The Alpha's Forbidden Vow novel Chapter 24

POV: Isabella

The fury was a block of ice in my chest.

It was not a hot, explosive rage; it was a cold, dense, and infinitely more dangerous thing.

I listened to the mercenary leader’s report on the encrypted line, his gruff voice full of pathetic excuses.

“Complications.”

“Interference.”

“A human.”

The sheer incompetence was staggering. I had hired the best rogues-for-hire, the most ruthless Cleaners in the business, and they had been thwarted by a small-town doctor with a first-aid kit.

The humiliation was almost as infuriating as the failure itself.

“So, to be clear,” I said, my voice a silken whisper that promised a slow and painful death, “the targets are alive. And they are now under the protection of this… doctor.”

“He got lucky, my Lady,” the mercenary snarled. “It won’t happen again.”

“No, it won’t,” I agreed coolly. “Because you will do nothing. You will pull your men back, and you will remain in the shadows until you receive new orders. Is that understood?”

There was a frustrated silence. “But we can still take them…”

“Did you not hear me?” I snapped, letting a fraction of my Alpha female’s power bleed into my voice, a command that demanded obedience. “Zane’s personal search party is sweeping that entire quadrant. His Beta, Kael, is leading it. If they find so much as a single rogue footprint near that town, they will descend upon it. And the questions they ask will inevitably lead back to me.”

That shut him up. The only thing these rogues feared more than me was a direct confrontation with a true Alpha’s elite guard.

“My men will be ghosts,” he finally grunted.

“See that they are,” I said and ended the call.

I stood, pacing the lush carpet of my suite.

Phase one had been a catastrophic failure. It had not only failed to eliminate the threat, but it had also introduced a new, unpredictable variable: Dr. Elias Vance.

And it had placed Selene and the boy under his protection.

I would use my position to subtly redirect his search efforts, sending his teams on wild goose chases to the far corners of the world while my own people did the real work.

And my first order of business would be to uncover everything there was to know about Dr. Elias Vance.

A human who could calmly face down two armed shifters and incapacitate one was not a simple country doctor.

There was a secret there.

And secrets were weapons.

I looked at the stunning wedding gown, still standing on its mannequin in the corner of the room.

My prize was so close I could taste it.

I would not let a stray bitch, her half-breed whelp, and some mysterious human doctor take it from me.

They had merely delayed the inevitable.