Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 131

MATTHEW

The reports were not getting any better.

I’d been in my office since six in the morning, working through the accumulated damage of the weeks I’d spent in BloodMoon City, and the picture that emerged from Marcus’s meticulous documentation was not a flattering portrait of my leadership.

Three families had transferred out to neighboring packs. Two more had filed preliminary requests that were still pending. Pack commerce was down fourteen percent from the previous quarter, partly because of general instability and partly because several of our trade relationships required Alpha–level engagement that hadn’t been happening while I was away. The medical cooperative we’d built with two other packs over the course of four years was at risk of dissolving because I’d missed three consecutive coordination meetings.

And Beta Adam had twenty–two percent of the pack signatures on his challenge petition, up from seventeen when I’d last checked.

“Walk me through the timeline on the Harker family transfer,” I said, pulling that file to the top of my stack. “They’d been with the pack for thirty years. What was the breaking point?”

Marcus, seated across from my desk with his own stack of documentation, checked his records. “The week after you left for BloodMoon City. Sandra Harker’s mother was ill, needed magical medical assistance that we couldn’t provide because our pack healer had been operating at reduced capacity since-” He paused. “Since Luna Bianca died. Sandra put in a transfer request to be closer to healers in the Creston pack. Matthew, our healer infrastructure collapsed when Bianca was gone. She’d been doing significant informal work-”

“I know.” I’d known this, in the abstract way you know things you’ve been avoiding looking at directly. “Bianca had medical training most of the pack didn’t know about. She was filling gaps quietly.”

“Very quietly. It wasn’t until she was gone that we realized how many gaps there were.” Marcus set down his papers. “Matthew, I want to say something, and I need you to hear it as your Beta, not as someone managing your feelings.”

“Go ahead.”

“The pack is recoverable. The challenges you’re facing–the transfer requests, the financial dip, Adam’s petition–none of these are fatal. Packs have come back from worse.” He paused. “But they’re only recoverable if you’re genuinely committed to being here. Not physically present while mentally somewhere else. Not going through the motions of leadership while carrying so much private guilt and grief that you can’t actually focus.” He met my eyes directly. “Are you ready to actually be here?”

It was the kind of question that deserved an honest answer, so I took a moment before I gave one.

“I think so,” I said. “I think BloodMoon City was necessary. Not just for Theo–for me. Dr. Martinez was-“I stopped, looking for the right words. “She helped me see things clearly that I’d been avoiding. About myself. About the choices I made. About what I actually want versus what I convinced myself I wanted.”

“And what do you want?”

“Theo to be okay,” I said, without hesitation. “Everything else is secondary to that. The pack, my position, what anyone thinks of me–all of it is secondary to making sure my son grows up safe and healthy and capable of trusting the world.”

Marcus nodded slowly. “And Mia?”

I’d expected the question. Had been bracing for it since I’d sat down this morning, because Marcus had been carefully not asking it for days, which meant he was waiting for me to be ready to answer.

“What about her?”

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“She approached Theo at his school. She tried to manipulate a grieving four–year–old into leaving with her by using photos of his dead mother as bait.” Marcus kept his voice neutral, which I’d learned over the years was his way of communicating genuine outrage without letting it interfere with factual reporting. “That’s not the behavior of someone who made mistakes out of love and desperation. That’s the behavior of someone who has crossed into genuinely dangerous territory. So I need to know what you’re planning to do about it.”

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling for a moment.

What was I planning to do about Mia?

The question had been circling in my mind since Dr. Martinez’s call yesterday. The possibility that Mia wasn’t acting entirely of her own volition–that someone was pressuring her, using her. That her desperation wasn’t just about me or about the life she’d lost, but about a threat she was facing that I didn’t fully understand.

“I don’t know yet,” I said honestly. “Dr. Martinez raised something that’s been sitting with me. She suggested Mia might be being coerced. That someone might be using her access to Theo for purposes that have nothing to do with Mia’s feelings about me or our history.”

Marcus was quiet for a moment. “That’s–not a possibility I’d considered.”

“I hadn’t either until she said it. But think about the trajectory. The threatening messages Mia mentioned before I left. The vandalism that seemed organized rather than random. Her escalating desperation that doesn’t quite match her character–Mia is many things, but she’s always been subtle in how she operates. Showing up at an elementary school in broad daylight and grabbing a child’s hand is not subtle.”

“No,” Marcus agreed. “It’s not.”

“Someone is pushing her toward Theo. And I don’t know why yet.” I pulled the threatening message file that Marcus had compiled–the texts Mia had mentioned receiving, the incidents that had been attributed to pack members acting independently. “Has anyone traced the source of these messages?”

“I asked our pack technology coordinator to look into it last week. He said the numbers were blocked through multiple routing services–not sophisticated enough to be professional, but enough to make casual tracing difficult.” Marcus studied the file.” He said it would require deeper resources to identify the actual source.”

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