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Chapter 16:  The Orphanage and Hope

Author: Dark Lótus
last update publish date: 2025-11-12 03:12:23

Karen felt something tighten in her chest. It wasn’t rejection; she was used to rejection. It was confusion mixed with a strange sadness she couldn’t name.

She had baked the cake to keep herself busy. To keep from going crazy in that gilded cage. But for a moment—just a moment—it had seemed like it could be something more. A bridge. A piece of common ground between two orphans who didn’t know how to exist in the same space.

And Sebastian had destroyed that in seconds.

Karen looked at the cake —
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