All Chapters of I Sold Myself to the Lycan King : Chapter 21 - Chapter 27

The summons came by courier, sealed in council wax, and Charles read it standing at the head of the table with the same stillness he had given the breach report and the dead man's credential."Rael."Rael appeared in the doorway as though he had been waiting for the word, which he probably had."Sir.""Read this."Rael read it. Belcalis watched his face do the thing faces did around Charles, the careful arrangement into nothing readable, and she had learned by now that nothing readable was its own kind of answer."They're citing the estate incidents," Rael said. "The fence breach, the surveillance on Miss Iyana, now this." He did not look up from the page. "And they want Miss Voss assessed. Bloodline situation, it says here. Within ten days.""They want access to her," Charles said."That's how I read it, sir."Charles set the summons flat on the table with two fingers, the way he set down anything he intended to control rather than react to. "Draft the response. We'll appear in three

She expected a wall.Charles had given her silence instead of refusal, and silence from him had a hundred different meanings, and she braced for the version that meant the conversation was over and he had simply decided not to fight it out loud. She had spent enough weeks in this house to know that was its own kind of wall, quieter and harder to climb than shouting.He surprised her."Sit down," he said. "We're going to plan this properly.""You're not going to argue anymore?""I argued. You heard me. You're still going." He pulled out a chair, and it was not a concession, exactly, it was something more controlled than that, the sound of a man redirecting force rather than absorbing it. "So now we make sure that if I'm wrong about the danger, it doesn't matter, because you'll be protected regardless."She sat."Terms," he said. "First. The location is mine to choose, not his. His letter named a place. I'll counter with somewhere I control, somewhere Rael has already walked, somewhere

He was waiting in the library when she came in, not pacing, not at the window, simply seated with a book closed over one finger the way he always held them, as if reading were something he could set down and pick back up without losing the thread of it."You're back," he said. "Tell me."She told him.The lodge, the dust, the woodsmoke. The woman, older than she expected, the unfamiliar bearing that belonged to no pack she had learned. The third faction, confirmed in the woman's own words, two centuries of watching, waiting for the founding line to surface. Varro's anchor, its location known to them, withheld for now. She gave him all of it in order, the way he had taught her to give a debrief, facts first, feelings after, and he listened with the full weight of his attention, not interrupting, not writing anything down, simply taking it in the way he took in everything that mattered.What she did not give him was the second anchor. Or the coordinates folded small in her coat pocket u