My Cheating Mate (Emma and Jeremy) novel Chapter 172

Chapter 172

My Cheating Mate

Jeremy pov

Seven days.

+15 Bonus

We’d given the Council one week to respond to our offer. Seven days to decide whether they’d rather shape the future of supernatural integration or continue fighting it and becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Seven days of preparation. Seven days of coalition coordination. Seven days of pretending to Grace that everything was normal while tension stretched like wire through every conversation, every meal, every quiet moment.

Grace, being Grace, knew something was happening anyway.

She’d started drawing more. Filling notebook after notebook with pictures of our family–Emma and me, Grandpa Richard, Uncle Cas, the vampire guards she’d named and considered personal friends. She’d started arranging her breck stables in defensive formations that she claimed were “just interesting architecture” but suspiciously resembled the tactical layouts she’d seen on the war room display when she’d sneaked in last year. 2

She was five years old and she was preparing in the only way available to her. Making art about the people she loved. Building protective structures with blocks.

I caught Cas watching her do it one evening–sitting in the corner of the living room while Grace constructed an elaborate block formation around a collection of small toy animals–and his expression did something complicated. Pride and grief and love all mixing together into something that had no single name.

Day three brought the first response from the Council. Not their final answer–just communication that the debate within their leadership was ongoing and they were requesting an extension on the deadline.

We declined. Seven days was seven days.

Day five brought something more significant.

Aldric contacted Cas directly. Personal communication, not official Council channels. A single message that Cas read three times before showing me.

*“The vote is divided. Soren will never accept. Two others align with him. Madeline and Thomas see the logic of your offer. I am -reconsidering positions I have held for centuries. The horse architecture was not a small thing, Castellan. It was the correct

detail.“*1

“The horse architecture,” I said. “He’s been thinking about Grace’s block stable for five days.”

r

“He’s been thinking about what it represents.” Cas set down the phone. “An eleven–hundred–year–old vampire confronting the reality that his ideological position requires him to be the enemy of a child who includes horses in her buildings because a vampire told her about pre–industrial transportation.” He paused. “That’s difficult to maintain when you actually examine it.”

“Is he going to vote our way?”

“I don’t know. But he’s genuinely reconsidering. That’s more than I hoped for.”

Day six was quiet, The kind of quiet that preceded major events–everyone aware that something significant was coming, tension humming underneath routine activities.

Emma made pot roast again. Her stress cooking had evolved over the years into genuinely excellent food, which the whole pack benefited from during crises.

Grace ate two portions and declared it the best thing she’d ever had, then immediately asked if Uncle Cas could eat pot roast because it seemed unfair that he couldn’t.

+15 Bonus

“Vampires don’t eat food,” Cas remifided her.

“But you could strell it,” he said reasonably, Smelling is almost the same.”

“It really isn’t.”

“I think it is.” She considered him with five–year–old certainty. “I’m going to take you something that smells really good someday. For your birthday. Do vampires have birthdays?”

“We have the anniversary of our turning.”

“Then I’ll make something that smells good for that.” She returned to her pot roast, satisfied with this plan. “What does your turning anniversary smell like?”

“Grace, that’s not-“Cas stopped. ‘I don’t know what it smells like.”

“We should figure out. It should smell like something good. Not scary.” She looked up at him with total seriousness. “Uncle Cas, does being turned hurt?”

The table went very quiet.

Cas met her eyes carefully. “It was a very long time ago. I don’t remember very clearly.”

“But did it hurt?”

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify