All Chapters of The Alpha’s college Mate : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Lucan’s POV I woke to a cold pillow and the smell of Clara’s fear. It was faint, threaded through lemon and lavender, and it came from downstairs. I was off the mattress and into yesterday’s trousers before I’d decided anything. The stitches along my ribs pulled in protest, and I ignored them on the way down, taking the steps two at a time. The kitchen light was on. Clara sat at the long pine table in my sweater with her knees pulled up to her chest. Milo stood across from her with his arms folded, and between them lay a cream envelope slit neatly along the top. A single sheet of heavy paper had been unfolded beside it and smoothed flat. “Don’t,” Milo said as I came through the door. “Read it sitting down.” I read it standing. My dear Miss Sterling, Please accept my warmest regards, and my apologies for the hour. I am told that young people keep late nights, and I prefer to be considerate. It has come to my attention that certain accounts bearing your family’s name rem

Lucan’s POV The library stair smelled of old plaster and cold stone, and somewhere beneath my boots, something hummed. I’d taken the second watch at two. Milo had given up his post with a grunt and a look that said don’t be a hero, and I’d settled onto the third step down with my back against the damp wall and the broken doorway at my shoulder. Nothing had come up. Nothing had gone down. The hum stayed constant, low and patient, like a held note at the bottom of an organ. My phone lit against my thigh. Clara. A photograph first, a small blue house with a leaning porch and a yellow bulb, a wide man in a pale suit on the top step. Beneath it, three lines. Adan is sitting on my parents’ porch. Has been for three days. I’m going. I just wanted you to hear it from me first. I was dialing before I’d finished reading. She answered on the first ring, and I could hear her breathing, quick and shallow. “Don’t tell me not to,” she said. “I’m not.” My voice came out rougher th

Lucan’s POV I read the registry entry four times, and it said the same thing every time. Goldtooth Holdings. Principal: L. Vance. Acquired eleven years ago, according to a deed I had never signed, for a building that had not existed when I woke up. Gail had gone to put the kettle on with the stiff walk of a woman refusing to look at a thing. Clara sat with the requisition in her lap, running her thumb over the stranger’s handwriting. “Don’t,” I said, because she had that look. “Whatever you’re about to say, I’d rather not hear it yet.” “I wasn’t going to say anything.” She folded the page in half. “I was going to ask if you’d drive me to see it.” “After Blackridge.” “After Blackridge.” She nodded slowly. “Of course.” The comm at my collar crackled before I could say more. Milo’s voice came through thin and clipped. “Alpha, east barracks. It’s Declan. You should come yourself.” The barracks smelled of boot polish and wet dog, and the common room had gone silent in the w

Lucan’s POV Adan Blackridge arrived eleven minutes early, and he brought his own dinner. Four servants in gray livery came through the great room doors first, bearing a table. It was a real one, walnut, with a white cloth already laid. They set it at the foot of the oak table where the Council had assembled, and unfolded a chair wide enough for two men. Silver domes followed on trays. Roast duck. Figs split open and glistening. A bottle of wine already breathing in its decanter. Not one of the dishes was meant to be shared. “Forgive the intrusion,” said the man in the doorway. “I find negotiations go so much better on a full stomach.” He was vast. The photograph hadn’t prepared me. His pale suit strained at every seam, and rings crowded all ten fingers, so that when he lifted a hand in greeting, light scattered across the ceiling in little coins. His face was florid and cheerful, his eyes small and bright above jowls that quivered when he laughed. He crossed the room with the

Lucan’s POV We brought the Sterlings back to Goldtooth in the dark. Marcus carried a single suitcase and refused to let Milo take it. Elaine sat in the back seat with her hands folded over a stapled bundle of paper, staring at the windows as if the road might rearrange itself and send her home. Clara rode between them. Neither parent had let go of her since the kitchen. By the time we reached the gates, her father had fallen asleep against her shoulder, and she sat very straight so as not to wake him. I put them in the east wing under Milo’s guard and Eliza’s supervision, behind the Council’s new charter and my own word. It was meaningless against a contract with a tenth day on it, and all four of us knew it. Midnight was five hours off. “Go,” Clara said at the foot of the stairs. Her mother’s cardigan hung over her arm. “Do whatever you do when you can’t sit still. I’ll stay with them.” “I’ll be in the library.” “I know.” Her mouth tilted. “You always go to the books.”