Semua Bab SURROGATE FOR THE ALPHA: Bab 41 - Bab 50

Chapter 41 Liam POVThe physician turns her tablet toward us, and I lean forward, Ashley's hand tightening in mine as we both study the image on the screen, though neither of us has the training to interpret it without her guidance."This is the growth pattern we've been tracking since the earliest scans," she says, pointing to a line curving steadily upward across a grid. "Accelerated, as we've discussed, but consistent. What concerns me is this." Her finger moves to a second, smaller reading tucked into the corner of the display. "A secondary marker, one I wasn't specifically screening for tonight, appeared only after the contraction event. It wasn't present in any of the earlier scans.""What is it?" Ashley's voice has gone tight with fear again, the brief peace we found together already receding under the weight of whatever's coming next."I don't know yet, precisely," the physician admits, and something in her honesty unsettles me more than false certainty would have. "It could

Chapter 43 Sienna POVI've been living inside spreadsheets and property records for three days straight, ever since the scare with Ashley pulled the whole household's attention toward the medical wing and left me largely undisturbed to keep digging. It's easier, honestly, having something concrete to chase while everyone else sits with fear they can't act on. I've always preferred problems that respond to effort.The territorial dispute map I found weeks ago has led me down a dozen dead ends since then, families dissolved, records incomplete, names too distant from current politics to explain the reach this enemy has demonstrated. But tonight, buried three layers deep in a county financial archive I only gained access to through a favor I'll owe for months, I find something the original settlement paperwork never mentioned at all.A ledger. Private, handwritten, the kind of record that exists specifically because someone wanted a paper trail that would never see an official filing ca

Chapter 45 Liam POVThe call comes in just after dawn, and something in the tone of the guard captain's voice tells me before he says a single word that whatever's happened, it can't be undone."Alpha Ashworth." His voice carries the particular strain of a man delivering news he knows will detonate. "It's Dorian Cole. The overnight watch found him in his cell twenty minutes ago.""Found him how."A pause, heavy enough to answer the question before he does. "He's dead, sir. It looks like he took his own life."I'm dressed and moving before the sentence finishes leaving his mouth, Ashley stirring behind me in the bed, still weak from the last two days of monitoring, the physician's mysterious secondary marker still unexplained despite round-the-clock observation. "Stay here," I tell her, though I already know she won't, not fully, not with everything happening lately. "I need to see this myself."The holding wing sits in the estate's lower level, secure, monitored, exactly the kind of

Chapter 47 Ashley POVThey find my mother crumpled at the base of the staircase, and for one horrifying moment, running toward her with my heart in my throat, I'm certain the worst has already happened before I even reach her side."She's breathing," Marta says, already kneeling beside her, checking her pulse with steady, practiced hands. "Elena. Elena, can you hear me?"My mother's eyes flutter open slowly, disoriented, her hand rising weakly to her temple. "I don't know what happened," she manages. "I was standing at the top of the stairs, and then everything simply went dark."The physician arrives within minutes, and after a thorough examination declares it exhaustion, plain and simple, weeks of accumulated fear and sleeplessness finally catching up with a body that's carried far more than it should have to. My mother is settled into bed with strict instructions to rest, and I sit beside her until she drifts off again, her hand loose in mine, before Liam finally coaxes me away, i

Chapter 49 Ashley POVSienna doesn't say much after showing us her father's name on that witness list, retreating instead to somewhere quiet to process what it means, and I don't blame her for it. Watching your own blood volunteer to testify against people you've come to love isn't something anyone processes gracefully in front of an audience.I find Marta in the small sitting room she's claimed during her recovery, propped against a mountain of pillows, still moving carefully around the healing burns along her side, though her color has returned in a way that eases some knot of worry I've carried since the fire."You look better today," I say, settling into the chair beside her."I feel better." She waves off my concern the way she always does, more interested in me than in herself. "You look exhausted, though. Is it the pregnancy, or everything else?""Everything else, mostly." I sink further into the chair, grateful for a moment that isn't wrapped entirely in strategy and fear. "M