Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 134

His expression didn’t change, but I saw the shift in his shoulders. “The nursery wing was attacked during one of the peak days. Airborne dispersal. It didn’t reach us.”

I stared at him. “But it was in the house?”

“Yes. Nathan contained it quickly.”

My grip on the glass tightened. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You already knew,” he said calmly. “Or you did for a moment. I told you at the time, you smelled it, but you were too far into the cycle to hold on to it. You were barely coherent.”

I blinked. The memory surfaced slowly. A muffled conversation.

Someone saying “contaminant.” My head pounding. The world spinning. I’d forgotten it until now.

“You didn’t think I’d want to know once I was lucid?”

“I was going to tell you today,” he said. “When you were grounded again. When your body wasn’t still recovering.”

I sat down, still holding the glass. “This can’t happen again. Not just for me. For anyone. We need to start talking about what’s actually happening during these biological cycles. The Pack deserves more than silence and rumors.”

Richard didn’t argue. He walked over and crouched in front of me.” Then let’s talk about it. Together.”

That night, I couldn’t sleep. My skin still felt too alive. Every muscle hummed. I paced around the hall. I kept replaying images in my mind.

His hands on my hips. The way he groaned my name. The way his eyes softened even when everything else in him had gone sharp.

I slid back into our room sometime past midnight.

He was half-asleep, one arm slung over his face. But when I crawled under the covers, he shifted.

“Amelia?” His voice was rough.

” I can’t sleep,” | whispered. I pressed my body against his. “I just want to feel you. Please.”

He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me. Something safe. Like we both knew this wasn’t about the bond. This was about need. About comfort.

It was slow. We moved like we were remembering each other. I didn’t want fast. I didn’t want wild. Not like in my heat. I wanted the way his breath caught when I kissed the hollow of his throat. The way he held me after, like I might slip through the sheets if he let go.

When I woke again, he was gone. A note on the pillow told me he was with Nathan and that he’d left food in the fridge. There was a little heart drawn in the corner, which I pretended not to stare at for ten full minutes.

I padded barefoot into his office and sat at the long table. Darius’s map was still out, his notes scattered. I started sorting through them, moving slowly at first, then more urgently. Something didn’t add up in the eastern quadrant. A pattern that seemed interrupted. There was a trade route, an old one, that hadn’t been flagged.

By the time Richard came back, I had the section redrawn.

“He left a gap,” I said as he walked in. “East of the river crossing. It’s the only corridor that hasn’t been reinforced.”

Richard took the map from me and studied it. “Good work, We’ll reroute the scouts.”Not long after, a courier arrived. He looked winded, like he’d run the entire way. Richard opened the sealed envelope and scanned the letter inside.

“He’s moving east,” he said. “Just like you predicted.”

I nodded, but my mind was already somewhere else. A pulse in my palms. A flicker beneath my ribs.

That night, I dreamed of light. Crimson and thick, moving beneath my skin like a tide. It didn’t glow. It throbbed. Each pulse echoed with a beat I didn’t recognize. When I reached for it, it snarled. With teeth and with memory.

Amelia

The clothes felt wrong.

Not in the way they hung or fit, but in the way they dulled everything.

The textures were too flat. The fabrics too quiet. I missed the mess of the nest, the sweat and skin and tangle of sheets that made everything feel vivid. Now the world had too much space in it, and couldn’t stop noticing it. My senses were turned up too high, like l’d come back from somewhere louder than this.

The council chamber doors creaked open. My heels clicked twice before the carpet swallowed the sound. I walked in alone.

Back in my office, I tried to meditate. It didn’t last. My thoughts wouldn’t slow, and my body refused to be still. I pulled up maintenance reports, just to find something concrete to focus on. And I found it.

Old expenses, Emergency work orders from firms I didn’t recognize.

One flagged in a sector Nathan had already linked to the wolfsbane dispersal. A firm that shouldn’t exist anymore. Officially dissolved. No payroll. No active employees. Yet it had routed over eighteen thousand credits through silent contracts.

I froze.

Opened a link to Nathan.

Tracing a shell company. Might be connected to the dispersal network.

Sending now.

He answered fast. Got it. I’ll stay quiet unless you say otherwise.

The moment the channel closed, the quiet pressed in again. And so did the ache.

It wasn’t just heat anymore. It was something more layered. Like my body was adjusting to a new rhythm, one it hadn’t been built for. My thighs clenched reflexively. I tried to ignore it. Tried to think.

Failed.

I didn’t even knock.

Richard opened the door like he’d known I was coming. His shirt was wrinkled. His hair wasn’t perfect. His expression was complicated.

“I can’t sleep,” I said. “I’ve tried.”