Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Chapter 36

DENISE

By the following afternoon, my ribs had downgraded from a sharp objection to a steady, manageable commentary.

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The concussion was better with rest and actual darkness-Kieran’s penthouse had blackout curtains in the guest room that were the most effective I had ever encountered, the kind that made three o’clock in the afternoon indistinguishable from three o’clock at night, and I had slept for eleven hours straight without once startling awake at the ambient sounds of an unfamiliar building. That alone told me something about the state my nervous system had been in for longer than just this week.

I woke to a tray outside the guest room door. Not a knock, not an intrusion-just tray, appearing between sleeping and waking the way things appeared in houses with attentive staff. Coffee, plain toast, water, two ibuprofen in a small dish. A notecard beside the cup in Kieran’s handwriting: *No obligations today. Rest. The documents arrived from legal-read them when you’re ready, not before.*

I sat on the edge of the bed and drank the coffee and looked at the notecard for a moment.

Then I ate the toast, took the ibuprofen, and went to find him.

He was in the main sitting room with his laptop and what appeared to be three separate documents spread across the coffee table, jacket off, sleeves rolled, looking exactly like a man who had been working since early morning and had no particular awareness of this as unusual. He looked up when I came in.

“You should still be resting,” he said.

“I’ve been horizontal for fourteen hours.” I lowered myself onto the sofa across from him with the careful movement my ribs required. “I’m done being horizontal.”

He assessed me with the direct attention that I was beginning to accept as simply how he looked at things. “How’s the head?”

“Better. The ribs are the main event now.”

“The doctor said-”

“I know what the doctor said.” I picked up the legal documents from the table and set them in my lap. “I’ll read these today.”

He let that go, which I appreciated. He was, I was learning, good at letting things go once he’d said them once-he didn’t repeat himself or circle back to check if you’d reconsidered. He said the thing, and then he trusted that you’d heard it and would make your own decision, and if the decision differed from his preference he noted it and moved on.

It was remarkably restful.

I was halfway through the first section of the legal documents when he said, without looking up from his laptop: “There’s an event tonight.”

I looked up.

“The Silvermoon family has thrown a party.” He turned the laptop toward me so I could see the invitation on the screen.

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Chapter 36

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“Ostensibly a social gathering for the broader pack community-influential families, council members, business figures. In practice, it’s a display. Elena and Dante’s mating is being celebrated publicly before the formal ceremony.”

I looked at the invitation. Elegant formal, the Silvermoon family crest at the top. The event was at the Grand Aldric, which was the venue that people used when they wanted no ambiguity about the statement they were making.

“My family received one,” Kieran continued. “Given the political dynamic between our packs, declining has its own implications-it reads as a slight that Richard Silvermoon would catalog and use later.” He paused. “I had been inclined to send my parents with regrets for my own absence, given the current sensitivity.”

“But?” I said.

“But I’ve been reconsidering.”

I looked at the invitation again. The date was tonight. The time was eight o’clock

I thought about who would be there. Richard Silvermoon, who had stood in a police station and told me I would never see sunlight again with the confidence of a man who had never been told no by anything. Cyrus, presumably still sporting the evidence of a marble credenza. Elena, who had cried in a hospital room over a story she’d been handed. Lyra, with her private smile and her four years of accumulated certainty that I was a weight she could put down whenever she chose.

Dante.

I thought about the dress I didn’t currently own, and the card that was in the document folder Kieran had sent to the guest room along with the legal papers, and the particular arithmetic of walking into a room where nobody expected you.

“Tell me the rest,” I said.

“Jayce would take you. Not me-not visibly, not yet.” He closed the laptop. “But my parents would be there, and Jayce would introduce you to them. If they take to you, it moves the timeline forward in a way that matters more than any public announcement.”

“And if they don’t?”

“My mother will take to you,” he said, with the flat certainty of someone who had thought about this. “My father is more formal. He’s also not well-you know this. He wants the succession settled before his health declines further. Which means he wants to approve of you, even if his manner doesn’t immediately show it.”

I thought about this. “What exactly do they know about me?”

Something moved at the corner of Kieran’s mouth. “My mother received a piece of footage yesterday from a source she won’t name to me, which I suspect was Lena, who is not known for restraint.” He paused. “She has watched it several times.”

I stared at him. “The police station footage.”

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