All Chapters of The Alpha's Lost Mate.: Chapter 31 - Chapter 35

Sophie Steele"Put the phone down," I said.Dominic looked at me, the screen still lit in his hand."Helena's statement can't be stopped tonight," I told him. "Lena can't stop it, you can't stop it, going back upstairs to make calls won't stop it. It's done." I held his gaze. "Whatever damage it does, we deal with it in the morning."He looked at the phone for a long moment. Then he set it face down on the counter."Okay," he said.The kitchen settled back into its quiet, alongside its amber light and the abandoned mug, plus the two of us, still close, neither of us having moved the distances we'd closed in the last half hour.I slid off the counter, moved to the small sofa along the kitchen's far wall, the one the staff used on long shifts. Old, worn at the armrests, the kind of furniture that had absorbed enough years to become comfortable in the way only old things could.I sat, and drew my legs up beneath me.After a moment, Dominic moved the armchair from the corne

Gerald Steele"It went poorly," Aldric said over the phone, with the tone of a man stating something he considered obvious."It went as it went," I replied. "Which is a different thing."A pause. "Dominic had documentation, Gerald. Payment records, names, dates. He laid it in front of the council like a case file. Castellan looked at me for the rest of that meeting like he was revising thirty years of opinion.""Castellan revising an opinion is not the same as Castellan changing a vote," I said. I was at the desk in the room I used when I stayed at the villa, the door closed, a glass of water untouched beside me. "There is a significant distance between discomfort and action.""Perhaps," Aldric said. "But the motion won't pass now. Not this week. Not with the council in this state.""The formal motion was always one instrument," I said. "Not the only one."Silence on his end. Aldric was old enough, sharp enough, to understand what I meant without requiring elaboration.

Dominic Steele"Get on a flight," I told Rowan. "Earliest available. Not commercial, take the charter.""Already looking," Rowan replied. "There's one out in ninety minutes. I can make it.""Take it." I was already at the desk, pulling up the council contact list on my laptop, one hand on the phone, the other moving through files. "The photograph at the front desk. Did Miriam describe whoever left it?""The staff at the desk said it was a courier. Uniformed, had a delivery log. It looked completely legitimate.""Which means it was arranged in advance," I said. "Before Miriam moved. Someone had the secondary address before we thought they did.""That's what I'm thinking," Rowan said. "Gerald's contact is better than we assessed.""Or Helena gave it to him," I said. "She was at the gate two days ago. She could have had people positioned in LA before she came here."A pause. "That's a longer game than we thought she was playing.""Yes," I said. "Go…Call me when you lan