All Chapters of Contract Marriage To The Alpha King : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Damian's POV Time slowed. The opulent hall, the expectant faces, the very air seemed to stretch, to distill into this single, agonizing moment. She wore the gown I’d chosen. The pale cream silk flowed around her like a luminous mist, the pearl sleeves shimmering softly, the elegant neckline framing her delicate collarbones. Her hair was swept up, a cascade of loose, soft curls escaping around her face, softening its sharp angles, her skin glowing like she’d stepped directly out of moonlight, fragile and ethereal. But her eyes— Her eyes were empty. Devastatingly so. Stripped bare of all emotion, all life. They were wide, distant, reflecting nothing of the joyous occasion this should have been. She walked toward me, toward the altar, with a slow, measured pace, her movements stiff, almost mechanical. She looked like she was headed to her execution, not her own mate ceremony. There was no defiance in her tonight, no spark of the fire I had glimpsed beneath her exhaustion. No fire

Ava's POV The soft, decisive click of the door was the only warning. I froze, every muscle in my body locking into a rigid tableau of fear. The faint sound of the lock turning was louder than the frantic blood rushing in my ears, louder than the pounding of my own terrified heart. My hands, which had just finished desperately wiping the last stubborn tears from my cheeks, fell uselessly into my lap, trembling uncontrollably. He was here. Damian Blackwood. My mate. My captor. I didn’t dare move, didn't breathe. My gaze was fixed on the intricate pattern of the carpet, hoping that if I remained perfectly still, perfectly silent, he might somehow overlook me. A foolish, child-like hope. The door opened slowly, deliberately, a dark rectangle widening into the brightly lit room, and he stepped inside, filling the doorway, his silhouette imposing and vast. He didn’t say a word. He rarely did, not when silence could be used as a weapon, as a means of intimidation. His dark

Damian's POV It was the sound of silence that woke me. Not a gentle awakening, but a jarring jolt to my senses, a primal alarm blaring in the depths of my subconscious. I didn’t know what time it was — just that it was deeply, unnervingly dark, and the opulent bedroom, usually filled with the subtle hum of the house, was unnervingly quiet, save for the faint, monotonous ticking of the antique clock on the bedside table. My eyes cracked open reluctantly, adjusting to the oppressive shadows cast by the moonlight that spilled through the sheer, whisper-thin curtains, painting the floor in shades of ghostly silver. Something felt… wrong. Deeply, fundamentally wrong. A visceral unease settled in my gut, sharper than any business deal gone sour. My hand, acting on an instinct I hadn’t known I possessed, instinctively reached toward the other side of the vast, emperor-sized bed — the side where she was supposed to be, where her presence had been a cool, almost distant weight just hours b

Damian's POV I don’t even remember walking down to the bar. The last coherent thought had been the chilling emptiness of her side of the bed, the mocking silence of her voicemail. One second, I was pacing like a caged animal upstairs, the gnawing anxiety and burgeoning fury a suffocating weight in my chest. The next, I was standing in front of the gleaming, extensive shelves of my private bar—whiskey, bourbon, scotch—bottles upon bottles, lined up like quiet, impotent soldiers, waiting to numb the raging storm in my chest, to douse the inferno she had ignited. My hand, acting on an instinct far more primal than thought, reached for the first bottle before I even realized it. A rare, twelve-year-old Macallan, a collector’s item that cost more than most people’s annual salary. I yanked the cork out with my teeth, a savage, almost animalistic gesture, the sharp wood grating against my enamel. I didn’t bother with a glass, didn’t waste a single agonizing second on formality. I tipped

Damian's POV The first tendrils of dawn, pale and unforgiving, pierced through the towering windows of the penthouse, doing little to dispel the glacial grip of the night within me. I remained a fixture in the shattered landscape of the bar, a monument to a night consumed by a potent cocktail of whiskey and raw, unadulterated fury. Empty bottles, like fallen soldiers, lay scattered around me, their fractured reflections mirroring the fragments of my own composure. My shirt, a rumpled, whiskey-stained testament to my descent, clung to me uncomfortably. A dull, persistent ache throbbed behind my jaw, a constant reminder of the hours spent clenching it, while my head pulsed with a relentless rhythm, a symphony of self-inflicted pain. Sleep had been a distant, unattainable luxury. Not a single moment of oblivion had graced me. The beast within, the wolf that usually roamed wild and snarling, had undergone a chilling metamorphosis. It was no longer a rabid animal, but something far mo