Semua Bab My Alpha’s Regret: Chasing My Pregnant Ex-Wife After Divorce: Bab 51 - Bab 60

MelindaMy hand shook so badly I almost dropped the phone. Carl reached over without asking and steadied it between both our hands, and together we stared down at the screen as the image finally loaded.It was them. My twins, curled together on a narrow cot in what looked like a bare stone room, lit only by a single hanging bulb. Their eyes were closed and their small chests rose and fell steadily, blankets pulled up around them, no visible marks on either of their faces.They were asleep, not hurt or even crying but most importantly, they were alive.The breath I'd been holding since the nursery finally broke loose from my chest in a sound that was half sob, half something I didn't have a name for."They're breathing," Carl said quietly, his own voice rough. "Melinda, look. They're breathing.""I see it." My thumb hovered over the screen like I could reach through it and touch them if I just pressed hard enough. "I see it, Carl."Beneath the photo, another message had already come th

Melinda"That's not possible." I said it again, like repeating it enough times might make it true. "Ashley. You're Ashley. My…"I couldn't even finish the sentence. The word sister sat lodged somewhere in my throat, too strange, too impossible to say out loud about a woman who had spent the last several months looking at me like I was the reason her marriage had cracked apart."It has to be a mistake," Carl said, though his voice didn't sound convinced of his own words. "There are a hundred women named Ashley Hartwell. It doesn't mean anything.""Petra." My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. "Is there anything else in the letter? A birthmark, a date, anything that could confirm this?"Paper rustled again on the other end of the line. "There's a birth date," Petra said slowly. "It matches yours exactly."The car went silent except for the hum of the engine and my own heartbeat pounding too loud in my ears."Kian,"

CarlNobody spoke for a long moment. Elder Voss stood there on the porch steps waiting, his eyes moving between Melinda and me like he was trying to read the truth off our faces before either of us said a word."By whom," he asked again, quieter this time. "Melinda. Who took them?"I could see her weighing it, the same calculation I'd watched her run a dozen times tonight already, deciding how much truth was safe to hand over and to whom. I stepped in before she had to answer."We don't know yet," I said. "That's the truth, Elder. We received a photograph proving they're alive, and we've been trying to locate them ourselves rather than waste time waiting on a council response."Voss's gaze sharpened on me. "You didn't think to report a kidnapping immediately?""We were told not to involve the council," Melinda said, finding her voice again. "Whoever has them made that condition very clear. If we bring in warriors, if we make this

CarlMy wolf didn't care about strategy. He cared about the two small heartbeats huddled against the altar and the six shapes closing in from the shadows, and every instinct in me screamed to put myself between them and whatever was coming.I positioned myself in front of Melinda's shifted form, my hackles raised, watching the newcomers spread out in a loose semicircle around the chapel hall. They moved wrong for hired muscle, too coordinated, too silent, each one falling into position like they'd rehearsed this a hundred times before.Ashley had gone rigid near the altar, her earlier fury replaced by something closer to panic. "Who authorized this?" she demanded, her voice cracking."I said to two guards. I said contain, not…"One of the figures stepped forward into the lantern light, and I felt Melinda go tense beside me, a low growl building in her throat. He was older, silver threading through dark hair, dressed in robes similar to th

Carl The humming grew louder, vibrating up through the stone floor and into my bones, and every instinct in my body screamed to break free of the silver chains and get Melinda as far from that dais as possible. "Stop this," I shouted over the rising noise. "Whatever you think you're doing…" "What we're doing," the silver-haired man said calmly, raising his voice just enough to carry over the hum, "is correcting a mistake generations old. Nothing personal, Alpha, it was merely necessary." The guards forced us both up the shallow steps of the dais, my boots scraping against stone worn smooth by centuries of feet before mine. Melinda stumbled beside me, her wrists still bound, her face pale as death in the amber glow now pulsing steadily beneath us. "Carl." Her voice shook. "If this severs the bloodline, I don't know what happens to me. I don't know if it just takes the power or if it takes more than that."