All Chapters of Broken by My Family, Reclaimed by the Alpha King: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

Murielle's POV I hadn't slept properly since the ledger, my mind circling the same question through every hour I should have spent resting: whether we were the only ones still looking for Colm, or whether someone else had already found him first.Two days had passed without a single new word from the search, the trail still cold past the cabin. Alizeh finally lost patience with watching me pace instead of rest. She ordered me outside, though she made me promise three separate times that a proper walk meant the training yard and the garden path, nothing further, and that I'd turn back the moment my legs told me to.A guard fell into step a respectful distance behind me the second I stepped outside, exactly the arrangement I'd bargained for in Callum's study. I found myself grateful for it in a way that still felt strange. Choosing my own protection made the guard's presence feel like something I owned instead of something done to me.Rook found me near the garden wall before I'd gott

Alpha King Cassian's POVI let Soren's words sit a moment before I answered, because the easy response, then bring him to me, was also the one response that could unravel everything the disguise had given me in a single afternoon."I can't walk into that room as Rook and walk out of it as the King," I said. "Not without half the household understanding exactly what that means before the day is finished.""I know." Soren had already reached for a pen, the same brisk efficiency he always found the moment a problem became solvable rather than merely difficult. "So we don't bring him here. We bring the Crown to him.""Meaning?""A sealed order, carried by someone who already holds standing to act in your name. Colm gets moved to the Crown post across the eastern boundary, under men whose names have never once touched mine in public. He never has to see your face for the message to reach you.""That works for moving him." I watched him finish writing. "It doesn't work if he refuses to spea

Murielle's POV "Draeger Court isn't one man handing out orders," I said. "It's a household the size of a small town. Factors, stewards, clerks, men who never see the person they actually answer to. So when you say the money came through people connected to it, I need you to be precise about what that actually means."Callum shifted slightly beside me, and I felt him make himself hold still again, letting the question stay mine to ask."Trade factors, mostly." Colm didn't look away from me now, whatever had broken in him earlier still sitting close to the surface. "Men who move goods and coin between estates for a living, legitimate work on the surface of it. Some portion of what passed through them wasn't legitimate at all. I never dealt with the same face twice in a row. Routes changed. Marks changed. I was told where to be and when, and I was there.""Coded routes.""The kind where a man learns to read a symbol chalked on a post rather than a name written on a page." He held up his

Murielle's POVCallum brought the records to my table, along with copies of the entries he couldn't remove from their bindings. Aldous Farrow's dismissal, the entry blank where every other name on that page carried at least a line of explanation. His father's note, the ink gone brown with age but the instruction still legible enough to read twice. The archive entry pointing toward Draeger Court, three lines in a stranger's careful hand.He set the household birth register beside the family Bible, opening both to the relevant entries. The attending midwife's name didn't match between them, and when he turned the register toward me, I could see the narrow strip left in its binding where the following page had been cut away."I wanted you to see it exactly as I found it," Callum said. "Not my read on it first.""Good." I studied the pieces a long moment, made myself hold them separately instead of letting them blur into one story. "None of this proves anything on its own.""No," Callum

Murielle's POVI packed less than I expected to need, though I stood in front of the small pile for a long time before I let myself close the bag.A few dresses. Two changes of riding clothes. The hairpin Callum had given me the week I turned twelve, kept through three years of prison in a place they'd never thought to search because it looked like nothing worth taking. The knife Rook had given me weeks ago, when protecting myself had stopped being something other people arranged on my behalf.I picked up the hairpin, then the knife, and set both down again before finally tucking them into the bag, testing whether I could actually leave this room without them.This was the room I'd grown up in before it became storage, then a guest room, then the place I'd recovered in after the estate, then the place I'd read my own case file with Rook beside me until nearly dawn. It had been a dozen different rooms wearing the same walls. I wasn't sentimental about the walls themselves. I'd learned