“What are you not saying?” I asked.
Cassian’s jaw flexed once.
“Alpha Mail isn’t as random as it appears.”
I stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said slowly, “that the women who are approved aren’t accidents.”
My pulse spiked.
“You’re telling me someone vetted me.”
“Yes.”
“Based on what?”
“Influence. Risk. Public presence. Psychological profile.”
The air left my lungs.
“So this wasn’t just me sending a letter into the void.”
“No.”
It was a selection.
A targeting.
A deliberate pairing.
“And my mother?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer immediately.
“I think she’s closer to the architecture of this than you’d like.”
The world tilted.
“You’re saying my mother has something to do with Alpha Mail?”
“I’m saying,” he replied evenly, “that you didn’t stumble into this alone.”
My chest tightened painfully.
That email I’d written.
The secrecy.
The thrill of thinking it was anonymous.
Had it ever been?
We drove in silence after that.
The snow thinned as we neared Saratoga.
