All Chapters of The Alpha's Hidden Debts: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Sera's PovWe were still standing in the hallway, neither of us moving, the echo of what Riven had just said sitting between us like something neither of us was ready to touch yet.He would have known exactly what you were.I had known it too, the moment he said it, the way you know a thing the instant someone finally gives you the right word for it. I had been carrying the memory for years without understanding what I was carrying."There's something I should tell you," I said. "It matters, I think. For what comes next."Riven tilted his head slightly. "Tell me."I pushed off the wall and moved toward the end of the hallway where there was a small bench against the window. I sat down on it. Not because I needed to sit, but because what I was about to say felt like something that needed a settled body underneath it.Riven came and stood near the opposite wall, giving me the room he always gave me. Not too far. Just far enough."I was seventeen," I said. "About four months into my time

Sera's PovThe ranger station sat at the edge of nowhere, halfway between two territories that had spent years pretending the other did not exist. Old wood, a rusted roof, windows so dusty they barely let in light. No pack markings. No allegiance to anyone. Exactly what neutral ground was supposed to look like.Riven had argued with me about it on the drive over."I go in with you," he said. "That's not up for discussion.""If you go in with me, he won't say what he actually came to say," I said. "He'll say the version he's prepared for an audience.""Then I stay close enough to hear.""The back room," I said. "You stay in the back room and you say nothing unless I call for you."He had gripped the steering wheel and stared at the road for a long moment."Fine," he said. "The back room."Dex took the perimeter without being asked, circling the station with the easy, unhurried movement of someone who had done this a hundred times, his eyes on the tree line instead of us. He caught my e

Sera's PovMara brought us inside, to the small sitting room off the main hall, and made tea that nobody drank. Coran sat in the armchair near the window, his hands folded on his knees, watching me with those steady, patient eyes. Riven stood near the door, close enough to hear everything, far enough back to make it clear that whatever happened in this room was mine to lead.I sat across from Coran and looked at him properly for the first time.He was older than he had seemed in the dark outside. The white hair, the slow way he held himself, the particular kind of stillness in his face that only came on a person who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time and had learned to move around it without letting anyone see."Tell me from the beginning," I said. "All of it."He nodded once, slow, like he had been waiting for permission and now that he had it, he was going to do it properly."Thirty years ago I was young," he said. "Low rank. I served under a council sub-division

Sera's PovI did not go to the meeting.I was not invited, which was not the same as being excluded. I understood the difference. A senior pack meeting was pack business, the inner circle of Northesk, and I was not that, not formally, not yet. So I did what I had always done when decisions were being made in rooms I was not in.I stayed close and I listened.The meeting room was down the hall from the records room. Old wood, heavy door, the kind of walls that were thick enough to muffle most words but not all of them. I sat in the records room with my door slightly open and I did not pretend I was not doing it.I heard Riven's voice first, low and even, the meeting-tone that was different from his regular voice the way a river was different when it went narrow, same water, more force. He laid everything out. I could not hear every word, but I heard enough. The Vaels. The bloodline. The extraction attempt. The detained team. All of it, and from what I could piece together, none of it s

Sera's PovThe council's inquiry moved the way the council moved, slow and deliberate, with the confidence of an institution that had never once needed to hurry because time had always been on its side.Riven's legal response went out within twenty-four hours. I read the draft before it was sent, not because he asked me to, but because I was in his study when he finished it and he slid it across the desk without comment, which I had learned was his way of asking. I read it twice. It was precise, carefully worded, and it bought time without conceding anything.But it did not resolve anything either.The detained team walked three days later. I was in the records room when Dex came to find me, and I saw it in his face before he said a word."Riven let them go," I said."He had to." Dex leaned against the doorframe, his arms folded, his usual ease gone. "He can't hold them without forcing a council hearing, and he says the timing for that isn't right yet.""He's building toward something