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chapter thirty five

Author: Ivy.L
last update publish date: 2026-09-26 02:06:17

Constance

I found William pacing his chamber when I returned, the same restless energy he wore whenever waiting became harder than acting, and the moment he saw my face he crossed the room fast, his hands finding my shoulders.

"Tell me."

I told him everything. The garden. Miriam's guilt-worn confession. The old practice buried fifty years ago and quietly resurrected. Ferdinand's father, the timing that lined up too precisely with my aunt's disappearance to be coincidence, even if Miriam herself
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  • An Heir For The Comatose Alpha   Chapter thirty seven

    ConstanceThe forest beyond Blackwood territory's border looked nothing like I'd expected. I'd imagined danger announcing itself somehow, the trees darker, the air heavier, some visible sign that we'd crossed into land where three men had already died. Instead it simply looked like forest, moonlight filtering thin and silver through bare branches, the road beneath our feet rutted and ordinary, and somehow that ordinariness frightened me more than anything dramatic could have.William walked close beside me, his senses clearly stretched taut in a way that had nothing to do with performance now, his head tilting occasionally toward sounds the rest of us couldn't hear. Julian led at a steady pace just ahead, the map memorized well enough that he rarely needed to check it, though his hand stayed close to the hilt of a short blade he'd insisted on carrying despite Ysolde's warning that weapons drew exactly the kind of attention we were trying to avoid.Ysolde herself walked last, a plain g

  • An Heir For The Comatose Alpha   chapter thirty six

    ConstanceNobody spoke for a long moment after Julian's warning settled into the room. The map lay open between us, the eastern road drawn in careful ink, the place where the envoys had fallen marked with a small, unremarkable cross that felt far too casual for what it represented."Then we don't take the road," William said finally.Julian shook his head. "There isn't another route to the healer's village that doesn't add three extra days of travel through territory even less friendly to strangers than this one. And three extra days is three extra days Ferdinand has to notice you're missing, my lord, and start asking exactly the questions we can't afford him asking.""So we go through danger quickly," I said, "or we go around it slowly and risk everything unraveling here while we're gone.""Those are the choices," Julian confirmed grimly.William's jaw worked, the protective instinct in him visibly warring against the same cold calculation I'd watched him apply to every other impossi

  • An Heir For The Comatose Alpha   chapter thirty five

    ConstanceI found William pacing his chamber when I returned, the same restless energy he wore whenever waiting became harder than acting, and the moment he saw my face he crossed the room fast, his hands finding my shoulders."Tell me."I told him everything. The garden. Miriam's guilt-worn confession. The old practice buried fifty years ago and quietly resurrected. Ferdinand's father, the timing that lined up too precisely with my aunt's disappearance to be coincidence, even if Miriam herself refused to call it certainty. The eyes she'd recognized before she'd recognized anything else about me.William listened without interrupting, his jaw tightening with every new piece, until I finally ran out of words and the silence between us filled with everything neither of us knew how to say yet."Fifty years," he said finally."Miriam doesn't know for certain," I reminded him, though the reminder felt thin even as I said it. "She said herself, fragments and suspicion. Not proof.""It doesn

  • An Heir For The Comatose Alpha   chapter thirty four

    ConstanceI found my chance two days later, in the quiet hour between the morning meal and the household's afternoon business, when Lady Miriam kept to a small private garden tucked behind the east wing, tending roses that had no business surviving so late into autumn. Julian walked me there under the pretense of an errand, then made himself scarce at the garden's edge, close enough to intervene if needed, far enough to let the conversation breathe."Lady Constance." Miriam didn't look up from the rosebush she was pruning, though something in the set of her shoulders told me she'd known I was there before I'd said a word. "I wondered how long it would take you to seek me out.""You expected me.""I expected someone would, eventually." She set down her shears and turned to face me properly, sharp eyes assessing in a way that reminded me, uncomfortably, of Ferdinand's own scrutiny, though hers carried none of his cold calculation. "You spoke true rite at your binding. Not many young wom

  • An Heir For The Comatose Alpha   chapter thirty three

    ConstanceNone of us slept that night. We sat around the small table in William's chamber, the old rite-book pushed aside to make room for something more urgent, turning the elder's phrase over from every angle we could think to try."Harvesting implies more than one person," William said, pacing the narrow space between the window and the bed. "A harvest is never a single stalk. If there was a first, that means a pattern, a practice, something done more than once, by more than one hand, over more than one generation.""Or the same hand," Julian said quietly. "Ferdinand's been regent thirty years. He was already an adult, already positioned close to power, nineteen years ago when my aunt was forced to run." I heard the shift in his own voice as he said it, my aunt, and understood he'd started thinking of her that way without meaning to, the way you absorb a stranger's grief when it's been sitting close enough to your own for long enough. "If there was a first harvesting even before he

  • An Heir For The Comatose Alpha   chapter thirty two

    ConstanceThe hall dissolved into chaos the moment the guard finished speaking, elders rising from their seats in a wave of murmured alarm, servants scrambling toward the doors, Ferdinand's own guard captain shouting orders that got swallowed in the general noise. I stood frozen near the dais, still wearing the dress built for my own binding, watching the man who'd spent weeks systematically dismantling my life stand exposed, for one unguarded moment, as something other than untouchable."Clear the hall," Ferdinand said, and though his voice had regained most of its composure, I heard the strain still threading through it. "Elders, return to your chambers. I will address the council properly once I have full word from the border." His pale eyes swept the room, cataloguing everyone still present with the same cold precision I'd come to dread, and for one terrible second they landed on me, lingering a beat too long before moving on. "Constance. You're dismissed as well. Go rest. You've

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