Page 94 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

“I have to go.” She stops with her hand on the frame and looks back at me. “Don’t mark her so haphazardly. At least make it romantic. And tell me before you do. Let me help you arrange a small ceremony at least. Give her some face. Don’t be a neanderthal, Callum. I mean it.”

Then she’s gone, and the door swings itself the last few inches shut behind her.

Damien takes the chair. He puts the tablet face down on his knee and rubs the scar through his eyebrow.

“She’ll have to understand exactly what it is you’re trying to do,” he begins. “And what if she decides against it?”

We’re already sleeping together, we are growing closer. She spends all his free time around me and Luca.

“Why would she say no?” I demand. “I can give her everything.”

“Human women don’t always crave power.” Damien sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “They crave love. They crave warmth. They crave honesty. They don’t like their decisions being made for them.”

He waits for me to snap at him, but I don’t. He’s right. A shifter female would have been more than willing, understanding what the bond promised, but Ariela wouldn’t.

“I’ll talk to her,” I murmur.

He picks the tablet back up. “There’s more, and you’re not going to like this either.”

“Say it.”

“We found bodies buried at the edge of Thorne territory.” He turns the screen toward me. “Two of my men were walking the boundary on something unrelated, and one of them caught the smell where the ground had sunk. We’re excavating quietly, at night, with people I trust.”

The photograph is a trench cut through clay with lamps standing at the corners of it. “How many?”

“Four so far. Two are men, and we’re nowhere near identifying them.” He swipes to the next image. “The other two were buried in uniforms. There’s an emblem on the breast pocket of both. It belongs to the surrogacy clinic. Those are nurse uniforms.”

My hand clenches into a fist on the desk. “Who?”

“Every nurse who worked at that clinic is alive.” Damien looks cautious. “I checked all of them. The remains are too far gone to identify by anything but the clothes. But they’re a few months older than the other two remains. I believe they all died in the same time frame.”

“So the Thornes are definitely involved,” I murmur.

“But how do we drag then down?” Damien asks. “Silas has a lot of influence, and unless we have something concrete tying him to Maya, this can all be explained away.”

“Keep digging,” I order. “They never expected us to find the bodies or link them. So let’s pretend we know nothing. Pull all employee records, anybody who had access to the nurse uniforms, anybody whose resignation can be explained away, find them.”

Damien nods, getting to his feet. As he heads to the door, he gives me a sympathetic look. “Best of luck with that talk.”

I wonder if I need it.

❦ ❦ ❦

Luca’s door is open exactly halfway, and I stop short of it because I can hear his mother’s voice through the gap.

“You skipped a word.”

“I didn’t.”

I look through the crack, and Ariela has him reading a book.

There’s a long-suffering groan out of the six-year-old, and I choose that moment to push the door open. Ariela is sitting on the edge of the bed with a book closed on her finger. Luca is already halfway under, one arm thrown over his head, the toy wolves lined up along the sill above him in an order nobody in this house is permitted to disturb.

“Go to sleep, Luca,” I tell him, and he makes a face at me but obediently closes his eyes.

Ariela kisses his forehead before sliding out of the bed. I hold out my hand. “Come with me.”

She watches me warily but doesn’t argue. Pulling Luca’s door shut behind her, she follows me down the corridor, and by the time we reach the back stairs, she’s worked out where we’re going.