Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 147

Richard

The envelope was unmarked, which was typical for Liora.

She never labeled anything sensitive, never gave anything away with the exterior. She handed it to me without ceremony, her mouth set in a line and her knuckles white around the folder until 1 pried it from her fingers.

“Don’t read it here,” she said, voice low but clear. “It’s not just confirmation. It’s placement, sequence, symbol lineage. It’s all there.”

“And the girl?”

Liora hesitated, just for a beat, and then said, “There was only ever one heir pendant made. The other Mooncut Locket was forged later. This one matches the archived impression from the Queen’s vault.”

I didn’t thank her or nod. I just turned and left, walking the length of the hall with the envelope pressed tight in my grip. The edge of the folder bit into my palm, drawing blood before I noticed. By the time I reached my office, my hand was red.

I sat down and opened it slowly, not because I was scared of what was inside, but because it felt like something sacred, something that might shatter if I moved too quickly. Inside were thin documents, crisp scans, and cross

-referenced imprints. Timestamps. Preservation logs. At the center of it all were two locket pendants side by side,printed on archival paper. One belonged to Serena. The other, marked beneath the third crescent with a deliberate score line, had been assigned to a child.

Identical. Not from wear, not a dent. A deliberate mark, carved at birth.

This wasn’t just evidence. It was provenance.

I locked the folder away, not in the desk or a file cabinet, but behind the wall panel above the crest, where only I had access. No one else would see it. Not yet.

When I walked into the lab, Simon was already there. He didn’t speak until I closed the door behind me.

“Second pass on Amelia’s blood markers are in. It’s consistent. There’s a dormant strand that only activates under stress, but the compound structure isn’t wolf. It never has been.”

“Is it active now?”

Simon nodded once. “Something’s changed. Her cell membranes are running hotter. We think the transformation is tied to hormonal shifts and exposure to pure Pack blood.”

“Mine.”

He didn’t flinch, just confirmed it with a glance.

“We need more samples. Voluntary, ideally.”

“Not yet.”

“Richard.”

“No reports. No disclosures. Not until I say.”

He didn’t argue, not fully, but his silence said enough. He folded his arms and stared at the sealed cooler beside him.

“You can’t keep this quiet forever.”

“I will for now.”

I left before he could say more. The hallway outside felt thinner than usual, as if the air carried weight. The buzzing lights overhead felt loud in a way they normally didn’t.

Later that afternoon, someone tried to send a message. A dart embedded itself in the front gate just before | arrived. It carried no poison, no signature, just a strip of fabric tied to the shaft. The ink was a dark red, almost brown, and the handwriting was rough: Blood of Serena’s heir.

It was confirmation. Someone else knew.

I burned the message in a sealed dish. The courier who delivered it never made it to a cell. He said nothing, fought no one, and watched me without fear. I had him removed quietly. No interrogation, no press. It was cleaner that way.

I did. Hard and deep and slow, with her name in my mouth and her legs still locked around me.

Later, she curled against me, fingers tracing shapes on my chest.

“You feel different,” she said.

“How sò?”

“Like you’re looking at me and seeing something you’re afraid of.”

I didn’t answer, and she didn’t push. She kissed my jaw and stood, pulling on one of my shirts. The locket pendant around her neck swung free for just a second. I saw it clearly, the crescent shapes, the faint maker’s mark nearthe base, the edge worn smooth from years of being touched without knowing why.

She caught me looking but didn’t say anything. She just smiled faintly, tucked the pendant beneath the collar, and walked down the hall with bare feet and damp hair.

I stayed in bed, unmoving, my hand resting beneath the pillow on the key I had never stopped hiding there.

There were still too many unknowns, and I needed to be sure.

Because if I was wrong, revealing this would destroy her.

And if I was right, it would still destroy her, only slower.

The pendant stayed in my mind long after she was gone, sharp in the dark like it had been carved there. Even now, l didn’t know what she truly was. I didn’t know if the blood markers, the heir pendant, and the dormant craving were all pieces of a whole, or if they were fragments of something we still didn’t understand. She might be the Alpha heir, or she might not even have a wolf at all. She could bè something else entirely, something in between, something no one was prepared for, something not even her parents would have recognized.

But for now, it was only a memory. Only a symbol. Only a question I wasn’t ready to ask.