All Chapters of PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

117 Chapters

What he is doing there

"The ritual requires a location," Bastien says.He says it in the hallway at midnight and his voice is doing the flat operational thing, which means he is already three steps ahead and is catching up to me.The binding location,I say. Nadia mentioned it. A place of established pack power where the ritual can be anchored. I look at Bastien. He is not going there to perform a ritual. The ritual requires willing blood and I am here and the statue is gone and I am not going anywhere near that site.Then why is he going, Bastien says.It is not a challenge. It is genuine.I think.My father reads the articles. My father reads the tribunal record. My father understands that the statutory framework is gone and the willing blood requirement stands and every legal and political mechanism he built is dismantled.He is not going north because he thinks the ritual is still viable.He is going north because the site is in the Crest Pack historical record as a ceremonial location. Because it is doc

Fourteen minutes

"Competing registrations go to a resolution panel," Holt says at seven in the morning.She is on the phone and her voice has the particular quality it gets when she has been awake for a very long time and has resolved the being-awake into pure function.Which panel, Bastien says.Council heritage division, she says. Three-member panel. The standard resolution timeline is four to eight weeks. During that period neither registration is active, which means neither party has a definitive custodial claim. A pause. The site is effectively frozen.He cannot use it, I say.Correct, she says. And the interim council cannot demolish or cede it. Both parties are in a holding pattern until the panel rules.What is the resolution criterion, Bastien says.Which party has the stronger claim to custodial standing, Holt says. A family member's historical claim versus a pack council's administrative claim. She pauses. The pack council claim is generally stronger in precedent. But the panel has discreti

Neve

"She asked me why I came," Ivy says.It is afternoon and Ivy is on the phone from the compound and she has the particular quality in her voice of someone who has had an unexpectedly good conversation and is still sitting with it.What did you say, I ask.I said I came because it is my pack and I wanted to be seen in it, Ivy says. She looked at me for a moment and then she said: that is the right answer. A pause. She has been here for three years managing the eastern boundary logistics and she said nobody from the main house has ever asked her opinion about anything until Marta did two weeks ago.What did Marta ask her, I say.Whether she thought the pack was being run correctly, Ivy says. Neve said no. Marta asked her how she would run it. Neve told her for forty minutes. Another pause. Marta apparently took notes.I smile.She sounds like Marta's candidate, I say.She is Marta's candidate, Ivy says. But not the way my father uses candidates. Marta is not asking Neve to be something.

The external call

"Vane," Bastien says.He says it at eight in the evening after two hours of Soren pulling communication records through every available channel, and he says it with the specific flatness of someone who is not surprised but is not pleased either.Vane is removed from the council, I say.He is removed, Bastien says. He is not gone. He is sixty-three years old and he has thirty years of pack-world connections and a lifetime of accumulated knowledge about bloodline tracking and pack law. He looks at the table. My father approached him. Years ago. Before the contract. Before any of this.You think your father reached Vane this afternoon, I say.I think Vane is the only external party with enough knowledge, enough motivation, and enough remaining resentment to be useful to my father right now. He holds my gaze. Vane lost a thirty-year career in one council finding. He will not have accepted that quietly.Soren turns his laptop toward us.The screen shows a communication log from a pack-adja

The visitor

"Get a description," Bastien says immediately.He says it to Soren, who is already texting Ivy before Bastien finishes the sentence, which is the particular efficiency that has developed in this building over the last two months, the way everyone knows what everyone else needs before the words are fully out.Ivy's response comes back in four minutes.Male. Late fifties. Grey at the temples. Carries himself like someone used to being in rooms where decisions are made. He arrived in a car with out-of-territory plates and went directly to the study without speaking to anyone in the main hall.Soren reads it and looks at his screen.Out-of-territory plates, he says. If I had the plate number I could trace the registration.Ivy sends the plate number thirty seconds later without being asked.She is paying attention to everything, Bastien says.She learned from our father, I say. The best parts.Soren is typing.I sit at the kitchen table and I think about who my father would call today, im

