Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Amelia

I checked the time on my phone again. Jenny was over an hour late-no text, no call, nothing. Typical. She asked to meet up, then vanished like it wasn’t a big deal.

I wasn’t even annoyed-just resigned. That was how she operated. On her own schedule, with the world

expected to wait. When she finally did show up, her steps were slow and her eyes distracted. She slid into the

seat across from me, looking like someone who hadn’t slept in days.

“Sorry,” she said, barely meeting my eyes. “Things ran long.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” I replied, though this time-unlike every other time she’d thrown out a careless

sorry-there was something about it that felt almost… real. A faint trace of actual remorse I wasn’t used to

seeing from Jenny. It caught me off guard.

We sat in silence for a minute. She tapped her nails on her cup, eyes fixed on nothing.

“I didn’t know,” she finally said, voice low.

I looked up. “Didn’t know what?”

“That something happened to you at the mate ball. Not until Dad told me.

My hand stilled on the coffee spoon. I looked back down.

“Oh.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice wasn’t harsh, but there was something raw in it-like she wanted to be

mad but didn’t quite know how.

“I didn’t want to talk about it,” I said. “It was a while ago. It’s not really worth rehashing. I mean, most people

have a story like that, right?”

Jenny gave a small shrug. “I guess.”

Jenny leaned back and let out a long sigh. “My friend got sent away this week. Some remote training pack. Like,

middle of nowhere. Totally out of the blue.”

I tilted my head. “Sent away?”

1/3

LO do with it.”

wall. What friend?”

“He was at the mate ball. The one-” She stopped. “You know.”

It took me a second, but then it clicked. She was talking about him. Whatever his name was-the guy who’d cornered me that night. My skin crawled. And she was still calling him her friend. After everything she’d just said, after acknowledging what happened, she was still putting him in that category. It stung in a way I wasn’t expecting.

My pulse jumped. “Are you saying your dad-?”

“I think he gave the guy’s parents a choice. Handle it or he would.”

The pieces clicked into place. I could still hear Richard’s voice that night, cold and controlled. The vanished, and now I knew why. He’d followed through. Not for show, for me.

“You didn’t know?” she asked.

“No,” I murmured. “Not until now.”

guy had

The weight of it sank in-quiet, powerful, terrifying. But not in a bad way. It was the kind of fear that left room for safety underneath it, like standing close to fire and knowing it wouldn’t burn you. Someone had done something for me without expecting anything in return. Someone had protected me because they thought I deserved to be protected.

That realization dug deeper than I expected. Not because it frightened me-but because it didn’t. Because it felt… good. Like something solid I hadn’t realized I needed to lean on until it was already there.

Jenny picked up her cup and frowned. “I mean… nothing actually happened, right?”

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