Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 157

Chapter 157

Alyssa POV

+20 Free Coms

Eli was at the table, hunched over a stack of papers, his hands moving with his brows almost touching as he drew.

“Eli, I need you to talk about you today.”

He looked up.

“Do you remember what I told you about the man we saw today?”

Eli nodded. “He’s a friend.”

“Yes he is.” I emphasized it to be clear.

He nodded and reached for another piece of paper.

“But he is papa.” He didn’t look up.

Of course, why did I expect this to go smoothly?

I kept my voice even. “He’s a friend, baby.”

His voice came through again, insistent, armed with the certainty of what he knows. “He is papa. He smells like papa.”

I had no comeback for that. Wolf-blooded children knew things adults spent years learning to talk themselves out of and to top that Eli had never once been wrong about a scent in his life.

“He’s a friend,” I said again.

He finally looked up and studied my face. His face has that assessing look it did when he was trying to reconcile what he knew with what he was being told.

He stared at me for a while. “Okay.”

He picked up his pen and started drawing.

I watched him draw two circles and something that could be called a tail if the definition was stretched enough.

He accepted it easily. All it took was a few repeated sentences and he accepted it the way toddlers do because he hadn’t learn that some contradictions were worth holding onto.

I knew the implication of what I just did. I was teaching him to doubt his senses. Keeping him away from Kieran wasn’t my intention, I didn’t even want to but it was the safe option.

GAT

3

1/3

15:15 Sat, Sep 19 )

Chapter 157

Watching the red pen move across the paper, I told myself that was still true.

السريعة

+20 Free Coms

Myphone buzzed on the counter. It was a message from the contact Dante had set up weeks ago, Surveillance ended. Threat has been found and neutralized.

I read it twice. There was no explanation or details about who or how. What I was given was the confirmation that the subtle threat that had been stalking me was over. There would be no more looking over my shoulder or the extra locks I had gotten.

I sat down and remained still for several seconds as relief flooded my system; I felt my shoulders drop and had no idea no how long they had been tensed. The euphoria of relief quickly left and was replaced by a quieter realization that was harder to shake. Dante had done this.

I asked him for protection because there was nobody else to ask. He had delivered on that promise and began realizing that I owed him. Dante Blackwood wasn’t a man who you owed even if he might never

collect.

There was no point in worrying about it tonight so I typed: Thank you.

There was nothing else to say aside that. I sent it and set the phone face-down on the counter.

Eli held up his drawing. “Mama, look what I drew. It’s a dog.”

I leaned forward “It’s a very good dog but something is missing.”

His eyes beamed. “It doesn’t have ears yet.”

“Yes. So you can add them.”

He nodded, went bent back to the table,, with his tongue between his teeth in concentration and began to scribble. I got up to open my laptop at the other end of the table, close enough to still see him.

I opened the company report open before I decided to open it. I needed the financial context for the integration project. At least that was what I told myself the reason I was reading it.

I scrolled through the executive summary and the rest of the document till I end of the page.

Prepared by D. Nightshade and R. Voss, Operations.

I stared at the name longer than I wanted but continued reading. It was her department’s work and I needed to understand it.

The allocation model she used was far more sophisticated than the standard models. Her parameters were tighter than most analysts and relevant to the model. I read it again, not because I didn’t understand but to understand how she arrived at her choice of model.

I scrolled back to check a footnote and continued reading telling myself it was professional curiosity. I’d read hundreds of reports but nothing like this. I knew what competent looked like on a page, and I knew when someone had done more than what was asked of them. She belonged in the latter category.

Eli held up the drawing. “Mama. It has ears now.”

2/3

SAT

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify