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24. THE DRIVE (Alaric's POV)
publish date:
2026-08-27 05:44:41
L.MISS PAUTHOR’S NOTE: SPEAK UP!: What do you think of Alaric’s POV?😍👀 Be honest—did you catch the moment his walls cracked? #Vote#!: Enjoying the story? Don’t forget to vote🌙✨ Each vote means a whole lot😭❤️🩹 PREDICTION: How do you think Alaric is going to handle his feelings?😂 You know, cause his father already told him to stay away from Selene🙄 RANDOM QUESTION: What’s the longest you’ve ever stayed awake? ☕💀 Thank you for reading! See you in the next chapter!🥹💜 Y’all are the sweetest💝🥰
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Demoted to the Throne 36. A NAME FOR NOTHING
It was like a switch flipped overnight, and Selene had spent half of that morning trying to figure out what went wrong.Alaric was at his desk when she brought his coffee in — no sun today, she didn’t want to come off as “doing too much” just for the sake of it — he barely looked up from his laptop to take it anyway. "Thank you," he said, to the screen rather than to her, and that was the whole exchange. No comment on the Tanaka contract she'd flagged. No dry remark about her being three minutes early, which had somehow become its own small ritual between them, him pretending to be annoyed by her punctuality, her pretending not to enjoy annoying him."Everything okay?" she asked, lingering a beat longer than the coffee delivery required."Fine." He still hadn't looked up. "Busy day."It wasn't a lie, exactly, but it wasn't anything close to true either, and she knew. It was the clear difference between a door that had been shut and a door that had been shut at you. She hovered near the
Demoted to the Throne 35. NOT A REQUEST
It was a normal morning, as usual but he should have sensed that something was about to ruin it.Selene set his coffee down at exactly eight-fifteen, the way she did every day, except today she'd drawn a small, lopsided sun in the foam with the back of a spoon, and when he raised an eyebrow at it she only shrugged. "You looked like you needed it. The sun I mean, not the coffee. And also the coffee, I guess.""I have just one expression. How could you tell?""They’re four actually. I've catalogued them." She counted off on her fingers, entirely too pleased with herself. "Resting disapproval, active disapproval, the one where you're actually listening but don't want anyone to know it, and whatever this morning's face is, which I'm choosing to interpret as gratitude.""It's indigestion.""Sure." She was already halfway to the door, laughing under her breath in a way that did something unhelpful to his chest, when his phone buzzed on the desk. He almost didn't look at it. He wished, later,
Demoted to the Throne 34. A PRICE FOR PATIENCE
Alaric hadn’t slept properly since the conference trip, at first he convinced himself it was jet lag but even that die didn’t hold for long.He sat at his desk with the merger contract open in front of him, the same paragraph re-read for the fifth time without a single word of it landing, and let himself do the thing he'd been avoiding since the plane touched down — think about the bar. The weight of her, leaning in. The breath he'd taken right before his phone had ruined everything, sharp and sudden as a blade cutting a thread he hadn't meant to let get that long in the first place.He’d wanted to kiss her. That wasn’t a question anymore, wasn’t something he could file away like he did things he didn’t want to address. He’d wanted it with a clarity that unsettled him more than the wanting itself — and then his father’s call had come through, demanding an update on a trade negotiation that could have waited until morning, and he’d stood there in a hotel lobby listening to Silas’s voice
Demoted to the Throne 33. THE LOUDEST WHISPERS
Bianca had poured the wine herself, watching the thick redness flow freely into the cup — a gesture, meant to be perceived as kindness or mistaken for warmth — and set the glass down in front of Regina who sat across her. Only a few would realize that it was nowhere near warmth, the gesture that is. Just an act pulled by someone who needed something, indirectly."I just think it's interesting," Bianca said, curling into the corner of her sofa, phone angled so the photo caught the light. Selene and Alaric, a hand at her back, a city that wasn't Ravenwood. "That nobody's talking about this already. A whole business trip, and not a word. You'd think someone would find that worth mentioning.""People don't really gossip about assistants," Regina offered, carefully neutral, watching Bianca's face for whatever she was supposed to say next."No," Bianca agreed, thoughtful, like the idea was only now occurring to her. "Though I suppose someone could always help that along. Not me, obviously —
Demoted to the Throne 32. SLIP-UP
The smell of homemade food was obvious, even from the front door before Selene stepped in, which was how she knew, with a furious certainty, exactly what she was about to walk into.“Grandma!”Her grandmother turned from the stove with the guilty speed of someone caught mid-crime, wooden spoon still in hand, a dish towel slung over her shoulder. Looking not one but like someone who had spent the last several days hooked up to machines that beeped whenever her heart raced even a tad bit too fast. "You're home early."“You’re supposed to be resting, in bed. Preferably deep in sleep.”“I was discharged yesterday. Behaved myself, apparently.” Hattie turned back to the pot like that settled it, stirring with more effort than the motion should have required, her free hand braced flat against the counter every few seconds, her simple way of relaxing through the stress. “The doctor said I could go home as long as I took it easy.”“How is preparing a full considered ‘taking it easy’?”“It’s ju
Demoted to the Throne 31. THE LONG WAY HOME
Selene woke before her alarm again, except this time it wasn't Nyx keeping guard — it was her own heart, still running through the tail end of a memory that wasn't a dream at all. The bar. His hand at her temple. The half-second where she'd closed her eyes and waited.She lay there staring at the ceiling for a full minute, mortified, embarrassed. Foreign feelings battling for dominance in her mind.You didn't do anything wrong, Nyx offered, unusually gentle. You just wanted something. That's allowed.“Is being this embarrassed allowed also?” Selene muttered to the empty room, and got up before she could think about it any further.Breakfast was a small, private disaster. Alaric was already at the table when she came down, coffee in front of him, untouched, like he'd ordered it as a prop rather than something he intended to drink. He looked up when she sat, and for exactly one second their eyes caught — and then both of them found somewhere else to look, fast enough that it would have b
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