Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 141

Chapter 141

Chapter 141

KLAUS

Lucian needed to tell Bianca about the call with Matthew before she found out from any other direction. She was already planning to go to Silver Moon territory. She was already, I suspected, further along in her decision–making than she’d been willing to say to Lucian on the phone earlier today. If she arrived at that assembly operating on information that didn’t include this conversation, if she made decisions based on an incomplete understanding of what groundwork had been laid-

My phone buzzed. Elijah.

*Lockwood’s movements for the past six hours tracked. He left BloodMoon City at fourteen hundred, driving toward Silver Moon territory. Took secondary roads rather than the main route. Arrived at a location seventeen kilometers outside Silver Moon pack boundary approximately two hours ago. Currently stationary.*

I read the message twice.

Thorne had left the city before I’d even made the call to Matthew. Had been positioning himself in Silver Moon territory for hours already.

Which meant he wasn’t waiting for the assembly to make his move. He was already there, already working, already doing whatever preparation Voss’s operation required before the main event.

I typed back: *Who’s he meeting with?*

Elijah’s response took four minutes, which meant he was checking multiple sources: *Unknown. Location is an isolated property, no registered owner on current rolls. Property purchased through a shell eighteen months ago. No visible associates on approach but thermal imaging suggests at least four people inside.*

Four people. A meeting of some size, in an isolated property, seventeen kilometers outside Silver Moon territory, while the assembly was still six days away.

I called Roy.

He answered immediately, which meant he hadn’t been sleeping either. “I saw Elijah’s update,” he said, before I could speak.

“What would Voss need to do at that location, six days before the ritual?”

Roy was quiet for a moment–the particular quiet of someone running through information at speed. “Preparation work. The binding curse isn’t something you can set up the night before. There are staging components that require several days of sustained work to establish. Magical anchors, essentially. Set in the geographic area where the ritual will be performed.”

“So she’s not waiting for the assembly to make her move.”

“Not entirely. The assembly is still the optimal moment for the blood acquisition–the chaos, the distraction, the access to Theo. But the groundwork for the ritual itself? That starts now, or she won’t be ready in time.” Roy paused. “Klaus, if Thorne is at that location, it means Voss is close. She’s not directing this remotely anymore. She’s in position.”

I turned from the window and moved back to the table, spreading out the map we’d been building of Voss’s known and suspected operational footprint.

The isolated property sat in a gap in our intelligence coverage -a blind spot between the monitoring we had around Blood Moon City and the territory where Silver Moon pack’s own security operated. Not random. Nothing Voss did was random

“Get me everything on that property,” I said. “History, magical registration, any connection to Voss or her known associates And Roy–the preparation work she’s doing. Can we disrupt it?”

“We can try. Disrupting magical anchors before they’re fully set is easier than breaking them after but it requires someone with specific curse–breaking knowledge to do it safely someone who can identity the anchors and counteract them without

Chapter 141

+25 Bo

triggering whatever defenses Voss will have placed around them.”

We both knew who that was.

“I need to brief Lucian,” I said.

“Yes,” Roy agreed. “You do.”

I ended the call and stood for a moment with my hands on the map table, looking at the location marker Elijah had placed. Seventeen kilometers outside Silver Moon. A blind spot. Voss, close and active, no longer waiting.

Lucian and Bianca were somewhere in this house, doing what families did in the evenings–putting a child to bed, finding the ordinary moments that made the rest of it survivable. I didn’t want to bring this into that. Didn’t want to interrupt whatever quiet they’d found in the last hour.

But the timeline had just changed.

I picked up my phone and called Lucian.

He answered on the second ring. “Louis is asleep,” he said, which told me he’d been expecting a call and was preemptively managing what he could. “Bianca’s in the kitchen. I can step out.”

“Do that.”

A brief pause, the sound of movement, a door closing.

“Tell me,” Lucian said.

I told him. The call with Matthew–what had been said, what had been carefully not said, the instruction about childcare that I‘ embedded as an afterthought. Thorne’s departure from BloodMoon City and his current position in the operational blind spot. Voss’s presence in the field, the preparation work underway, the timeline that had compressed from six days to something more immediate.

Lucian was quiet through most of it. The kind of quiet that meant he was processing rather than disengaging–I’d known him long enough to know the difference.

“You called Matthew without telling Bianca,” he said, when I’d finished.

“Yes.”

“She’s going to find out.”

“Yes,” I said. “And she should find out from you, tonight, before she makes any further decisions about how she wants to approach this.”

“I know.” A pause. “Klaus–the call. How was he?”

The question was simple and wasn’t simple at all. How was Matthew Morrison, the man who’d been Bianca’s husband, who’d tried to kill her, who was now raising their son alone and apparently doing the difficult work of becoming someone different.

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