Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 165

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Chapter 165

Chapter 165

KLAUS

Elijah’s update came through at six–oh–three PM.

I read it standing in the narrow hallway of the safe house, with the noise of the group assembling in the main room behind me and the particular focused stillness that came over me when pieces were moving into their final positions.

*Thorne departed hotel at 17:52. Currently traveling toward pack assembly location via main route. Pace and route consistent with guest attendee rather than operational movement. No contact with known associates en route. Two unidentified vehicles following at distance – possibly security, possibly coven support. Unable to confirm.*

Two unidentified vehicles. That was the detail I held onto, because everything else in the message was expected. Thorne moving toward the assembly was the plan working as anticipated. Two vehicles we couldn’t identify moving with him was the variable.

I forwarded the update to Mikael and went back into the main room.

The safe house’s main room was not designed for operational briefings. It had a low couch, a table that seated four uncomfortably, and lighting that someone had chosen for atmosphere rather than function. We’d pushed the furniture back earlier in the day to create something that functioned as a working space, and Elijah had set up the portable display unit on the table with the terrain maps and the assembly hall layout that Roy had sourced through official pack records.

It was not ideal. But we’d worked in worse.

Everyone was there.

Rivera was standing near the window, coffee in hand, wearing the expression he used when he was managing several things simultaneously and keeping all of them behind a professional exterior. Elijah was at the table with the display, already updating the position markers with the information from his latest reports. Mikael was on his phone in the corner, tracking financial and

threads that ran parallel to the operational picture. Roy had his documents in a neat stack at the edge of the

com

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‘s instinct for organization persisting even in a safe house forty–eight hours before a potential crisis.

at the table with a notepad in front of her and a pen in her hand, which she held the way she always held it paring to take information in rather than waiting passively. Her dark hair was pulled back. She was wearing thes she’d had on all day–not her hospital clothes, not the clothes she’d wear to dinner, just the clothes of d dressed for a working day and intended to work through it.

on the floor near the wall, as far from the operational center of the room as the space permitted, with his dinosaurs ed in what he’d described this morning as a new formation he was testing. He’d been quiet for most of the afternoon- withdrawn, just self–contained in the he got when the adults around him were busy with something serious and he’d vas not requiring attention.

ecided the most useful thing he coul

I looked at him briefly when I ca

The look on his face was sm didn’t have obvious edges focused assessment of se

Then he looked dow

I moved to the

“Thorne unident

ng at Bianca.

he slight frown he sometimes had when he was working out a problem that us in his hand, turning it over slowly, and his eyes were on her with the ng something they couldn’t yet name.

moment passed.

ward the assembly location. Consistent with a guest attendee’s approach, but with two tance that we can’t confirm.” I looked at Elijah. “What’s our read on those vehicles?” ity,” Elijah said. “Too consistent in their following distance to be coincidental traffic. My

positioned to move quickly if needed but not close enough to be visible at the assembly

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Chapter 165

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itself.” He indicated two points on the terrain map. “If they hold their current pace, they’ll park here and here. Both positions give them line of sight to the assembly hall exits without being inside the pack’s obvious security perimeter.”

“So Thorne goes in clean,” Rivera said from the window. “Whatever he’s there to do, he does it without visible backup inside the building. The vehicles are retrieval, not acquisition.

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“That’s consistent with what we know about his approach,” Roy said, looking up from his documents. “He’s been careful throughout. Nothing overt, nothing that creates a direct line back to Voss. He’ll position himself inside the assembly as a legitimate guest and wait for an opportunity to get to Theo without it looking like what it is.”

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