< The Alpha Who Never Loved Me
Chapter 49
Kieran
I hadn’t planned on going to the pack house.
But Sophie’s text changed that.
Her text had been short and precise and it sounded like it leaned towards the side of fear and uncertainty, it was a simple sentence.
Your mom wants to have dinner with me.
What the hell was my mother doing by talking to Sophie?
The drive over was short. I walked through the front door and found my mother in the living room, arranging flowers into crystal vases the way she always did when she was pretending everything was fine.
I sat on the sofa across from her.
“Why did you go see Sophie?”
She didn’t look up. Her fingers adjusted a stem,ltingit36
half an inch to the left. She stepped back examined the
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< Chapter 49
arrangement, then moved it back to where it was.
“What did Sophie tell you?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. I just watched her hands move from one vase to the next, precise and unhurried.
Jenna was curled in the armchair by the window. She looked up from her phone.
“Let me guess,” she said. “You ran into Sophie and she was crying again?”
I ignored her. My eyes stayed on the flower vases lined up along the table, six of them, each one identical, each one filled with the same arrangement.
The irritation was building beneath my ribs.
“Stay out of my life,” I said. “Both of you. I can handle my own affairs.”
My mother finally looked at me.
She rolled her eyes. Actually rolled them, like I was seventeen and had just said something stupid at the dinner table. Then her hand shot sideways and grabbed
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something from the table beside her.
She threw it at me.
I caught it out of reflex. My fingers closed around a small black device. I turned it over in my palm.
A voice recorder.
“Listen to that,” she said. “Then make your decision.”
I opened my mouth to respond but she cut me off.
“You can divorce Serena if you want.” Her voice was rather calm. Devastated too. “I’m done interfering in your life.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out her card. She
threw that at me too.
I didn’t catch this one. It hit my chest and dropped onto the cushion beside me.
“I want to pay off Serena’s debt,” she said. “Every cent. I want to set that girl free.”
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The words landed harder than the card did.
< Chapter 49
“Since when does a mother push her own son toward a divorce?” I asked.
Jenna answered before my mother could.
“Since Sophie showed up.” She uncurled from the armchair and stood. “Ever since that woman came back, you’ve been making Serena miserable. You hurt her, you humiliate her, you demand money from her like she’s a business partner and not your wife.” Her voice shook. “This is it, Kieran. We’re done watching.”
I looked between them. My mother stood behind the flower vases with her arms crossed. Jenna stood by the window with her jaw tight and her eyes wet.
Ganged up on. That was what this felt like.
I picked up the card from the cushion, set it on the table but the recorder was still with me, and then I walked out without another word.
The house was dark when I pulled into the driveway..
I sat in the car for a minute and checked my phone.
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< Chapter 49
Nothing.
I had sent the message before dawn which was hours ago, yet she hadn’t even opened it.
I stared at the screen and remembered how it used to be. She had customized my ringtone. A separate tone for texts, a separate one for calls. She told me once, laughing, that she wanted to know it was me before she even looked
at the screen. So she could answer faster.
She used to reply within seconds. I’d send a message and the three dots would appear almost immediately, like she had been holding her phone and waiting for my name to
show up.
Now I was the one waiting.
I went inside, climbed the stairs, and took a shower. The hot water loosened something in my shoulders but not in my chest.
The recorder was still in the car. I had set it on the passenger seat and forgotten to bring it in.
Lwas about to go back down for it when my phone rang36
< Chapter 49
Sophie.
“Ethan’s fever spiked again.” Her voice was strained. “It came out of nowhere. He’s burning up.”
“I’m coming. Don’t panic.”
I drove to her house, got them into the car, and took Ethan straight to the hospital. The boy was limp against Sophie’s chest, his dark curls plastered to his forehead with sweat, his small body radiating heat that I could feel from the driver’s seat.
The next several hours blurred together. Doctors, IV lines, cool compresses, Sophie gripping the armrest of the hospital chair. I sat across from her and watched the monitors and waited.
Ethan’s fever broke around three in the morning.
His breathing evened out and the flush faded from his cheeks. Sophie slumped back in her chair and pressed both hands over her face. When she lowered them, her eyes were red but dry.
“Gg.” she said. “Go home. Explain things to your wife”:36
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< Chapter 49
I didn’t tell her that Serena had moved out. It wasn’t her
business.
“Get some rest,” I said instead. “I’ll check on you
tomorrow.”
I left the room and walked through the quiet corridors of the hospital. The lights buzzed overhead and my footsteps echoed against the floor.
The parking lot was empty except for my car.
I slid into the driver’s seat and reached for the recorder on the passenger side.
My hand found nothing.
I looked down. The seat was empty. I checked the floor, the console, the gap between the seat and the door.
Nothing.
I turned around and scanned the back seat. Receipts, at jacket I’d tossed there days ago, an empty water bottle. No recorder.
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I checked the glove compartment. Under the seats. Every
< Chapter 49
pocket, every crevice, every place a small device could have slipped into.
Gone.
I sat back and stared at the steering wheel.
Someone had been in my car. While I was inside the hospital with Ethan, someone had opened the door and taken the recorder.
My jaw locked.
The parking lot was still and silent around me. The only sound was the low hum of a streetlight and the distant beep of hospital equipment through an open window.
Who had taken it?
And what the hell was on that recording?
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