Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 117

Amelia

The courier stumbled into the council chamber so fast he nearly sprawled across the floor. His breath steamed in the cool air, his palms scraped where he caught himself. “Ridge watch sent this,” he gasped, thrusting a packet toward the table. “Rogues at first light. They hit and vanished, like they were testing us.”

Richard took the reports, his captains clustering in tight around the map. The courier fumbled with a second bundle and held it toward me, his voice lower. “Cross-references from field medics, ma’am. They keep their own ledgers.”

I broke the wax seal. Numbers and names blurred until one cut through everything. Morrow. A requisition note from the vampire wars, copied in two hands: a convoy redirected to Morrow’s unit, a child transfer marked as pending, recipient unnamed.

The ink swam. I had seen the name before, scattered in the Haven archives and in the orphanage ledgers that never balanced. A surname written in margins where no donation arrived. A space where someone should have been. Now it surfaced again, cold and sharp.

My fingers clenched around the page. I felt Richard’s gaze before I looked up.

“You know it,” he murmured, pitched for me alone.

“It connects everything,” I whispered. “The war, the ledgers, the elder who signed my papers. I thought it was nothing. It isn’t.”

He angled his body, shielding me from the captains’ eyes. “Keep following the thread. Quietly.”

“David is watching.””Then give him something else to watch.” His mouth twitched, stubborn even as worry darkened his face.

I tucked the bundle under my jacket and left them to argue patrol routes. My legs carried me down the steps into the colder levels of the Haven, where the dust clung thicker and the stones held onto damp.

Each echo of my boots reminded me how fragile this calm truly was.

By the time Treached the supply base, the air was thick with tension.

David’s soldiers clogged the corridor, our guards faced them three deep. A crate sat between them like bait. Voices snapped sharp as knives.

“That pallet was logged for our infirmary,” one of our porters insisted.

“Your logs are lies,” a soldier in David’s colors shot back. “We count mouths, not paper.” His hand lingered at the knife in his boot.

Shoulders collided. A lid slipped. Beans spilled across stone in a clattering rush. More voices rose, boots scuffing as men stepped too close.

“Stop!” I shouted, climbing onto the crate. The noise cut off. Dozens of eyes turned up to me. “We are all hungry. We are all waiting. If you draw steel here, the children will carry that sound forever. We can share the damn beans.”

The silence stretched. Then our porter crouched, scooping beans into his palms. After a beat, the soldier followed. The spell broke. Others bent down muttering, hands busy. I stayed standing until the floor was clear. My pulse throbbed in my ears, but I did not let them see it.

On the catwalk above, David leaned with his hands behind his back, Adam close at his shoulder. When our eyes met, David lifted two fingers in a false salute, then turned away. His composure chilled me more than shouting ever could.

Richard

Authority could be a blade, but here that would have cut us in half.

And as tensions were rising with David’s camp, I coutdn’t take that chance. I kept my hands visible, my voice steady, and measured what humiliation my men could endure without resenting me and what concession David’s could take without blood.

I ordered the armory to inspect our own knives first. My men bristled, but obeyed. When David’s soldiers reached the checkpoint, they followed suit because the pattern had atready been set. No one could claim we singled them out. No one could claim we looked away.

“I keep wondering what authority looks like when it isn’t shouting.”

“It looks like not humiliating a man just because you can,” she said.” And letting a woman speak when you’d rather order her around.”

Her mouth softened. The word that had pressed at me for weeks climbed into my throat. The moment had every right edge. Above the nojse, under the sky. I could see the shape of a future if I stepped toward it. I pictured the ring hidden in its cedar box. I pictured her yes.

leaned closer, almost dizzy with it. “Amelia,” began.

The alarm bell split the night. Once from the lower gate, again from the east stair, then the yard. Shouts, boots, smoke. Nathan came pounding up the path, face pale, breath ragged. “It’s shifted, Richard,” he called. “David’s men have turned violent. The lines are breaking into open fights.”

I clenched my jaw and answered for all to hear. “We don’t give them blood, not yet. Authority sometimes means knowing when to hold back. We evacuate and return to the Pack House. Before this rot spreads further.”

Amelia was already moving. “The infirmary, we need the kits.”

“Evacuation protocol,” I said, the drill returning like muscle memory.”

Elders first. Captains rotate. We leave in ten.”

I squeezed her hand hard enough to say what the bell had stolen. She squeezed back as if she heard it anyway.

We ran. The Haven cracked beneath us. David wanted chaos. The rogues wanted power. We would not give them both. If we fled, we fled back to the Pack House, to make the symbol stand where the walls could not. Even as the lamps behind us guttered, I knew we couldn’t break the way they wanted us to.