<b>Chapter </b><b>230 </b>


    He also cried like hell whenever I put him down, so there was that.


    +15 <b>BONUS </b>


    But Sophia was right; I was already searching for a nanny, and the world couldn’t wait forever<b>. </b>I was still the Alpha King, even if I just wanted to be a grieving husband for the rest of my life. I couldn’t let <b>my </b>duties fall to the wayside. I’d already missed so much this week.


    “My offer still stands, you know.” Sophia leaned closer to me. “Hire me as the nanny. You don’t even <b>have </b>to pay me. Just…” She swallowed hard. “Let us go back to the way things once were. Friends.”


    My jaw clenched at that. Sophia had been practically begging me to hire her as Lucien’s nanny since he was born, but I still didn’t trust her enough for that. And… friends? That notion felt so far–fetched I <b>could </b>haveughed if I wasn’t so exhausted.


    “The ad has already gone out, and we’ve received dozens of applications,” I replied curtly. “At this point, <b>I </b>can’t just halt the process. It wouldn’t be fair to the qualified individuals who applied.”


    Sophia’s face darkened. She was opening her mouth to say something else when a suddenmotioning from downstairs caught our attention–ss breaking and raised voices. A momentter, Hunter


    burst into the room with wide eyes and disheveled hair and a cut across his cheek like he’d been


    scratched.


    “Alpha, there’s been an incident downstairs. A homeless woman snuck in and is refusing to leave.”


    Cursing, I followed Hunter out of the room and downstairs. I found the woman in question immediately in the foyer, where a crowd had formed to watch the disy. Her back was turned to me, but I could see her wild auburn hair and dirty overalls and oversized boots from where I was standing.


    “Let go of me!” she was shouting, fighting wildly against two guards who were trying to forcibly “escort” her out by both arms. “I live here!”


    “Who are you?” I stepped forward and held Lucien tightly against my chest. “My son is sleeping, so you’d better lower your voice.”


    The room fell silent. The woman froze, then whipped around to look at me. Silver eyes, so silver they were nearly white, widened when they spotted the tiny bundle in my arms. Something protective came over me, and I held Lucien a little tighter.


    But with that protectiveness came something else.


    A… familiarity. Faint but present, like the distant twang of a thread that reverberated in my chest.


    For a moment, just a moment, I swore I felt the slightest tug on my mate bond.


    Goddess, I really was going insane, wasn’t I? I needed to sleep. Preferably for a week straight.


    “I said, who are you?” I repeated,posing myself once more.


    The woman’s eyes snapped back to mine. She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. “Don’t you recognize me, Alexander?<b>” </b>


    I frowned. “No. I don’t.” Which was true–I had never seen this woman before in my life–although I couldn’t help but think that she did look strikingly like E, just with different features. But that was ridiculous, of course; I was probably just imagining the likeness because of my grief.


    E was dead.


    The woman huffed and stormed closer to me, but the guards blocked her path. At a nod from me, they grabbed her arms again and began to haul her away.


    “Alexander–Tell them to let go of me!” she shrieked.


    “Get this woman far away from the property, even if you have to buy her a train ticket out of the territory<b>,</b>” I ordered, ignoring her. “I won’t have anyone causing a scene on the day of my wife’s funeral.”


    “Wait! But I’m-”


    “Let me see her out, Sir.” Lilith suddenly stepped into the foyer with a grim expression on her face. She gestured to the woman. “Follow me.”


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