terror into action so quickly, but I had learned, across every danger this life had thrown at me since crossing Nightpine's boundary stone, that grief indulged too early only cost the people who still needed saving.Ruth had spent three years teaching me how to survive in a world that had never once been built to protect me. I intended to use every lesson she had given me now, when it mattered most, to bring her home safely rather than mourn her loss from beneath a laundry floorboard.I carried Wren to our neighbor's apartment the moment I judged it safe to move, a kind, unassuming woman named Carla who had watched Wren occasionally when work required it and asked no questions about our careful

Cassian's POVDorian's call came in at three in the morning, urgent and clipped, relaying everything he had discovered about the crown warrant pulled on Neva's employment records four days before his own investigation reached the same file. I was on the road within the hour, driving through the night toward Ardenfall with a desperation that reminded me uncomfortably of every previous false lead I had chased across three exhausting years. I had learned, across those years of dead ends and disappointments, to keep my hope carefully rationed, protecting myself against the particular exhaustion of believing too fully in a lead that would inevitably dissolve into nothing the moment I arrived.This one felt different, though. This one had a name attached to it, an actual employer, an actual city, an actual trail I could follow with something more substantial than hope alone.I traced the crown warrant's target to a small laundry two districts from the city cente

Neva's POVRuth did not answer immediately, standing frozen beside that impossible grave marker, her hands twisting together in the particular nervous gesture I had come to recognize as her final defense before a confession she desperately did not want to give. The morning light had shifted while we stood there, clouds moving slowly overhead, and I found myself acutely aware of every small, ordinary detail of the world continuing around us even as everything I believed I understood about my own family threatened to fracture entirely."Ruth." My voice cracked with three years of accumulated grief and confusion, everything I had swallowed and buried across countless careful, patient months finally rising up all at once. "Please. I have trusted you with everything. My life, my daughter's life, every secret I've had to carry across these past three years. I need you to trust me now, with whatever this is."She looked at me then, and something in her weathered

Neva's POVThe woman who walked into Kestrel Forensic Partners each morning bore little resemblance to the frightened girl who had once hidden in a freezer truck to escape a single determined tracker. The transformation had not happened overnight, though it sometimes felt that way looking back, three years compressed in memory into a series of deliberate, exhausting choices that had slowly reshaped everything about how I moved through the world.I had built Nell Vale carefully over these past three years, deliberately, the same way I had once corrected Barrow's ledgers in secret, one precise, methodical decision at a time. Formal certification in forensic accounting, earned through night classes and relentless self study while Wren slept. A junior position at a respected firm, earned through work so meticulously accurate that promotion became inevitable rather than requested. A reputation, slowly, carefully built, as the auditor who found money other people could n

Neva's POVWren asked the question again on a Tuesday evening, three days after the Kane Holdings discovery had left my careful composure quietly, privately shaken, both of us settled together on her small bed while I read through her favorite bedtime story for what felt like the hundredth time that month. The Kane Holdings discovery still sat heavy in the back of my mind, three days of careful, contained panic that I had not yet found the courage to properly act on, and something about this ordinary evening ritual with Wren offered a small, precious anchor of normalcy against everything else threatening to unravel."Mommy." She interrupted the story entirely, her small face serious in the particular way three year olds manage when they have decided a question matters more than any story could. "Why don't I have a daddy."I closed the book slowly, giving myself a moment to gather the careful, rehearsed answer I had prepared across months of anticipating th