Rejected by My Mate, Claimed by the Triplet Alphas のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 21 - チャプター 30

Viene’s POV Nathan found me in the east reading room an hour after the meeting broke apart. No one else was around. Neil had gone to run numbers. Nolan had gone to check the perimeter reports. It was just the two of us, and a stack of old pack ledgers neither of us cared about. “You should be resting,” he said. “I don’t want to rest. I want to think about something that isn’t a graph of my own fear.” He sat across from me instead of beside me, which I noticed. Since the meeting, he’d been keeping distance on purpose, like he thought space would prove something to Neil. “Ask me something normal,” I said. “Anything. I need ten minutes of normal.” He almost laughed. “Normal isn’t really my specialty anymore.” “Try.” He told me about the ledgers instead — old land disputes, a border dog that used to bite every messenger who came through the east gate, a great-uncle who lost a bet and had to rename a hunting cabin after his sister. It was stupid and small and I laughed for the fir

Viene’s POV Nolan found me in the hallway outside the study before I’d even made it to my room. He must have passed Neil on his way in, because his mouth was set in a way I hadn’t seen before. “He interrogated you,” Nolan said. “For an hour. Alone.” “It wasn’t like that.” “He wrote down your pulse. Your breathing. Where the mark stopped on your body.” His voice stayed level, but there was something underneath it, tight and controlled. “That’s not a conversation. That’s a report.” “He’s trying to understand what’s happening to me.” “He’s trying to understand a pattern. You’re not a pattern.” “Nolan—” “I’m not wrong.” We were still standing there when Neil came around the corner, tablet gone now, just him. He stopped when he saw the two of us. “Something you want to say to my face,” Neil said, “or are you going to keep saying it to her instead?” “I already said it to her. I’ll say it to you too. You don’t get to treat what happened tonight like a data set.” “It is a data se

Viene’s POV Nathan called it a new protocol. That was the word he used, standing in the doorway of my room the next morning like he hadn’t spent half the night with his forehead against mine. “Effective today, private time with Nolan and Neil goes through me first. Scheduled. Supervised if I think it needs to be.” I set my cup down harder than I meant to. “You’re rationing them.” “I’m managing risk.” “You’re rationing me.” “Last night proved the pathway strengthens under contact. I’m not going to sit here and let it run wild because nobody wants to be the one who says no.” “You didn’t say no last night. You held my hand through the whole thing.” He opened his mouth, then stopped. His fingers tightened on the doorframe before he let go. “That was different,” he said. “Was it. Or is this really about what happened after Neil walked in and saw us?” “This isn’t about Neil.” “It’s a little about Neil.” He didn’t answer that. He left before I could push further. An hour later

Viene’s POV Neil wasn’t in the study. He wasn’t in the lab either, or the archive room, and by the time Nolan and I had checked half the compound the mark under my collarbone had started climbing again, slow, insistent, like it didn’t care that we hadn’t found what we were looking for. “We’ll find him after,” Nolan said. “Right now I need you sitting down.” “I don’t want to sit down. I want answers.” “You’ll get them faster if you’re not on the floor when he gives them to you.” We were crossing the main hall when the fourth line caught fire. That was the only way I could describe it after — not a spike, not a flare, but a sudden burning that dropped me to my knees in front of a dozen witnesses before either of us saw it coming. Nolan was down with me instantly, one hand flat against my sternum, over the mark, over all four lines at once. The hall had people in it. Staff crossing to the kitchens, two guards changing shift, someone’s assistant carrying a stack of folders who sto

Viene’s POV The pain hit without warning, in the middle of the corridor, nothing like the fourth line’s slow burn. This was old. I recognized it the way you recognize a scar tearing open instead of a new wound forming — the original bond, the one Miel had broken in front of an entire pack, screaming back to life as if it had never actually gone quiet at all. I went down hard, both hands on the stone floor. My vision broke into pieces, the corridor splitting into fragments that didn’t line up right, and somewhere behind my ribs something was clawing to be felt again. “Miel.” His name came out of me before I understood why. “That’s Miel.” Footsteps, more than one set, running. I couldn’t lift my head to see who. “She’s convulsing.” Nathan’s voice, close, and hands on my shoulders trying to hold me still. “It’s not the mark,” Neil said, and I felt him drop to the floor beside me, fast, no hesitation this time. “Pulse is wrong for the mark. This is something else.” “It’s Miel,” I