Meeting neve

"I don't need Iron Fang's endorsement," Neve says.She says it immediately, before I have finished my opening sentence, and she says it without sharpness, just the plain statement of someone who has been clear with themselves about what they want and what they don't want and has had the conversation in her head many times already.I liked her immediately.She is twenty-eight years old and she is on the video call in what appears to be an office in the eastern management building, practical space, no decorative effort, a stack of boundary maps visible on the desk behind her. She has the kind of face that reveals nothing by default and reveals everything when it chooses to.I am not offering an endorsement, I say. I wanted to meet you.She looks at me for a moment.Why, she says.Because the Crest Pack Alpha will be my daughter's closest pack neighbor for her entire life, I say. And I would like to know what kind of person holds that position.Something shifts in Neve's expression. The

Viable

"He kept a copy," I say.Not a question. Of course he kept a copy. He is Gregor Crest. He has kept copies of everything since before I was born. The originals went into the case that Ruth brought out of the compound. But originals have copies and copies have copies and a man who has been running a twenty-three year plan understands that documentation is infrastructure.Bastien is already in the room.He has the specific expression from the early days, the operational one, except it is different now because three months have changed what it sits alongside.The document is from when you were nine, he says.Yes, I say.It is in the tribunal record, he says. It is in the committee evidence file. It is referenced in the Pack Observer article. It is not a secret document. He holds my gaze. "The information is already public.Publishing it with viable circles is different from referencing that it exists, I say. He is going to let the image do the work. A medical record of a nine year old chi

Alone

"He went to see my mother's grave," Ivy says.She calls at eleven that night, hours after he left the compound, and her voice has a different quality than it has had in any of our previous conversations. Not soft exactly. More like someone who has received information that doesn't fit cleanly into any existing category and is deciding what to do with it.How do you know, I say.Marta's contact in the northern village confirmed, she says. The old Crest burial ground is forty minutes north of the compound. He was there for two hours. Alone. She pauses. He sat by her grave for two hours and then drove back to the compound and went directly to his room.I sit with this for a moment.Bastien is beside me in the library and he is very still.Did he know Sera Finn's article was up before he left, I say.Yes, Ivy says. He saw it. Marta's contact said he read it in the main hall. He stood there reading it and then he put his phone in his pocket and walked to the car. She pauses. He did not say

The withdrawal

"Dorian's nomination has been withdrawn," Soren says.He says it at seven in the morning, standing in the kitchen doorway with his coffee and the specific expression of someone reporting something they did not quite predict and are recalibrating around.I look up from the table.When, I say.Six forty-three AM, he says. Filed by Dorian himself through the interim council system. Not by a staff proxy. His own credentials. He pauses. No statement attached. Just withdrawal.Bastien comes in from the hall. He has been on a morning call. He reads Soren's face and then looks at me.Dorian withdrew himself, I say.He sits down.My father told him to, I say. Or Dorian read the same article my father read and drew his own conclusions about the value of the association. I look at the table. Either way, it happened before seven in the morning. Before anyone in the compound would have expected it.Neve's nomination is now unopposed, Soren says.Not technically. There is still a formal vote in twe

Vane's testimony

"He argues the committee had incomplete data," Holt says.She calls at eight thirty and she is in full work mode, which means she has been awake since before the submission and has already read the full document and is delivering the analysis in the precise order of what matters most.I am at the library desk. Bastien is beside me. Soren has his laptop open at the end of the table.What data does he claim was incomplete, Bastien says.His testimony presents three arguments, Holt says. First, that the committee's repeal was based primarily on ethical grounds, specifically the personhood argument, without adequate assessment of the practical implications of removing the statute entirely. She pauses. Second, that a Prime's capabilities in terms of pack influence radius and Volana field potency were not fully documented for the committee before the vote. She pauses again. Third, that the absence of the statute creates a regulatory gap in how pack communities manage unprecedented supernatu

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