Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 45

Chapter 45

Chapter 45

DENISE

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The news about Lyra reached me over breakfast.

Not through any dramatic channel-no phone call, no urgent message. Just a brief text from a number I didn’t recognize that contained four words: *Blackwood girl got out.*

I read it, set my phone face-down on the table, and finished my toast.

I had expected it eventually. Lyra had resources and a brother who, whatever his failures, was not going to leave her in a cell indefinitely. The misrepresentation charge was formal but it was also, at its core, navigable by people with the right lawyers and the right relationships. It would cost something-money, a quiet apology filed through the correct channels, some arrangement between the Blackwood legal team and the Grand Aldric’s management that made the official record reflect something more contained than what had actually happened.

That was how it worked for people like Lyra.

I knew this. I had always known this.

What had changed was that it no longer sat in my chest the way it used to-that particular weight of knowing that the rules applied differently depending on where you stood. It was still true. It would probably always be true. But I was standing somewhere different now, and from here it looked less like a wall and more like a fact of geography. Facts of geography could be navigated.

I poured more coffee and looked out the window of Kieran’s penthouse at the city doing its morning business, and thought about what I needed to do today.

The legal documents were signed. My copy was in the folder on the desk in the guest room, reviewed twice with the independent lawyer Kieran had insisted I retain-a woman named Adaeze Obi who had an office on the east side and a manner of reading contracts that made you feel every word was being individually interrogated before she allowed it to pass. She had found two clauses she wanted amended. Kieran’s team had amended them within the day, without pushback, which Adaeze had told me was not standard behavior and which I had filed accordingly.

The arrangement was formal now.

What it was beyond formal was a question I was leaving alone for the moment, because I had enough to manage without also managing that.

My phone buzzed.

*Rosaline: Good morning. I’m downstairs. I hope you haven’t eaten too much breakfast because we have a full day.”

I looked at this message for a moment.

Then I looked at my half-finished toast.

“Rosaline: Also wear comfortable shoes. The fourth shop always requires the mast walking.”

*Fourth shop”, I typed back. “We haven’t been to any shops.”

1/3

Not yet, she replied, with the energy of a woman who had already planted the itinerary and was simply informing me of it.

I put on comfortable shoes,

Rosaline Nightshade moved through the city like someone who had never once doubted that it would accommodate her, and discovered repeatedly that she was correct.

She was in the lobby when I came down, in a well-cut coat and low heels, with the compact purposeful energy that I had noticed at the Grand Aldric. She looked at my shoes approvingly when I stepped out of the elevator.

“Good,” she said. “Kieran told me you were practical.”

“Kieran is in Tokyo,” I said.

“He called this morning.” She took my arm with the ease of someone who had decided we were past the formality of asking. “He wanted to make sure you were resting. I told him I had plans for you, which he pretended to object to.” She steered us toward the door. “He didn’t object very hard.”

I processed this information as we stepped out into the morning.

“Mrs. Nightshade,” I said.

“Rosaline.”

“Rosaline.” I adjusted to the name with the slight effort it still required. “When you say a full day–”

“Wedding dresses,” she said, with the directness of someone who had no interest in building up to things. “Don’t look like that. It’s never too early. The good designers have waiting lists that you’ll be glad you joined before you needed them.” She guided us toward a car that was already waiting. “And I’ve wanted to do this for three years. Kieran has been very uncooperative about the entire process until now.”

“Three years,” I said.

“He’s been ready longer than he would tell you.” She said it simply, as a statement of fact, and then moved on before I could examine it. “We’ll start on the north side. I know the woman who runs the first shop and she’ll pull things worth looking at rather than things worth selling.”

I got in the car.

The first shop was beautiful and slightly overwhelming, with dresses arranged like an art installation and a woman named Celestine who greeted Rosaline with the warmth of a long association and looked at me with the assessing eye of someone whose job was to see people clearly

I tried on four dresses. None of them were right, which Celestine acknowledged with more honesty than I’d expected from someone trying to make a sale. “You need structure,” she said, circling me with her head tilted. “Something with a strong line. These are too soft for you. Try Maison Varel next-tell them I sent you.”

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