All Chapters of Midnight Debt: Never His, Always His: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

74 Chapters

The Morning After I Kissed Her

ZADENI didn't sleep.Not even for an hour. I lay on my back in the dark staring at the ceiling like it had something to tell me and it had absolutely nothing to tell me and by four in the morning I gave up entirely and went to my office.But she was still there, in my head.The way she kissed me back.I pressed my fingers to my desk and looked at the wall.That part I could not stop coming back to no matter how many times I told myself to stop coming back to it. She kissed me back. Not hesitantly. Not because she was surprised and didn't know how to respond. She kissed me back like she had been waiting and had stopped pretending she hadn't and the two or three seconds before I pulled away were…I stood up.Went to the window.The courtyard was dark and empty and the guards were doing their rotation and everything was exactly as it should be and I felt like something had been rearranged inside my chest without my permission and I couldn't find where everything had gone.I called it a

Someone Is Watching

REINAI went to the garden before six.Not because I had a plan. Just because the house was quiet and my head was loud and the garden has always been the one place where those two things can exist together without destroying each other.I pulled weeds I didn't need to pull. Turned soil that didn't need turning. Gave my hands something to do so my brain would stop replaying the hallway on a loop like it had been doing.It wasn't working.A mistake.Fine. It was a mistake. I had heard him clearly.But I tried to figure out what I was actually feeling underneath all the dignity.Hurt. I was really hurt.The kind that happens when someone confirms something you were already half-afraid was true.I sat back and looked at what I'd done to the far end of the garden.Then I laughed a little. Quietly. To myself.Get it together, Reina.Lena found me an hour later with two mugs of tea and the expression she wore when she already knew something was wrong and was giving me the choice of whether t

Blackthorn

ZADENBy end of day Damian had everything.He laid it out on my desk.I read it twice. Then I sat back and looked at the ceiling.Elias Blackthorn. Thirty years old. Inherited Alpha at twenty-four when his father died under circumstances that were officially classified as a territory dispute and unofficially classified as something considerably less clean. Since then, six packs absorbed in three years. Not by force alone. By a combination of political pressure, strategic alliances, and the occasional well-placed threat that was always just deniable enough to avoid a formal response.He is smart and patient. And now looking at my territory."The border attacks," I said."Coordinated," Damian confirmed. He sat across from me with his own copy of the file. "We thought they were opportunistic. They're not. Look at page three, the pattern."I turned to page three.The attacks mapped out over four months formed a specific shape, not random aggression but systematic probing. Testing response

Elder Selene

REINAI received an invitation that was shaped like a command.Elder Selene would like to see you this afternoon, if you are available. The housekeeper delivered it with a carefully neutral expression that told me declining was not really an option.So I wentSelene's rooms were in the oldest part of the pack house, the original stone section that predated everything else by about a century. The corridor leading to them was narrow and quiet and smelled like old wood and something herbal I couldn't name. I knocked on the door feeling, if I was being honest, like I was about to be called in front of the headmistress."Come in, child."I opened the door.The room surprised me. I had expected something cold and formal, everything else in this house was cold and formal. Instead it was warm. Books everywhere, stacked and shelved and piled on every surface. A fire going despite the mild weather. Two chairs pulled close to it with a small table between them holding a teapot and two cups that

The Journal

REINAI waited until night time.The pack house had finally settled into its nighttime rhythm and the corridor outside my room had been still for twenty minutes. Then I took the key from my bedside table, put on my cardigan, and went to find the east library.I had passed it a dozen times without going in. It was small, more of a reading room than a proper library, tucked at the end of the east corridor behind a door that looked like it hadn't been opened recently. The key turned smoothly though. Like it had been used not long ago.I slipped inside and closed the door behind me.The room smelled like old paper and dust. I turned on the small lamp on the reading table, low light, enough to see by.Third shelf from the bottom.I ran my fingers along the spines until I felt it, a thin journal. No title on the spine, tucked between two larger books like it had been placed there carefully rather than shelved. I pulled it out.The cover was dark green leather, worn soft at the corners. Some

