Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 40

Chapter 40

DANTE

I watched because I couldn’t do anything else useful. Intervening was not available to me-not without making the evening significantly worse in ways I couldn’t control. So I watched, and processed, and tried to build a model of what was happening that contained all the relevant variables.

Denise moved through the lower salon with Jayce at a measured pace-not circulating ‘aggressively, not performing, simply being present in the room with the ease of someone who had been prepared for exactly this environment. She spoke to people, and people spoke to her with the particular attentiveness that appeared when someone’s social positioning had been established through reliable channels and the room had done the math.

Rosaline Nightshade had come down from the upper salon and was visible across the room with her hand periodically on Denise’s arm in the gesture of a woman claiming familiarity.

Richard Silvermoon watched this with an expression that I recognized as a powerful man identifying a problem he hadn’t built into his calculations.

A business associate of his-Prestan Yule, whose family had wanted an alliance with the Nightshade pack for three years and had been politely deflected-approached Denise and Rosaline’s orbit and was included in the conversation with the ease of someone being introduced by a relevant party.

Richard Silvermoon watched Prestan Yule laugh at something Denise said.

He turned to me.

I met his gaze with a neutral expression that I worked to maintain.

“What exactly,” he said, with the control of a man keeping his voice below the range of the people nearest us, “is her connection to the Nightshade family?”

“I don’t have that information,” I said.

It was technically true.

He looked at me for a moment with the eyes of a man deciding whether he believed me. Then he looked back across the room.

“I need to speak to her,” he said.

“That’s your decision to make.”

He shot me a look that contained several things, none of them warm, and moved across the room.

I watched him approach her,

I watched Denise register his approach and shift her posture by a degree that was imperceptible to anyone who didn’t know how to read her, which in this room was almost everyone except me. She turned to face him with the expression she had worn in the police station-the attentive neutrality of someone who was receiving information they had already anticipated.

I couldn’t hear the exchange from where I stood. I watched it in the visual register.

1/3

Richard Silvermoon, who had never, to my knowledge, groveled to anything, said something to her with an expression that had the physical quality of a man reducing his own height. Denise listened without helping him-without the social lubrication of nodding or the encouraging softening of expression that people offered when they wanted a conversation to resolve quickly. She simply received what he was saying.

He said more.

She waited.

He said something final-I watched his jaw work, watched the particular swallowing movement of a man consuming his own pride -and then looked at her with an expression that was as close to supplication as I suspected Richard Silvermoon’s face was physically capable of producing.

Denise said something measured. Then something else. Then she nodded once, a single, clean acknowledgment, and returned her attention to Rosaline Nightshade.

Richard Silvermoon walked back across the room toward his family with the expression of a man who had just conducted a transaction he hadn’t expected to conduct on terms he hadn’t set.

I picked up my drink.

Lyra had been quiet for the better part of an hour, which was how I knew she was planning something.

My sister in full voice was manageable. My sister in silence was a different calculation. I tracked her position in the room at intervals, noting when she moved, who she spoke to, the particular direction of her attention.

She’d been speaking to two women I didn’t immediately recognize near the west side of the salon. Then to someone who appeared to be a member of the event staff. Then she’d moved toward the area where Denise was standing with Rosaline and Jayce and two other guests.

I set my glass down.

I was moving before I’d fully decided to move, the way you moved when instinct had identified something that reasoning hadn’t finished processing.

I was not fast enough.

Lyra’s voice, carrying with the particular projection of someone who intended to be overheard: “I’m sorry-I just need to understand, because I’m hearing some confusion from several people tonight-” The tone of polite concern that she used when she was doing something with sharp edges. “Are you actually affiliated with the Nightshade family? Because there seems to be some misunderstanding circulating, and I’d hate for anyone to be embarrassed by a misrepresentation-”

The conversations in the immediate vicinity adjusted.

Rosaline Nightshade turned.

She looked at Lyra with the comprehensive attention of a woman who had been reading rooms for forty years and had no difficulty identifying what was in front of her.

“I beg your pardon?” Rosaline said.

“I just mean–” Lyra’s smile was the pleasant one, the dangerous one. “I know Denise from previous employment. I wanted to

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