Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 143

Chapter 143

Chapter 143

KLAUS

“Yes. The full information needs to come from someone he has reason to trust and context to understand. Klaus Blackwood from BloodMoon City is—” I paused. “He has no reason to trust me beyond the fact that I have resources and I called. That’s not enough for what he actually needs to know.”

“Tell me what you know about the preparation work Voss is doing. Specifically what she’s building, what it will look like from a magical signature standpoint, and what I’d need to do to counteract it.”

This was what I’d hoped for and expected. Bianca operating as the resource she was–not as the object of everyone’s protective instincts but as the person best equipped to address the specific problem at hand.

I pulled up Roy’s documentation and began walking her through it.

We worked for ninety minutes, until Lucian appeared in the doorway looking like a man who’d also not slept, followed shortly by Elijah and Mikael and Roy in various states of early–morning functionality.

By five–fifty AM, we were ready.

By six–fifteen, we were on the road.

Toward Silver Moon territory.

I drove the lead vehicle, Elijah beside me, the map route loaded on the secure system.

In the car behind mine, Lucian drove with Bianca in the passenger seat and Louis in the backseat.

The city fell away behind us.

Silver Moon territory lay ahead.

BIANCA

We arrived in Silver Moon territory at just past nine in the morning, which meant the school day had already started and the streets near the residential districts were quiet in the particular way of places that had recently emptied of children.

I knew the school’s schedule because I’d lived in this territory. Had driven past Greenbrook Primary dozens of times in the years before Theo was old enough to attend, had noted it the way parents note these things in advance, cataloguing the future without meaning to. Had dropped Theo off precisely twice before everything had fallen apart, both times standing at the gate and watching him walk in with the particular determined march of a child who was nervous but wasn’t going to say so.

I knew the layout. The main building facing the street, the playground extending behind it and along the eastern side, the low fence that separated the grounds from the public path that ran alongside. The mature oak trees that lined that path, planted long enough ago that they’d grown into something significant–wide trunks, full canopies, the kind of trees that created genuine shade and genuine cover.

I had not planned to come here. That was what I told myself during the forty minutes between our arrival at the safe house Klaus had arranged–a nondescript property on the residential edge of a neighboring pack’s territory, close enough to Silver Moon to be useful but outside its jurisdiction—and the moment I found myself asking Lucian where the car keys were

“You don’t have to tell me no,” I said, when he looked at me. “You can just not give me the keys.”

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he held them out.

“I’m coming with you,” he said.

“I know.” I took the keys. “Louis stays here with-

Chapter 143

+25 Bont

“Louis is not staying anywhere without one of us right now,” Lucian said, in the tone that meant this had already been decided. He comes with us or we don’t go.”

I turned to look at Louis, who was sitting at the kitchen table of the safe house eating toast with the focused contentment of a child who’d decided that toast was sufficient compensation for being woken before dawn and driven across territory lines without full explanation. He’d been told, in the age–appropriate way that Lucian and I had developed between us over months, that we were going somewhere important to help some people who needed it. He’d accepted this with the equanimity of a child who’d learned that his parents‘ important things tended to involve complicated magic and long days and eventually came out alright.

“Can I bring my dinosaurs?” he asked, without looking up from the toast.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then I’m ready.”

We parked on the public road that ran alongside the eastern fence, under the oak trees, at ten forty–seven in the morning. Recess started at eleven. I knew this because the schedule had been on the school’s public website, unchanged in the two years since I’d last been aware of it.

Lucian sat in the driver’s seat. Louis sat in the back with his dinosaurs arranged on the seat beside him in what he’d described as “patrol formation,” which apparently meant they were watching the windows.

I sat in the passenger seat and watched the school.

“You don’t have to do this,” Lucian said quietly.

“I know.” I kept my eyes on the playground visible through the fence. “I want to.”

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