All Chapters of I Accidentally Became the Alphas' Mate : Chapter 81 - Chapter 85

It was Elara who said it.She hadn't spoken in several minutes — I'd noticed her going quiet in the particular way she had when she was turning something over, pressing on it from different angles, checking for where it gave. Her hand was still resting against her stomach."We haven't talked about Declan Voss at all."The room shifted."Not once," she continued, her voice thoughtful and careful and slightly dangerous. "We've been talking about the organization. The bloodline program. The arranged matings, the seeding, the petition, the council." She looked at me. "But not him. Not specifically. Not his role, not why he was even present for any of this." She paused. "Did Josiah mention him?"I thought back through everything Josiah had said. The way he'd talked — the names he'd offered, the threads he'd handed us to pull."No," I said slowly."Not once?""Not once."Elara nodded, like that confirmed something she'd already suspected. "So we sat across from a man who has been embedded i

Josylyn found the map first.She'd asked one of Alpha Tomas's wolves for paper — actual paper, not a phone, not a screen — and now it was spread across the bed between us, a printed satellite image of Korr's old territory that someone had pulled from a county land registry. Unmarked roads. Dense tree cover. A river cutting through the eastern edge that didn't appear on most GPS systems because it had been rerouted sometime in the 1970s and never officially updated."Brianne's people have been living here," I said, tracing the tree line with my finger, "for years. On routes that don't exist on any map Voss has built. Which means every blind spot he thinks he owns—""Is occupied," Josylyn finished."By wolves who know that land the way you know your own house in the dark."Elara was sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, her palms resting on her knees, her eyes moving across the map with the careful attention she gave things she was committing to memory. She hadn't said much. She

The clearing was exactly where Elara said it would be.We came through the eastern tree line in the gray hour before full morning, the three of us moving at an even pace, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched. Josylyn on my left. Elara on my right. The ground was soft from two days of rain, and the logging stumps that ringed the clearing's edge were older than I was, mossy and low and offering nothing in the way of cover.Voss was already there.He stood at the far edge of the clearing with seven wolves ranged behind him in a loose formation that was meant to look casual and was not. He was taller than I'd expected — broad-shouldered, the kind of physical presence that had probably served him well his whole life, the easy authority of a man who had never once been the smallest thing in a room. His eyes found me immediately and stayed there.He didn't look at Elara.He didn't look at Josylyn.That was his first mistake."Laney Ashwood." He said my name as if he were identifyin