Page 122 of Knot Her Beta

I feel numb as we leave the registration office, the mood now the complete opposite of the excited anticipation we were feeling when we arrived. Leif has to steer Jared out the front door as the young Alpha vibrates with restrained rage.

As soon as we hit the parking lot, he breaks loose and spins to face us. “We’re not just going to take this. That viper has ruined Em’s life enough already!”

He spins on me. “You are not protecting him this time.”

“No one is protecting him.” Grady turns to me, his usual gentleness replaced by a hardness I’ve never seen before. “I assume you have receipts for all those fees that you paid and he pocketed?”

“Yeah.” My voice comes out as a rasp, and I clear my throat. “They should all be in the boxes for the office.”

“Good.” He turns his hard stare on Dominic. “So, we sue?”

“Oh, we’re going to do so much more than sue,” Dom growls. “We’re going to destroy him.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Emily

The cottage door doesn’t close before Jared starts up again.

“He had no right.” His boots are loud as he kicks them off in the entryway.

He paces from the door to the living room and back, his hands opening and closing at his sides. “No legal right, no moral right, nothing. I’m going to find him.”

“He’s not hiding.” Leif moves past him toward the kitchen, possessive anger hardening his features in a way that doesn’t belong to the man I know. “He said it himself, didn’t he? That he wasn’t done with Emily?”

I don’t join their conversation as my feet carry me down the hallway, past boxes labeled kitchen, bedroom, or office in black marker.

The closet door sticks when I pull it open. Inside, the rod is empty, the shelf above it stripped down to only one remaining item. The gray metal fireproof box sits where I left it when I packed everything else away.

It’s heavy as I lift it down and carry it back to the dining table, where I set it down along with the Petition for Expulsion.

The black latch cracks when I pop it, and the sound cuts through whatever Grady is saying to Jared near the window.

As I sort through the documents inside, he leaves the young Alpha to come join me and pulls out the chair beside me. “What are you searching for?”

“Proof.”

I lift out a folder labeled House, setting it aside before reaching for another marked Pack Registration in my own handwriting.

“When Auren took over the paperwork, I stopped dealing with the Registration Office.” I flip open the folder. “He said it made more sense for him to handle all the administrative work, since I was so busy, and he was the head of the pack, anyway.”

Jared snorts from across the room. “Convenient.”

“At the time, I thought so, too. But I took it as a sign that he…” My hands shake, and I force them back to steady. “I thought it was a sign he was serious about our pack, and he had administrative experience. He handled billing for the side jobs I took on, too.”

I don’t even want to find out how much he stole from those. I’ll save that for after this current problem is resolved.

Inside the folder, everything is exactly where I remember leaving it. Carbon copies of checks. Registration forms. Sponsorship forms. Receipts. Copies of correspondence I’d almost forgotten I’d kept.

“I never handed money to the county.” I set the first stack on the table. “I wrote checks to Auren. He was supposed to submit the paperwork and the filing fees.”

Grady picks up the first carbon copy.

Pay to the Order of: Auren Dovelle.

Memo: Expulsion from the Lavender Pack Filing Fee.

“You kept the check copies?”