Chapter 150 – The Letter

Cedrick's POV"Come back with me," I said.The words came out bare and unguarded, carrying none of the authority I'd relied on for years. I wasn't commanding. I was asking. And the difference felt like standing naked in a room full of people.Beatrice turned to face me. Her cheeks were still damp, and her eyes held the particular clarity of a woman who had finished crying and arrived at a decision."No," she said."Beatrice...""No, Cedrick." Her voice was firm. Not angry, not bitter. Certain. The certainty of a woman who had weighed every option and settled on the one that kept her standing. "I'm not going back.""I've changed. I know I've changed. What happened in Martin's palace, what I did in that courtroom, the three months you spent beside my bed, none of that was the man you knew before. I am not the man who chained you.""You chained me yesterday." She held my gaze. "Not with iron. With legal documents and a job you created to trap me and a debt clause you pulled from my broth

Chapter 151 – Don't Go

Beatrice's POVThe letter read;Beatrice,I don't know how to say these things to your face. Every time I try, what comes out is an order or something cruel I don't mean, and by the time I realize what I've done, you're already gone.So I'm writing it instead, because paper doesn't flinch when I get it wrong.I have loved you since you were seventeen. I didn't know it then. I thought it was duty, a king protecting a girl who'd wandered into danger. But when I wrapped my cloak around your shoulders, something settled inside me that never left. When they brought you to me in that dungeon years later, it woke up, and I didn't know what to do with it.So I did everything wrong.I chained you because I couldn't stand to let you leave. I called you a slave because calling you what you really were meant admitting something I wasn't ready to feel. I grabbed your throat because I was terrified that if I opened my hands, you'd slip through my fingers forever. I hurt you with words I thought wer

Chapter 152 – Forever

Beatrice's POVI ran.Up the gangplank, across the deck, past the crew members who stepped aside without being told, and I hit him at full speed. My arms wrapped around his chest, my face pressed against his neck, and I held on with everything I had, every ounce of strength in my body and every year of longing I'd been suppressing and every wall I'd built to keep him out collapsing at once."Don't go," I said. My voice broke against his skin. "Don't leave. I love you. I've always loved you. I never stopped, not for a single day, and I'm tired of pretending I did."His body was rigid against mine. His arms hung at his sides, and for three terrible seconds he didn't move, didn't breathe, didn't respond, and I thought I was too late, thought the promise he'd made to stay away was stronger than whatever I was offering by standing here with my arms around him and my tears on his neck.Then his arms came up.They wrapped around me, slowly at first and then all at once, crushing me against h

Chapter153 Wish

I looked at the ring. At his hands holding it, the hands that had chained me and caught blades and wiped tears from my cheeks and cooked wolf-shaped pancakes for a son he hadn't known was his. At the scars on his forearms where he'd cut himself open to buy our freedom. At his face, leaner and older and carrying the particular beauty of a man who had been broken and rebuilt and come out the other side still standing."Yes," I said.He put the ring on my finger. His hands were steady, which surprised me, because mine were shaking. Then he kissed me, soft and slow, and the rose petals were crushed beneath our feet, and my wolf settled against his with a peace so complete it felt like silence after a storm.Elan's birthday fell three weeks later.We held the party in the garden of the estate, under the trees Cedrick had chosen for their morning light, and the tables were covered with food and the chairs were filled with children from the town and their parents, and Elan ran between them a

Chapter154- Ending

Cedrick's POVThe wedding was held on the hillside.White flowers lined the aisle. The old oak tree at the top of the garden spread its branches overhead, and the afternoon light fell through the leaves in patterns that moved and shifted with the breeze. Every seat was filled. Pack leaders and nobles and diplomats and the ordinary people of the town who had known Beatrice as their children's teacher and had come to watch her marry a king.I stood at the end of the aisle and waited for her, and while I waited, the memories came.Not the dark ones this time. Not the chains or the dungeon or the hospital rooms or the blood on white marble. Those memories were still there, filed away in the places where guilt lived, and they would never fully leave. But today they sat quiet, overshadowed by others.Beatrice at seventeen, looking up at me with trust so complete it made my chest hurt. Beatrice in the scroll room, her handwriting flowing across parchment, her concentration so deep she didn't

All Chapters of When I’m Gone, You Love: Chapter 151 - Chapter 155

Chapter 150 – The Letter

Chapter 151 – Don't Go

Chapter 152 – Forever

Chapter153 Wish

Chapter154- Ending