Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 74

Chapter 74

Chapter 74

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Denise registered it immediately. I watched her register it-the slight stillness, the processing, the decision to file it rather than

react.

Elena said something to her coordinator and moved toward the garden doors, and their coordinator followed, and then it was the four of us and then three, because the venue coordinator excused herself to check on something, and Dante was standing eight feet from us with the particular quality of a man who had assessed a situation and decided it was useful.

I kept my face neutral.

“Nightshade,” he said.

“Blackwood.”

His eyes moved to Denise. Something in them changed-not the business register, the other one, the one I had been watching him fail to contain since the Grand Aldric. “You look well,” he said to her.

“I am well,” she said.

A pause.

“I hope you’ve been thinking carefully,” he said, and his voice had dropped to the register of someone speaking for a specific audience of one. “About what you’re in. About what he’s actually using this for.”

Denise said nothing.

“The arrangement isn’t about you,” Dante continued. “It never was. It’s political positioning-he needed a Luna before the council election cycle, he needed someone visible enough to signal stability, and he needed someone that his personal situation could be covered by.” He held her gaze. “You’re a cover, Denise. Well-dressed, well-placed, but a cover. The same as you were for me, just better packaged.”

I took a step forward.

Denise moved.

She stepped between us-not dramatically, not with the energy of someone preventing something, but with the clean, certain placement of someone who had made a decision before the situation required it.

“Don’t,” she said to me. Quiet, direct.

“Denise-”

“If you throw the first hit, you’re the one they take in,” she said. “In a venue you’re actively considering for your wedding, with staff present and security cameras on every entrance.” She held my gaze for a brief, steady moment. “Don’t give him that.”

I looked at her.

Then I looked at Dante over her shoulder.

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Chapter 74

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He was watching this exchange with the expression I had been waiting to see from him-the one that had moved past the careful management into something rawer. Not satisfaction at the words he’d delivered. Something more complicated, the expression of a man watching a dynamic he didn’t fully understand and finding the not-understanding difficult.

He held my gaze for a moment.

Then he looked at Denise one more time, with the expression he couldn’t keep as controlled as he wanted it, and turned and walked toward the garden where Elena was waiting.

Denise watched him go.

I watched her watch him.

The coordinator reappeared. We finished the walkthrough. We confirmed the booking. I signed what needed signing and we walked out into the afternoon and got in the car.

The city moved past the windows.

I wanted to address it. The words were present-the specific, clear response to what Dante had said, the explanation of the council election timeline and what it had and hadn’t been, the version of the arrangement’s origins that was more complete than the one he’d delivered.

I wanted to tell her that the cover story was not the whole story, that there had been a year of watching before I approached her, that the dress in the box had been made by someone who said it was the kind of thing people killed for and I had not disagreed.

I opened my mouth.

“We’re both using each other,” Denise said.

I closed my mouth.

She was looking out the window, her profile clean against the moving city. Her voice was even-not defensive, not wounded, not performing anything.

“We signed a contract,” she said. “We both had reasons. Whatever he said is true and it’s also void because the reasons were mutual.” A pause. “I knew the shape of this when I signed it. I’m not standing here surprised by the shape.”

Nooked at her.

“You don’t have to explain it,” she said. “You don’t have to-” She paused. “I’m not asking you to defend the arrangement. I understood it.”

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