Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 142

The morning after the council dinner felt more like a hangover than a victory. Not from alcohol. Not from exhaustion. My thighs ached from how hard I’d squeezed them under the table, every nerve still buzzing from what Richard had done.

He hadn’t looked at me once on the way back. Not in the elevator. Not when I followed him down the hall, still shaking. I had tried to thank him. To explain. He didn’t let me. “We’ll debrief in the afternoon,” was all he said.

Now I was in the strategy room, pacing behind Nathan as he crouched over his tablet.

“Three clerks,” he said. “All from bell-tower archival sectors. All accessed sensitive records within the last week. None of them reported home. No outbound calls.

No confirmed exits.”

I stopped pacing. “Did they know each other?”

“One worked second shift. One was rotating. The third was in the habit of double-tagging checkouts. We might not have caught it if she hadn’t flagged a ghost invoice two nights ago.”

He tilted the tablet to show me. Records scrolled past.

Funding chains. Tunnel permits. Shell firms. My stomach turned.

“They were following the money.”Nathan nodded. “Until someone made them stop.” He walked to the console and keyed into a secure log.

“Richard wants this internal for now. No alerts. No press.

He reactivated the sealed breach log. We’re on quiet audit protocol.”

I stared at the screen. “That hasn’t been touched since before I was born.”

He reached into his coat, pulled out a heat-sealed pouch. ” This was buried in Darius’s personal locker. We swept again after last night.”

Inşide the pouch was a scorched pendant. Blackened at the edges, but still visible. The Mooncut. Older than any version I’d seen. It was twisted and worn.

“Simon scanned it. Blood residue. Not wolf. Not human.

He’s running a compound breakdown now.”

My heart beat faster. I nodded. “Send me whatever he finds. Immediately.”

Nathan hesitated. “Amelia, are you alright?”

I didn’t flinch. “I’m just…hot.”

The nursery filter logs didn’t lie. They were just wrong in the exact same way, across four units. Timestamps had been offset by exactly twenty-six hours. Signatures were digital, never confirmed by biometric chip. It looked like protocol until you realized the logs were forged in advance.When I cracked open the third panel, the smell hit me before the color registered. A faint purple film clung to the mesh. It wasn’t blood or pollen. Wolfsbane aerosol residue.

I recoiled, sealed the panel, and triggered lockdown. Then I chain wrapped the main unit. My access chip locked it.

No one would open this without breaking in.

Back in surveillance, the security team was pulling camera feeds.

“Six dead zones,” one of them said. “All during HVAC downtimes. Not software glitches. Timed gaps.”

1 watched the timeline. Movements syncing with airflow and shadow.

“Sabotage,” I said.

Richard called me to his study just before dusk. He didn’t pace. He didn’t raise his voice. He just stood by the window with his back to me.

“Close the door.”

I did. He turned slowly. His expression unreadable:

“You want to tell me what that was last night?”

I crossed my arms. “You were there.”

“Don’t pretend it was nothing.”

“I got us through that vote. I held it together.”

“You came on my fingers in front of the Elder Council.”

I flinched. He stepped close.

“You told me your heat ended.”

“It did.”

“Then why are you still dripping every time I get near you?

Why do I smell you before I see you? Why do your eyes darken when I bleed?”

“Because I want you,” I said. “That’s not new.”

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Are you threatening to bench me?”

“I’m saying your denial is a security risk.”

I got dressed in silence. Zipped my pants. Straightened my shirt.

“Then what happens next time you lose it in front of the Council? What if I can’t stop?”

He didn’t answer.

I left without another word.

I didn’t go far. My body was still trembling, soaked between my legs, throbbing with want. But my mind was racing. I walked the upper hall twice before slipping into the armory wing where it was quiet.

What I hadn’t told him was that I’d had three near blackouts in the last two weeks. Not exhaustion or stress.

Something else.

A flash of sound, a scent, a voice pitch, and suddenly my vision blurred, my body clenched, and it felt like something else wanted out.

Something in me had changed. And if I didn’t figure out what it was soon, someone else would. Richard. Simon.

The Council. Or worse.

David.

I stood, steadied my breath, and went to the console. I rerouted Nathan’s audit protocols and entered the glyph from the pendant.

One more layer of access unlocked.

And then I saw it.

A match. The same design, same etching. Filed ten years ago, and assigned to a child.

Whoever planted that pendant wanted it found.

And I-was starting to think I wasn’t supposed to be asking these questions.