The Alpha Kings And Their Stripper Mate

Chapter 209: Chapter 208: Malachai is targeting her loved ones

"She was partially awakened then," Vael said carefully. "Now she’s depleted. The situations are...."

"The situations are incomparable," Malachai said, and there it was....the thing beneath the composure, the controlled rage pressing against the surface like heat through glass, "because in one of them we didn’t know what we were dealing with. We sent a blade against something that required a different instrument entirely."

He moved to the window again. The city. The dark. The order that only existed if you didn’t look too closely.

"She’s in a bed bleeding," he said, "and she is still more dangerous than she appears. She always has been. That’s the problem." He turned his profile to the glass. "Her father was like that. Azrael could walk into a room half-dead and still be the most politically dangerous person in it. You’d think you had him cornered and then discover he’d been maneuvering you into a position you didn’t notice until it was too late."

Vael said nothing. He had learned, also, not to speak when Malachai was remembering.

"I made the mistake of underestimating them once," Malachai said. Quietly. Almost to himself. "I won’t make it again with the daughter."

The silence stretched between them, specific and heavy.

"So we don’t send the assassin," Vael said finally.

"Not yet." Malachai turned fully from the window. "We find the pressure point first. Every person has one....the thing they’ll break for, the person they’ll abandon strategy for, the vulnerability that makes them predictable." His voice was even again. Controlled. The composure sealed back into place as smoothly as if it had never cracked. "Azrael’s pressure point was Lilith. Lilith’s was the child. We used both."

He moved toward the door...the meeting was ending, as his meetings always ended, on his terms, at his timing.

"Find hers," he said. "She’s been living a human life until recently. She has human attachments. Human friends who don’t have supernatural protection, who aren’t pack, Even those who are pack, just find me those who she.....who are simply....people she loves." He paused at the door. "Find me the one she’d walk out of that recovery bed for. Depleted, bleeding, not thinking clearly."

"And then?" Vael asked.

Malachai looked back at him once.

"Then we’ll have a conversation with the Seraphine heir about the true cost of claiming a throne she was never meant to have."

He left. The door closed behind him without a sound.

Vael stood alone in the room for a moment, looking at the report on the table. Then he reached for his phone....not the official one, the secondary line that ran through channels that didn’t exist on any Court record....and made a call.

"Begin surveillance," he said, when it connected. "The heir’s human contacts. I want names, locations, routines. Everything."

He listened.

"Yes," he said. "All of them. We’re looking for the one she loves most."

****

Raphael’s POV

He was in the library when his phone rang.

Not the number that rang for pack business or Court correspondence or any of the dozen legitimate channels through which people contacted him. The number that rang for one specific caller....a number he’d given to exactly one person, years ago, when the situation had required a line of communication that didn’t leave traces.

Seraphine.

Raphael looked at the screen for two rings. Then he answered.

"You need to move faster than you’re planning," she said, without preamble.

This was characteristic. In two hundred years of intermittent contact, Seraphine had never once opened a conversation with pleasantries. He had always found this either admirable or exhausting, depending on the circumstances.

Tonight it was neither. Tonight it was alarming.

"How fast?" he asked.

"Faster than the girl’s recovery allows, which is the problem." A pause.....brief, the kind that meant she was choosing words with more care than her clipped delivery suggested. "My source has gone quiet. Suddenly, completely, in the way that means either they’ve been compromised or they’ve been removed."

Raphael was on his feet before he’d consciously decided to stand.

"When?"

"Three hours ago. I’ve been attempting to verify through secondary channels since. What I have is incomplete....fragments, nothing confirmed." Another pause. "But Raphael. The fragments are specific enough that I thought you should know tonight rather than waiting for confirmation that may not come."

"Tell me."

"Malachai has activated someone. Not the assassin angle.....or not only that. He’s running a softer approach first. Target identification. He’s looking for the heir’s pressure points.....her human connections specifically." Seraphine’s voice was very controlled. "Someone who isn’t pack. Someone unprotected."

The word unprotected landed in Raphael’s chest like a stone dropping into still water. The ripples moved outward immediately....his mind cataloguing, assessing, running through the people in Eve’s life who fit that description.

Maya. Elena.

Maya. Elena. But Elena is a wolf.....but she is also an omega which makes her very similar to a human in some ways. So if she was targeted....

"How far along is the targeting?" he asked, and his voice was steady in the way that required active effort.

"I don’t know. That’s what concerns me. My source went quiet before I could get specifics.....timeline, names, method. I know the intent. I don’t know the execution."

"Seraphine...."

"I know." And there it was....beneath the composure, beneath the five hundred years of practiced control, something that sounded almost like urgency. Almost like fear, in the particular register of someone who experienced fear very rarely and found it deeply inconvenient when they did. "I know what I’m asking you to navigate. She’s not recovered. Moving her too soon after the power crash could....."

"I know what it could do," Raphael said quietly.

"Then you understand why I’m calling at...." he could almost hear her checking the time ".....eleven forty-seven rather than waiting for morning."

He did understand. That was the problem with understanding Seraphine.....she was always right about the things that mattered, and the things that mattered were almost always the things you least wanted her to be right about.

"The friends," he said. "Maya and Elena. Are they on the estate?"

"Maya is. Elena went home two days ago....she has a life outside this situation, a job, family obligations. She’s been at her own apartment since the morning after the trial."

Elena. Alone. Unprotected. In an apartment that had no wards, no pack security, no supernatural presence of any kind.

"I need to make calls," Raphael said.

"Yes," Seraphine agreed. "You do."

A silence fell between them....not awkward, never awkward, they had been past awkward for a very long time. Just the specific quiet of two people who had said what needed saying and were both aware that words were not, currently, the most valuable resource available. freēwebnovel.com

"Thank you," Raphael said.

"Don’t." Her voice shifted.....something underneath it that was neither faction politics nor ancient pragmatism. Something older than both. "Just keep her safe, Raphael. Whatever it costs."

She ended the call.