บททั้งหมดของ The Alpha Who Threw Me Away: บทที่ 31 - บทที่ 40

Selene’s POVI take the phone from Mara’s hand.She lets me have it without resistance, which tells me whatever is on the screen she has already read and processed enough to know it needs to go directly to me.I read it.It is not long. Caden does not write the way some people write when they are trying to make an impact — he does not build to things or wrap meaning in careful phrasing. He writes the way he talks, plain and direct and without performance.Mara. I am sending this to you because I do not have Selene’s number and I did not want to go through the household line. Please give it to her when you think is right. I am already on the road. I left this afternoon as I said I would. Before I did, I spoke to Halsey. I told her everything I know about Corrin, about the northern leaders’ connection to my father’s former second, and about what I believe the filing is actually designed to accomplish. I have submitted a formal written account to the council under my own name and territo

Lucian’s POVI look at the phone.Then at Selene’s face.Her face wins. Whatever the council wants at ten o’clock at night has been at ten o’clock at night for thirty seconds and can stay there for thirty more while I work out what has happened to put that specific expression on her face. She is composed, she is always composed, but underneath the composure something is sitting heavily and it has been there since before she knocked.“Bowen,” I say. Not a question.She blinks. “How did you know.”“Because there are three things that would put that look on your face tonight and two of them are in this room already.” I step back and let her in. “What happened.”She tells me. Quickly and without excess, the way she does everything, and I listen and watch her hands while she talks, the way she is holding the green folder against her chest the same way she held the clipboard this morning, and I understand that the folder is serving the same function. A door. Something solid.“He asked me to

Selene’s POVNobody knocks at five in the morning with good news.This is something I have learned, not from experience specifically, but from the particular quality of a knock at an hour when the world is supposed to be still. Good news waits. Good news arrives at reasonable hours with its coat on and its composure intact. Whatever is at the front door right now did not wait and is not composed and I can feel that through the walls before I have even moved toward it.Lucian is already moving.I follow him because I am not going to stand in the kitchen holding a coffee mug while the morning decides what it is going to be without me in it.The entrance hall is cold. The heating has not kicked up to its daytime level yet and the stone floor pulls the warmth out of everything it touches. Lucian reaches the door and opens it and for a moment I cannot see past him, cannot see who is on the step, and then he shifts and I see.A man. Older, travel-worn, a coat that has been worn for hours and

Selene’s POVI reply to the message at half past six.I tell Halsey yes, five minutes, and I tell her I will be at the council’s local office by nine-thirty. She confirms immediately, which means she was waiting for my response, which means whatever she wants to tell me before the hearing she has been sitting with since last night and has decided cannot wait until we are in the room.That is either very good or very bad and I do not have enough information yet to know which.I go downstairs and make coffee and Caden sits at the kitchen table with his coat finally off and his hands wrapped around a mug and we do not talk about anything that matters. We talk about the mountains. He asks how long I have been looking at them and I tell him my whole life and he tells me his territory has mountains too, further north, darker than these, the kind that hold snow until June. I listen and drink my coffee and let the ordinary conversation do what ordinary conversation does when everything around

Selene’s POVNobody moves.Pack Leader Dain stands at the back of the hearing room with his coat still on and the particular stillness of a man who has made a decision that cost him something and is standing in the aftermath of it. He is older than I expected. Late sixties maybe, broad-shouldered but carrying it the way men do when age has redistributed the weight of them, and his face has the specific quality of someone who has not slept and is not pretending otherwise.Halsey looks at Reth.Something passes between them, a question and an answer, and then Halsey says, “Pack Leader Dain submitted a formal withdrawal and corroborating statement overnight. His request to appear was filed at three this morning.” She looks at us. “He is within his right to address the panel directly. The question is whether this panel permits him to address the room.”She is asking us.Not formally. But the way her eyes move — to Lucian first, then to me — she is asking.Lucian looks at me.I look at Dai