My Cheating Mate (Emma and Jeremy) novel Chapter 175

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Chapter 175

My Cheating Mate

Jeremy pov

Meeting Aldric had not been part of the original plan.

The ceasefire was eleven days old. We’d been focused on consolidating the coalition, establishing the reporting protocols the Council had requested, coordinating with allied packs and wovens on the new political landscape. Practical work. The kind that happened after major events settled into ongoing reality.

Then Cas received another private message from Aldric.

Not official Council communication. Personal. The same channel as before.

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*“I would like to meet. Not as Council representative. As an individual reconsidering eleven centuries of certainty. I believe I should understand what I’ve been fighting against before I decide how to vote in five years. I would appreciate meeting the Luna and Lord Castellan. Neutral location of your choosing.“*

Cas had read it twice, then shown it to me. “He’s not asking to meet you. He’s asking to meet Ernma and me specifically.”

“Emma and you specifically are what he’s been thinking about. The horse architecture comment was about Grace, but the reconsidering is about what you represent.” I looked at the message again. “He wants to understand the relationship. The vampire lord who became Uncle Cas. The Luna who made it happen.”

“Emma made it happen,” Cas said. “She offered me a place in your family when I was still operating entirely as a political creature. She’s the one who said ‘accept it‘ when I kept calling it strategy.”

“Then she’s exactly who he needs to meet.”

Emma, when we told her, had been quiet for a long moment. Then: “An eleven–hundred–year–old vampire who asked about the horse stable through diplomatic channels wants to understand why you sit on floors and learn what markers smell like.”

“Essentially yes.”

“Then we go.” No hesitation. “Jeremy, if Aldric votes our way in five years, that changes the math inside the Council. Two votes

worth a meeting.” to one instead of two to three. Thar

“It could be a trap. Council manipulation to gather intelligence-

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“Cas doesn’t think it is. Do you?” She looked at him directly.

He was quiet for a moment. “No. Aldric is–genuinely troubled. In my experience, the oldest supernatural creatures are the hardest to move ideologically and the most fundamentally changed when something does move them. He’s not gathering intelligence. He’s trying to understand something that’s challenging everything he’s believed for eleven centuries.”

“Then we go,” Emma repeated. “And we help him understand.”

We arranged the meeting for the following week. Neutral location—the same witch estate as before, which the owners had offered as a standing arrangement given the significance of the ongoing negotiations. Cas contacted Aldric through private channels. Security was lighter than previous meetings–Aldric had specifically requested minimal formal protection, citing a desire for authentic interaction rather than political theater.

We arrived first. The meeting room felt different with just three of us–smaller, more intimate. No formal table arrangement, at Cas’s suggestion. Just chairs, comfortable ones, positioned conversationally.

Emma had dressed carefully. Not formally–she’d rejected that approach immediately. “If Aldric wants to understand what we’ve built, he needs to see it. Not a political delegation.”

She wore the soft blue sweater Grace had helped her pick out last month–Grace’s opinion on clothing being both frequent and

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strongly expressed. Her hair was down. She looked like what she was a woman in her mid–thirties who happened to be Luna of a pack that was shaking up supernatural politics.

Aldric arrived alone.

That was the first surprise. No attendants, no guards, no Council observer taking notes. Just an ancient vampire in simple clothes

–dark trousers, a grey shirt, a coat that looked like it might actually be historically significant–moving with the particular

gravity of extreme age.

He was older than Cas in ways that showed despite the ageless appearance. Something in the eyes. The way he carried himself, like a man accustomed to centuries of careful observation.

He stopped in the doorway, taking in the three of us. His gaze moved methodically: me, then Cas, then Emma.

It stayed on Emma.

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