Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 140

Chapter 140

Chapter 140

KLAUS

He was sharper than I’d been giving him full credit for. The therapy had done more than improve his parenting–it had apparently cleared some of the self–absorption that had been obscuring his analytical instincts.

I made a decision in the space of two seconds, which was about as long as I could reasonably pause before he read the pause itself as information.

“The intelligence we’ve shared is accurate,” I said. “The threat to your son is real and you’re right to take it seriously.” I kept my voice even, informational, the tone of someone confirming rather than warning. “What I’d ask is that you continue to prepare for the assembly as planned. Don’t change your announced schedule, don’t alter the guest list, don’t take any actions that would suggest you’ve received specific intelligence about particular attendees.” I paused. “My office is managing some related matters in parallel. Your cooperation in maintaining normal appearance will be more helpful than additional precautions on your end.”

A long silence.

“You’re asking me to act normally while knowing something is wrong,” Matthew said.

“I’m asking you to trust that my office has resources and angles of approach that will be more effective than anything you could do independently with the information currently available to you.” I kept my voice calm, because the steadiness in it was doing work–was communicating that the situation was manageable, that we were not flying blind, that the request for his cooperation wasn’t desperation but strategy. “Can you do that?”

Another silence. Shorter this time.

“Is my son going to be safe?” he asked. The question was stripped of everything except what it actually was -a father asking the only question that mattered.

“We are going to make him safe,” I said. “That’s different from promising he’s currently in no danger. But Matthew, I need you to hear me when I tell you that you are not managing this alone. My office has significant resources oriented toward this problem, and your job right now is to do what you were already planning to do.”

“Prepare an honest speech and address my pack.”

“Exactly that.”

He was quiet for a moment. I let him be quiet, because rushing him through this would produce performed agreement rather than genuine understanding, and performed agreement was worse than uncertainty.

“Alright,” he said finally. “I’ll proceed as planned.”

“Good. And Morrison?” I paused. “Make sure childcare arrangements for the assembly are with people you know personally. Not volunteers, not unfamiliar faces–people you’ve worked with, people whose loyalty you’d stake something on.”

I said it as if it were an afterthought. As if it were simply practical advice about event management. Not as if it were the single most important instruction I was going to give him, the one that might be the difference between Theo being safe and Theo being accessible to whoever Thorne positioned in that room.

“Understood,” Matthew said. His voice had gone quiet in the specific way of someone filing something away carefully.

“I’ll see you at the assembly.” I kept my tone easy, conclusive, the tone of a conversation that had accomplished its purposes and was ending on comfortable terms. “Thank you for speaking with me directly.”

“Thank you for calling.”

The line disconnected.

1/2

I set down the phone and sat for a moment in the quiet of the war room.

+25 Bonus

The call had accomplished what I needed it to accomplish. Matthew would proceed with the assembly. He wouldn’t tip off Thorne by changing his behavior or canceling the invitation. He would tighten childcare security in a way that was plausible as normal parental caution rather than specifically targeted response.

And he hadn’t asked the question that would have been hardest to answer without lying outright: whether Thorne specifically was a threat he should act on immediately.

I’d navigated around it by keeping the conversation at the level of general intelligence and general preparedness. Had confirmed the threat was real without naming Thorne as the vector. Had given Matthew just enough to act appropriately without enough to act in ways that would alert Thorne that his cover was blown.

It was the right call. I believed that.

But I also sat with the knowledge that I’d just asked a grieving, recovering Alpha to trust me with his son’s safety based on half the picture I was actually holding. Had asked him to act normally while knowing something was wrong, which was a significant thing to ask of someone who’d been trying very hard to stop hiding from hard truths.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify