Disguise 85_The Matchmaker

CHAPTER 85

 The static faded, and the recording jolted into life–muffled voices crackling through low distortion, then sharpening with rity

 “We need to move carefully,” said a clipped male voice. “The alliance is almost set. Timing is everything.”

 Saphira’s spine straightened, as if tugged by invisible thread. Her fingers tensed where they rested against the table’s edge, skin brushing the wood. Her can tuned with surgical precision. She didn’t recognize the first speaker but then the next voice came, and her stomach turned.

 Confident. Arrogant. Laced with the kind of control disguised as concern.

 The Alpha. Her old one.

 She felt Niks shift beside her, not reacting audibly, but his thigh pressed lightly into hers beneath the table: Grounding. Present.

 Another voice joined in–calm and slow, with the cold certainty of someone who rarely repeated themselves.

 “I trust the pack is clean now?”

 Saphira didn’t need to ask who that was. The Elder’s voice carried that unnerving stillness she’d only heard described in hushed spection–like the calm before a storm you couldn’t outrun.

 Then-

 “Yes.” That voice. t. Familiar. It mmed into her with unrelenting finality.

 Lupus. Her father. 

 “We sent thest non–wolf to the Matchmaker months ago,” the recording continued. “She’s gone. Noplications. No more questions. And if she didn’t survive–well. All the better.”

 The words fell into the room like daggers. Saphira stopped breathing. Her hands, braced on the table, trembled once–then curled into fists, nails biting the tender skin of her palms. 

 She had known, yes. But this… this was different. His voice, so casual, so utterly devoid of remorse, echoed louder than any de or bruise ever could.

 The room closed in. The walls too tight. The light too loud.

 She shoved her chair back in a scrape loud enough to make Raven flinch, and rose with a precision that belied the chaos building in her chest. Without a word, she walked across the office–deliberate and silent–toward the cold, unlit firece. Her boots thudded softly against the rug, each step a fight not to burn.

 Niks was at her side not ten secondster, as if her anger had called to him directly.

 He didn’t speak right away. Just stood near, close enough that she could feel the heat of him, but not touching. Letting her hold her own silence. 

 “Saphira?” he asked gently, his voice threaded with concern.

 She turned her head just enough to reveal her jaw–tight, rigid. “That was him,” she said, a brittle edge cracking through the words. “Lupus. My father.”

 Niks’s breath shifted, and then his hand was there–settling against the curve of her back. No pressure. Just steady warmth. Solid. Real.

 She gripped the mantel with both hands, the stone cool beneath her fingers. “I knew,” she whispered. “I knew what he did. What he allowed. But hearing it like that–he didn’t hesitate. Didn’t even pause./I wasn’t a daughter. I was a problem to be cleaned up.”

 Niks’s touch became firmer, not pushing anchoring.

 “I wasn’t even worth wondering about,” she continued, voice thick with fury barely restrained. “Just… gone. Better that way.”

 173

 CHAPTER 85 

 A beat passerl. Then another.

 Behind them, ted cleared his throat. “There’s more, he said gently. “You need to hear the rest.

 Saphira let her shoulders rise with a breath that barely made it past the knot in her chest. Then she exhaled, Enna Contr 

 She released the mantel and turned back to Niks. Their eyes met, and in his, she saw no pity only promise. Steadfast and sweating,

 She nodded once. A single act of resolve.

 Then without a word, she walked back to the table. The fire behind her hadn’t been lit, but she burned just fine on her own.

 Chairs scraped faintly as Saphira and Niks settled back at the table, the silence thick but expectant. Her jaw was still clenched, but the fire behind her eyes had shifted–less raw, more focused. Niks gave her hand a brief squeeze beneath the table, just once, before releasing it.

 Jasper tapped his phone again. The recording resumed.

 “…the circle is thinning,” came the crisp,posed voice–undeniably the Elder again. “And it’s time to expand. We’ve chosen to fill the openings quietly. Strategically. We’ll take the strongest two from each bloodline. Werewolves. Vampires. Witches.”

 Saphira stilled.

 Next came a voice she hadn’t realised she was bracing for–the Alpha from her old pack Arrogant. Pompous. “Will they be initiated fully?” he asked. “With the ancestral rite? The power thates with the bloodline?”

 A pause. 

 “No,” the Elder said, clipped. Final. “If we continue to dilute the bond with new initiates, the ancestral connection will weaken. Their power willpromise ours. That cannot happen.”

 Saphira’s lips parted slightly. Not just recruitment. A masquerade.

 “But,” the Elder continued, “we need the appearance of numbers. Strength. Bnce. No one can know they weren’t truly initiated. Not even the new members. They must believe it themselves.” 

 Niks shifted beside her, his elbow brushing hers lightly. She didn’t nce at him–her eyes were locked to the device–but she could feel the storm rising in both of them.

 Another voice broke through–Lupus.

 “Well that’s the problem,” he said, irritated. “You want two vampires and two witches–like we can just conjure them out of nowhere? That’s not how this

 works.”

 “You agreed to provide them,” the Elder snapped. “Or we find another pure pack to fulfil the pact.”

 Saphira’s nails dug into her thigh beneath the table. Another pure pack. Like they were </bmodities. Bargaining chips.

 Her father’s voice sounded strained beneath its veneer. It won’t be easy.”

 “Then make it easy,” the Elder said coldly. “Or your position dissolves. And your wolves lose everything.”

 The recording faded into static again.

 Saphira’s pulse thundered beneath her ribs. This/wasn’t just corruption. It was orchestration. Smoke and mirrors, hiding something deeper–something ancient.

 She looked toward Niks.

 He was already watching her. No words passed between them—but in the set of his jaw and the quiet, electric fury in his gaze, she saw it clearly. 

 2/3 

 They were past the line of negotiation. Now came the reckoning.

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Disguise 85