Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 183

ARIA

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But the room was quiet in the way I needed it to be, and the performance was absent in the way I needed it to be, and I was tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep and that the specific quality of this room was, for reasons I was not going to examine directly, doing something to.

I stayed.

We were quiet for perhaps ten minutes. The wind outside moved through another cycle. Somewhere in the building’s depths, the afternoon routine made its sounds.

“The Covenant,” Jayden said.

I looked at him.

“You’ve had it for a week,” he said. “You’ve been thinking about it in that specific way you think about things – where it’s in a separate room behind your eyes and you’re running it at the same time as everything else.” He wasn’t accusing. Just reporting what he’d observed. “Is it what you hoped it was.”

“It’s more,” I said. “And more complicated.”

“More complicated how.”

“There’s a provision that could be used to challenge the Blackthorn line’s Alpha claim,” I said. “Under certain interpretations. It’s not inevitable the language is ambiguous and a careful presentation of the invocation could avoid triggering it. But it’s there.” I kept my voice even. “I don’t know enough about High Council procedure to know how likely it is that someone would try to use it that way.”

Jayden was very still in the specific way he went still when he was processing something significant. “You’re saying the document you need to remove Clarissa could also destabilize Kael.”

“Under the wrong interpretation. With the wrong advocate making the argument.” I held his eyes. “I need to understand the High Council procedure before I use it. And I need to understand whose interests might push toward that interpretation and how much leverage they’d have.”

“The Ironwood line,” he said immediately.

I stared at him.

“The third signatory bloodline,” he said. “The dissolved pack. If they still have representatives with legal standing, they’d have the most to gain from a High Council review of all three bloodlines‘ claims because the Ironwood line dissolved, so their covenant claims were held in abeyance. A full review reopens those claims.” He met my eyes. “How did you know about the Ironwood

“The document names them. And the seals.” I looked at him. “You know about the Covenant.”

“I know about it the way you know about something you heard once from someone who knew someone,” he said. “Rumors at the beta level, years ago. An old legal instrument from the founding era that had been used a few times to force Alpha removals. I never knew the specifics.” He paused. “I knew the founding date removal was connected to it. Or suspected”

“Did Kael-”

“No.” Flat and certain. “He doesn’t know the Covenant exists. His father didn’t mention it or didn’t know himself. The scrubbing happened twenty–five years ago, before Kael was old enough to be told pack history in any formal sense.”

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I filed that. The timeline of the scrubbing which put it approximately five years into Clarissa’s marriage to Kael. Long enough for her to assess the landscape, to understand what records existed and where, to begin the patient work of removal.

3

end

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“She knew when she married him,” I said. “About the Covenant.”

“Yes.” He said it without surprise, which meant he’d been reaching the same conclusion from different information. “The Voss bloodline would have maintained private records regardless of what happened to the public ones. They’d have known exactly what the Covenant said, what rights it conveyed, what it threatened.” A pause. “And exactly what they’d need to remove to prevent anyone else from knowing.”

The compress needed changing again. I went to the basin, wrung out the cloth, returned to the bed. His forehead under the cloth was warmer than the third change the fever was still rising, not yet at its peak.

“You need to call the woman,” he said, as I settled back into the chair.

“I know.”

—-

“The Voss family’s private records would include whatever interpretation the Covenant supports. She’s the only person we know of who has access to those records who had reason to take them and keep them safe.” He watched me with the fever- honest eyes. “She sent you the box. She’s been waiting for you to call.”

“I know,” I said again. “I’ve been waiting until I understood what I had.”

“And now you do.”

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