Neutral Ground

ZADENThe Blackthorn meeting point was a stretch of open land between our territories. My choice deliberately. Nowhere to hide anything or people.I arrived first.Damian beside me. Cade, one of my senior warriors on my other side. We stood in the open field at ten in the morning and I watched the Blackthorn vehicles arrive from the north and took the time to study the man who stepped out of the first one.The reports had been accurate. Elias Blackthorn was not what most people expected an Alpha to look like. He wasn't built like a weapon the way most dominant wolves were. He was lean but well-dressed, with the kind of face that settled into an easy smile. He moved across the field toward us like a man arriving at a pleasant social occasion rather than a territorial negotiation.He stopped three meters out and extended his hand. "Alpha Cole. Thank you for agreeing to meet."I shook it once. "Blackthorn.""Elias, please." The smile didn't waver. "We're going to be neighbors for a long

Tobias Arrives

REINAI was coming down the east corridor with Ada's journal tucked under my arm, heading back to return it to the library, and I nearly walked into the source of the noise at the bottom of the stairs.He was tall. Dark haired. Wearing a jacket that cost more than my old monthly salary and carrying it like he'd forgotten he had it on. He was mid-sentence to one of the house staff, when he looked up and saw me.His face did something warm… kind of"You must be Reina," he said. Like he'd been looking forward to saying it.I stopped on the last step. "And you are?""Tobias." He extended his hand. "Tobias Cole. Zaden's cousin. The better-looking one, in case there was any confusion."I looked at his hand. Then I shook it. "There really wasn't."He grinned. "She's funny," he said to no one in particular. "Nobody told me she was funny."He picked up the bag at his feet like he lived here, which apparently he felt he did. "Walk with me? I need to find my usual room before someone puts me in

What Tobias Said

ZADENI stood at the window for a long time after Tobias left.The study was quiet. It always was, I used it rarely, only when I needed space the office didn't provide. Tonight I had come here because what I needed to think about didn't belong in the same space as border reports and alliance proposals.Tobias had a talent for finding the thing you were least ready to hear and saying it in a room you couldn't easily leave.You're going to lose her before you've even decided you want to keep her.He wasn't wrong. That is Tobias, he is frequently not wrong.He saw things sideways and said them directly and then made himself scarce before you could properly respond, which was either cowardice or strategy depending on your mood.Tonight I thought it was probably both.He had shown up the way he always showed up, without warning, with too much luggage and too much confidence, filling whatever room he walked into with an energy that the pack house didn't usually have. I had found him in the

She Has A Name

REINAI was in the kitchen making lunch when Sofia called and something in my chest loosened. Like a knot I didn't know I was carrying just released.I answered before the second ring."Hey you.""Hey." Her voice was bright. "So. I have news.""Good news or Sofia news?""What does that mean?""It means sometimes your news is objectively good and sometimes it's good by your personal definition which occasionally involves decisions I find alarming."She laughed. "It's good news." A pause. "Remember the scholarship I told you about earlier? It’s in the advanced literature program. In that competitive university I’ve always dreamed of."I sat down on the kitchen stool."Sofia, you've been trying to get in for two years""I know. I still can’t believe I got a full scholarship, Reina."My eyes burned and I was absolutely not going to cry"You…" My voice came out unsteady. I stopped and tried again. "You deserve it Sofia. You really do."She laughed, that laugh, the one that had been the bes

Lockdown

ZADENI was in my office finishing the eastern alliance proposal when Damian walked in without knocking, which he never did and I knew before he opened his mouth that something was wrong."We found him," he said. "The watcher."I set my pen down. "And?""He's a Blackthorn."I stood up slowly. "How long.""Eleven days inside our boundary." Damian's voice was controlled but something underneath it wasn't. "Eleven days, Zaden. He had a full file on her movements. Her schedule. The garden, when she eats, when she sleeps…""Lockdown," I said. "Now."He was already on his phone before I finished the word.The next twenty minutes moved fast.I pulled my senior warriors from their posts and redistributed them, perimeter doubled, east wing specifically tripled. Pack members recalled from outer territory. All non-essential external access suspended. The house locked down with the efficiency of a pack that had drilled for exactly this and knew what it meant when the Alpha used that word.I moved

...

3 4 5 6 7 8

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP