Semua Bab Fate Chose the Prince, I Chose the Alpha: Bab 1 - Bab 5

By morning, the mate bond still hurt every time I breathed too deeply. I stood beside Malik's bed at St. Mercy and pressed two fingers against the sore place in my chest. Apparently, humiliation came with overnight delivery."Good morning to you too," I told my brother.Malik did not answer. He had not answered me in eleven years. I pulled the chair closer and sat beside him. The nurse had already changed his water cup and adjusted the blanket over his legs. His breathing sounded the same as yesterday. The monitor beside him showed the same steady numbers I had learned to check without thinking.That was the thing about Malik's room. I knew what normal looked like here. Normal was not good. Normal was just familiar.I reached for his hand. "You missed a very educational night. I learned that the Moon Goddess has terrible taste in men. I also learned Crown Pack can fit an impressive number of cruel people into one ballroom. Very efficient use of space."My voice sounded almost normal.

By morning, Eric's offer was still open on my phone, and I had run out of reasons to avoid answering it. His audit team was leaving Crown territory that afternoon. If I wanted the Black Ridge job, I had to decide before they went.I sat at the kitchen table with Malik's account notice beside the phone and read the offer again. I cared about four parts: salary, housing, medical benefits, and the cross-pack transfer condition. I read every one of them twice.The salary and housing terms gave me a practical way to make Malik's costs less frightening. The medical-benefit language mattered too, but I did not pretend it fixed his account problem. It did not say that. The transfer condition was the part I studied longest because my mate status was still pending. Nothing in the offer erased the Crown hold. Yesterday's clerk had made that clear.So Black Ridge was not a magic exit. Good. I had started to distrust anything that looked too much like one.The harder part was Eric Anderson. Yester