102: What It Costs to Face Myself — Part 2

Damon’s POV“So tell me,” I continued, stepping closer close enough that the harsh fluorescent lights carved brutal honesty across both our faces “since when did spending time with a son become an obligation, Mum?”Her lips parted, ready to defend herself, ready to twist the entire situation into something convenient and clean.I didn’t give her the room. Not anymore.“You created this mess,” I said quietly.Too quietly. The kind of quiet that shook even me.“And I will stick to the terms we agreed on. Once the children are healthy, Rachel returns to Erinville. Permanently. My life is already in ruins from every way I let you meddle.”Rachel’s crying intensified at those words, her sobs ricocheting through the sterile hospital corridor like shards of broken glass, slicing through the tension, the guilt, the accumulated regret hanging thick in the air.But as her face crumpled and her shoulders shook, something terrifying dawned on me.I felt nothing.Or not nothing. Something closer

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23; The Burden of Blood and Duty

Damon’s POVThe doctor’s footsteps echoed down the corridor long before he reached us slow, steady, unforgiving. In the suffocating quiet of the hospital wing, each soft tap against the polished floor struck my nerves like a hammer. Nothing in this place moved quickly except fear, and fear had already wrapped itself around all of us like a noose.When the doctor finally appeared, his shoulders were squared with practised calm. But there was a heaviness behind his eyes that made my stomach clench. He bowed lightly.“Your Highness. Your Majesty.”My mother straightened instantly, slipping into her queenly posture as naturally as breathing. Regal. Composed. Unreadable. I could barely manage a nod. My spine felt rigid, my lungs tight — as if one wrong inhale would shatter the fragile thing holding me together.“How is he?” I asked, though the words scraped out of me like broken glass. “My son.”The doctor didn’t answer immediately. He clasped the clipboard to his chest, fingers tightenin

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104 The Burden of Blood and Duty — Part 2

Damon’s POVI stepped slightly aside, away from the prying curiosity in my mother’s eyes and the suffocating tension that clung to the hospital walls like dust. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, the scent of antiseptic sharp in the air, the weight of fear heavier than any crown.I lifted the phone to my ear.“Father.”His response was brisk, clipped, already strained by the unravelling chaos of a kingdom at breaking point.“Damon, where are you? You need to get back to the palace immediately. We’re preparing a press release. The people are panicking. The riots are escalating ”I closed my eyes briefly, inhaling through the tightness in my chest. Of course. One crisis was never enough. Eldenwald had a talent for bleeding in every direction at once.I paced a few slow steps down the hall. “Is the food reserve being released? What am I supposed to tell them if there’s nothing tangible to offer?”“Not yet,” he answered, irritation hardening into frustration. “I’m still assembling a

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105

CHAPTER 27 the gym is gone Liana’s POVThe USB drive had given me answers.But answers without context were just more questions wearing different clothes.I knew what Matteo had done. I knew the shape of it now the debt, the transfer, the correspondence that referred to me as the subject like I was a line item in a budget. I knew my marriage had been a transaction completing itself and that I had walked into it believing it was a choice.What I didn’t know was what Maxwell had intended to do with any of it.And that gap that specific gap between what I knew and what I didn’t was where everything lived. Where the anger lived. Where the something-that-wasn’t-quite-hope-but-wasn’t-quite-dead-yet lived.I needed more.I started small.Careful. Methodical. The way you move when you’re searching inside a house that watches you.I had a name the holding company that had purchased the gym. The attendant had been tight lipped but the sale of a business left records. Public records. The kind

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Lahat ng Kabanata ng Rejected by the alpha, claimed by his brother : Kabanata 101 - Kabanata 104

102: What It Costs to Face Myself — Part 2

23; The Burden of Blood and Duty

104 The Burden of Blood and Duty — Part 2

105