Page 57 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

“Just keep your head up,” I tell him quietly.

He does it, walking the length of that room beside me with his chin level, his hands out of his pockets, and he doesn’t take hold of my sleeve once, though he wanted to at the door. Isabella is standing three rows back with her father, in cream, entirely still. Damien is over by the tall windows with his family. Neither of them says a word to me.

I take the front of the room. “This is my son.” I don’t raise my voice because I never have to in this hall. “Luca Vance. He has my blood and my birthmark. He’s my heir from today.”

Samuel Rook, a pack elder I have never really been fond of, comes forward before I’ve finished. “This is the child born to that human woman living in your estate?”

“Yes.”

“Why is that human woman in your estate?” He turns his head so the room gets it. “We heard she is raising him.”

“She raised him for the first part of his life. I am not separating mother and child.”

“An alpha’s heir raised by a human.” He lets it hang. “A boy learns what he is from the woman who feeds him.”

Behind Samuel, a man I’ve funded twice offers his daughter out loud without being asked, then a second one does the same. Isabella’s father says her name into the room while she stands beside him looking straight ahead at nothing.

Samuel waits for the whole of it to run out. “There is a cleaner arrangement available,” he continues. “The Vance house and the Thorne house have been at odds politically. If you were to take Corinne Thorne as your mate, it will ease the tensions within the pack, and the pack gets a luna.”

“You cannot have a human raise an alpha,” one of the elders adds from behind him. “It is not done.”

I let the room go quiet on its own. “And you do not tell me what to do.” I put both hands on the table. “I’m respecting you out of choice. Don’t make me regret it. This child is my heir, and I will choose who raises him. I am not going to take a mate until I want to.”

Somebody at the back attempts Elena’s name as an argument for the other side, and the whole room finds something else to look at.

“I didn’t come for a lecture on what to do.” My tone hasn’t changed. “I have found my son. He’ll be raised as the next alpha. I’m not asking for opinions.”

Nobody moves anywhere in that room. “You know very well what happens when you interfere in my affairs.”

Samuel is still standing. He clearly has something else to say.

“The boy is sick,” he says. “You’ve brought us an heir with dormant genesis. You need a mate to have another child just in case.”

Salar steps out from the wall on my left before I’ve drawn breath. “I examined him this morning, and I examined him when he first arrived at the estate.” He says it to the room. “There is no presentation of the disease. His wolf is stable, his bloodwork is clean, and I’ll put all of it in writing for this council by Wednesday.”

Samuel’s mouth opens a fraction before he catches it, which is the only thing worth having out of this afternoon. He didn’t know. Somebody told him, somebody who has had access to my house since Luca arrived, and whoever it was had the details wrong. He can’t fight Salar in front of this room.

“I’m glad to be corrected.” He sits down, but I see him summon one of his men and whisper furiously into his ear. I look at Damien and nudge my head. He disappears for a moment then returns, giving me a discreet nod.

As I take Luca to one side, Damien catches up to me. “I just got intel I need to share. Luca, go with Salar.”

My son runs off.

We find a quiet corner, and Damien says, “The clinic had two IT contractors on the books the year Maya went in. Both of them stopped existing about eight weeks after she ran.”

I stop walking. “How are you just finding this out?”

“When we started looking into Maya disappearing, they were still there.” He doesn’t look away from me. “I’ve got them on a payroll run six weeks after she left the clinic. Two weeks after that, they completely disappeared.”

“They disappeared, or they ran, or what happened?”

“Their apartment has been empty for years, and the landlord said that they didn’t pay rent or come back for their belongings.” He lifts one shoulder. “My guess is somebody killed them or something along those lines. Nobody walks out on a deposit and a furnished apartment.”

“How did the pack not know?”

“Both of them registered a vacation abroad at the same time, which is why nobody looked. I had somebody check the previous records.” He waits until I look at him. “They never made it onto the plane.”

I stop hearing the people talking around me. Six years of investigators on a name, and we haven’t been able to find anything. Because we were looking at all the wrong places. “They were used and then removed. Check their financials. And do it quietly, tidying up. Somebody was behind this.” My voice is cold. “Dig out the rat, Damien. I’m starting to lose my patience now.”