Semua Bab SURROGATE FOR THE ALPHA: Bab 51 - Bab 59

Chapter 52 Liam POVSienna's words hang in the room like a struck match, and for a moment none of us move, the weight of it settling in fully. A man sat at my table for the better part of an hour, asked pointed questions about my child, my mate's mother, and left before we could stop him, and he was never invited at all."Get me the gate logs," I say, already moving toward the security office, Ashley close behind me despite the exhaustion still evident in her face. "Every camera angle from tonight, starting the moment the first guest arrived."Sienna works fast, pulling footage across three monitors while Julian arrives moments later, alerted by whatever urgency carried through the house the instant that man excused himself from dinner."There," Sienna says, freezing a frame on the gate camera. "This is him arriving. He came on foot, Liam, not by car. Just walked up the drive alongside two of the actual invited guests, as though he belonged with their party.""He used them as cover,

Chapter 54 Ashley POVThe physician arrives precisely within the hour, exactly as threatened, and something about his punctuality unsettles me more than a late arrival would have, the particular precision of a man who does nothing carelessly.He's polite enough, professionally distant in a way that feels appropriate rather than sinister, and Liam stands in the corner of the exam room the entire time, arms crossed, watching every movement of the man's hands like he's cataloguing threats rather than observing a routine checkup. The exam itself passes without incident, standard vitals, a scan that mirrors what our own physician has already documented, and by the time he packs up his equipment, I've mostly stopped bracing for something to go wrong."Everything appears consistent with what's already been recorded," he says, addressing his notes rather than either of us directly. "I'll submit my findings to the council within the day.""Consistent," Liam repeats. "Meaning you found nothing

Chapter 56 Julian POVI don't tell anyone I'm going out tonight, not because I'm hiding something shameful, but because I've learned these past weeks that explaining myself before I've actually done anything only invites arguments I don't have the patience to win. Liam is consumed with the Vane meeting tomorrow. Sienna is still shaken from the favor she called in for Greta Holloway's address. Ashley needs rest more than she needs one more person hovering at her door with questions.So I go alone, the way I've been quietly returning to fragments of my captivity alone for weeks now, chasing threads too small and too personal to bring to anyone else yet.The ring sits foremost in my mind tonight, the one the note delivered alongside Reeves weeks ago, tarnished silver, black stone, the exact match to what Elena described burying in her sewing box thirty years earlier. I've been unable to stop turning it over since Sienna first laid it on the evidence table, some old instinct insisting it

Chapter 58 Julian POVI should call Liam. I know this with total clarity, standing on that street with the message still glowing on my screen, every lesson these past weeks have taught me screaming that walking back into that building alone is exactly the kind of reckless decision that gets people killed.I went anyway.Not through the front door this time. I circle back the way I came, three blocks retraced at a near run, to the alley beneath the second-floor window I dropped from not long ago, some old, stubborn instinct insisting that whoever sent that message wants me to come through the obvious entrance, expects it, has probably already arranged for it.The alley is empty when I reach it, quiet in a way that feels deliberate rather than simply abandoned. I'm three steps in when the pain hits, sudden and total, a blow across the back of my skull that drops me to my knees before I even register another person's presence.I didn't lose consciousness, not entirely, though the world