All Chapters of All wolves university: The Last Kitsune: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The inside of Margaret's house was warm and ordered, every surface deliberate. Books filled the walls, not for decoration but for use, their spines creased and worn. A fire burned in a stone hearth. On the kitchen table, three cups were already set out.Three."You knew we were coming," Noah said, pulling out a chair.Margaret moved to the stove with the efficiency of someone who had lived alone for decades and made every motion count. "I felt Yuna cross into my territory about forty miles back. A royal bloodline moving through the land announces itself." She glanced over her shoulder. "Like a bell being struck.""You can feel that?" Yuna asked."I could feel your mother the same way, thirty years ago." Margaret brought over a pot and poured tea without asking if anyone wanted it. "Sit down, please. All of you."They sat. Yuna wrapped her hands around the cup, more for something to hold than because she wanted tea.Margaret sat across from her and looked at her with open, unhurried as

The name settled over the table like a drop in temperature."I've never heard of him," Yuna said."You wouldn't have. He's spent fifty years making sure no one current can identify him." Margaret stood and moved to the bookshelf, pulling a leather-bound journal from the third shelf. She set it on the table and opened it to a page near the middle. "This is what I know. Which is more than most and less than I'd like."The journal page had a sketch. A man's face, done in careful pencil, with angular features and eyes that the artist had drawn with disturbing attention to detail. There was something in the rendering of those eyes that made Yuna's fox spirit press uneasily against her ribs."He was the leader of the kitsune hierarchy before the royal line asserted authority," Margaret said. "Not royal bloodline. A powerful elder who believed power should belong to whoever could take it, not whoever was born to it." She turned the journal slightly so Noah could see. "He and your mother's gr

"What exactly did Caine say to them?"Yuna had pulled Rebecca into the common room at the end of the hall, which was empty at this hour. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, unhelpfully clinical.Rebecca sat on the arm of a chair, her posture tight. "He reached out through an intermediary. Someone who approached Diane in person at the coffee shop near her apartment in Colorado.""Someone who knew where she was," Yuna said."Yes. Which means he either has resources we underestimated or someone gave him the locations." Rebecca's jaw was set. "I've been going through who knew where Diane was staying. It's a short list.""You think there's someone on the inside.""I think it's possible." Rebecca looked at her carefully. "I'm not pointing fingers. I'm telling you what the facts suggest."Yuna sat down. "What was the message? Exactly.""That the Binding is a leash. That royal bloodline doesn't mean qualified leadership, it means inherited control. That Yuna Kanzaki is twenty years old, u

The council building was downtown, on a street that looked unremarkable from the outside because it was designed to.Noah drove. Camille had offered to come but Yuna declined, partly because this needed to be a small, focused meeting and partly because she needed Camille back on campus keeping an eye on Garrett, who had been visibly absent for two days, which was somehow more unsettling than when he was present.The lobby had the cold, functional energy of a place that had been serious for a long time. A woman at the front desk checked Noah's name, glanced at Yuna with careful neutrality, and directed them to the third floor.Walter Bishop was already in the room.He was smaller than Yuna expected. People with reputations often were. A compact, white haired man with a hearing aid in his left ear and hands that shook very slightly when he stood to greet them. His face was deeply lined, not from age alone but from decades of expression, furrowed brows and squinted focus all pressed perm

The Malibu property looked exactly like what it was trying to look like: a retreat.Low, modern buildings connected by walkways, overlooking the ocean. The kind of place that communicated safety through architecture, warm lighting and open spaces and the sound of water. Noah recognized the design intelligence in it. Caine hadn't built a compound. He'd built something that felt like an exhale.He and Christopher had arrived separately, Noah using his father's credentials as a framework for a routine hunter perimeter check, Christopher with a cover story about a real estate inquiry that was thin but plausible."I hate this," Christopher murmured as they walked toward the main building. He said it without drama, just statement of fact."You asked to help," Noah said."I know. I still hate it." Christopher glanced sideways. "Is Yuna watching somehow?""No. She's on campus." Noah scanned the property as they walked. Six people visible outside. Probably more within. None of them looked dist