The Alpha's Hidden Debts

Chapter 26: Non-Negotiable

Sera's Pov

Riven found me in the records room early, before I had even poured my first cup of tea. He did not knock. He just walked in and set his phone down on the table in front of me, screen still lit, his face giving nothing away except the tightness around his eyes that told me he had not slept.

"Read it," he said.

No good morning. No softening first. I picked up the phone and read the message twice, the same way I read most things that mattered.

‘We know Gideon defected. Return him or we move on the girl.’

My stomach dropped, but my face did not move. I had learned a long time ago how to keep the two separate. I set the phone back down slowly, my fingers trembling just slightly before I caught it and stilled them flat against the table.

"They want him back," I said. I set the phone down carefully, like it might do something if I held it too long. "They think you'll trade him for my safety."

"I won't."

I looked up at him. He stood across the table, arms crossed, jaw tight, the same look he'd had the night the howl split the sky.

"They might not give you much choice," I said.

"This is not up for discussion." His voice did not rise, but something in it had gone hard, final. "Gideon stays. You stay. They can send whoever they want."

I studied his face. I was good at reading people, I had spent years learning how, and there was nothing in his expression I could find a c***k in. No doubt. No hesitation. Just the same steady certainty he carried into every conversation that mattered.

"Why?" I asked. I crossed my arms too, mirroring him without meaning to. "Why are you taking this risk? For a human woman you met two weeks ago. You don't owe me anything, Riven."

He held my gaze. He did not look away, not even for a second. His shoulders did not move. His voice, when it came, was quiet and sure.

"Because no one has the right to own you," he said. "And I don't negotiate with people who think they do."

It was not a big speech. It was not romantic, not the kind of thing said with a hand pressed to a chest or a voice gone soft. He said it the way he said everything, plain, like a fact you could check against the sky and find true.

Something in my chest loosened, just a little, even though the danger had not gone anywhere.

I nodded once.

"Okay," I said. "Then we need to get ahead of them."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean we don't wait for their next move." I pulled the chair out and sat down, my mind already running ahead, the way it always did when there was a problem in front of me instead of just feelings. "If they're willing to threaten you over Gideon, they're getting desperate. Desperate people make mistakes. We should be watching for that, not just bracing for the next attack."

Riven studied me for a moment, something almost like a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, the first soft thing I had seen on his face all morning.

"You sound like a strategist," he said.

"I had three years of practice," I said. "Watching Caden plan around threats he never told me about. I learned things, even when nobody meant to teach me." I tapped my fingers once against the table, restless, my mind already three steps ahead of my mouth. "Knowing how a man like that thinks helps when you're trying to outthink someone else."

He opened his mouth to say something else, something I never got to hear, because the door burst open behind him so fast it cracked against the wall.

Dex stood there, breathing hard, chest heaving, his eyes wide and his hair messy like he had run the whole way from the gate without stopping once.

"Alpha," he said. "You need to come now."

Riven turned fast, his whole body shifting from calm to alert in a single breath. "What is it?"

"A Vael representative." Dex's chest rose and fell quick, his hand braced against the doorframe to steady himself. "She's at the outer gate. Says she's here officially. Requesting a meeting with you directly."

The room went very still.

I stood up so fast my chair scraped against the floor, the sound sharp and ugly in the sudden silence. Riven's eyes found mine, sharp, calculating, the threat from the phone suddenly standing right at his front door in the flesh.

"Now?" Riven said. "She's here now?"

"Right now," Dex said. "Standing at the gate like she owns the road leading up to it. Calm as anything. Smiling, even."

My hands curled at my sides, nails pressing small half moons into my palms. The message had said move on the girl. And now, hours later, someone from that same family was standing outside, asking to be let in, polite as anything, like good manners could hide what they really wanted underneath them.

Riven looked at me one more time. I saw the question in his eyes before he asked it.

"Do I let her in?" he said.

I felt my pulse pounding in my throat. Whatever I said next was going to decide how this morning ended, and maybe a lot more than that.