Semua Bab SURROGATE FOR THE ALPHA: Bab 31 - Bab 40

Chapter 31 Elena POVThe house is quiet again by the time Ashley finds me, though quiet feels like the wrong word for something built entirely out of restrained fear, guards doubled at every door since Sienna's call, Liam locked away with Julian poring over maps and radio logs, searching for a man named Reeves who still hasn't been found. Nobody's said the word missing aloud yet. Nobody needs to."You should be resting," I say when Ashley settles onto the small couch across from my chair, though I say it the way mothers say most things, knowing it won't be heeded and asking anyway."I can't." She draws her knees up as much as her belly allows, wrapping her arms around them. "Every time I close my eyes I hear that note in my head. Bring her back to me. Mom, what does that even mean? Bring you back to where?"I don't answer right away, because the honest answer frightens me more than the question does, and because some old habit of protecting her from the ugliest parts of my past is st

Chapter 33 Ashley POVThe email sits open on Liam's desk for a long time after it arrives, both of us reading it more than once, as though repetition might soften the seventy-two hours into something less immediate than it actually is."They're moving faster than they should be allowed to," Liam says finally, closing the laptop with more force than necessary. "A formal inquiry into legitimacy doesn't get called this quickly without someone pushing hard behind the scenes.""Cedric," I start to say, then stop myself, because we still don't have that name, only the shape of a man built out of decades-old fear and stolen rings and one silver-haired elder who paid his condolences and vanished before we could learn anything useful from him. "Whoever it is. He wants this decided before we're ready.""Then we get ready faster than he expects." Liam rubs a hand over his face, and for the first time since I've known him, I see something underneath the alpha's composure that looks genuinely, si

Chapter 35 Sienna POVMy phone has been buzzing since dawn, my father's name lighting the screen with the particular insistence he reserves for things he considers urgent enough to interrupt any hour, and I let it ring out three times before I finally answer, standing in the estate's darkened hallway while guards sweep the grounds for whoever cut the power last night."Sienna." His voice carries none of the warmth he still occasionally pretends toward me, not since I moved permanently into the Ashworth estate. "The emergency session has been announced. You will be expected to give testimony.""I'm aware.""Then you're aware of what's expected of you." A pause, calculated, the kind he's always used to let silence do the threatening his words won't quite commit to. "The family's position on this matter has been made clear. You will testify that the human's pregnancy raises legitimate concerns about the succession, that her presence in that household has brought nothing but chaos and da

Chapter 37 Liam POVI stare at the photograph long enough that Ashley finally takes it gently from my hand, needing to see it herself, her breath catching the moment she does."That's my mother," she whispers. "She looks so young. And whoever's hand that is.""We need to show her," I say. "Now, before she hears about any of this secondhand."We find Elena in the small sitting room she's claimed as her own these past weeks, and I watch her face carefully as Ashley sets the photograph down in front of her, watch every trace of color drain out of it in the space of a single breath."Where did you get this?" Her voice comes out strangled."Someone left it on the kitchen windowsill," I say. "Along with a gift for the baby. A music box that plays a lullaby Ashley says you used to sing to her."Elena's hand trembles as she picks up the photograph, studying it with an expression I can't fully read, grief and recognition and something colder underneath both. "This was taken at the estate," sh

Chapter 39 Julian POVThe corridor doesn't lead where it should.I know this building. I have counted every step of it a thousand times over six years, and yet the exit I'm certain should be four doors down instead opens onto a narrow side passage I don't remember ever existing, dust undisturbed along its length except for a single, narrow track worn into the concrete, the kind of wear that comes from a door being opened and closed regularly, recently, by someone who knew exactly where they were going.I should keep moving toward the actual exit. Every rational instinct I have insists on it. Instead, my hand finds the handle of the door at the passage's end, and I understand, dimly, that some part of me needs to see whatever's behind it more than I need to be safe tonight.The room beyond is small, windowless, lit only by the thin beam of my phone's flashlight, and for a long moment I simply stand in the doorway, unable to process what the light reveals.Every wall is covered.Photog