Semua Bab The Contracted Alliance; Accidental Marriage : Bab 21 - Bab 30

LILY'S POVOthers frequently confused my quietness for gentleness. Courtesy. Tenderness. However, I had discovered long ago that silence could serve as protection. Quiet might signify conflict. I remained by the hospital room window, observing the clouds move across the city skyline. Inside, the atmosphere seemed overly thick. Leena lay sleeping, her breaths shallow yet steady, enveloped in sterile sheets that had endured too much suffering. Devices hummed gently around her like a soothing song for the shattered. I was no longer just present as her friend. I was present because I had made a choice. And that side was not Zack. I had cared for him once. Not as Leena did, not as Kara asserted to. But sufficient to recognize the person he once was. And who was the man he had become? Toxin. Power-thirsty, merciless, fixated on domination. Something within him had warped long before the relationship with Kara, prior to the harshness toward Leena beginning. He was descending into chaos.

CHARLES POVThe manor had consistently been silent at night ...too silent and not in a serene way, but rather the type that murmured secrets hidden away and betrayal thickened like the blood in our veins.I remained in the study, the glow of the fire creating shadows on the smooth wood paneling and the half-full glass I held. Bourbon. Matured and polished. However, this evening, it felt like ashes.Leena's name had started to resonate in circles I didn't foresee. Individuals were inquiring. Not from worry about her, but rather due to the ripple effect her downfall had caused. Zack’s carelessness had stripped away the initial layer of decay. Now the rest of us were rushing to mask the odor.I was aware that Ethan had returned. The wayward wolf-king holding secrets that could engulf a nation. And what about Leena? She was no longer a pawn. No, she was becoming a queen—and queens could be perilous when trapped.Nonetheless, that wasn't the reason I was unable to sleep.It was due to the

LEENA'S POVSilence returned to the hospital room. It wasn't silent; machines continued to beep and the air conditioner softly hummed, yet it was quiet enough for me to hear the flow of my own thoughts. So many events had unfolded so rapidly that I felt as though I was amidst the wreckage of my life, uncertain about what to keep and what to discard. The fragrance of his shirt remained on my skin. Ethan. That was the name he went by. The man who stormed into my hospital room like a fierce tempest asserting dominance. *She’s my wife*, he’d declared, voice intense and insistent, infused with something I hadn't witnessed in Zack for a long time. It frightened me how my body recognized him before my mind did. His presence had awakened something profound within me, something comforting and painfully recognizable. Now, lying here by myself with only a light blanket and a heavier confusion, I was unsure of what to feel. Zack had not come back since Ethan's noteworthy arrival. I figured h

ZACK'S POVShe stood in the garden, sunlight pouring like golden honey over her bare shoulders. The same shoulders I’d once kissed beneath the veil of secrecy, two years ago, when she said yes in a chapel neither of us was supposed to enter. Leena. My wife.She was laughing softly with Karina, a sound I hadn’t heard in weeks months, maybe. Not since the chaos began. Not since I let my company, my silence, and my past come between us...But things were changing and I was changing too.We were finally alone in the Grayson estate’s south wing again, No staff,No family, Just her, me, and the echo of promises we never got the chance to live."Are you just going to stare at me like a love-struck schoolboy?" Leena asked, breaking my trance."Perhaps I am," I answered, approaching her gradually. "You seem like a figure from a dream." "Compliments?" "From Ethan Grayson?" She raised an eyebrow. "Did someone hit you on the head?" "No," I replied, speaking softly, grasping her hand in my own, "

Charles POVI followed one principle while growing up in the Grayson shadow: Loyalty is not noisy. It is demonstrated in quiet. When my face appeared in that security video, mirrored in the window behind Kara and Zack, the silence I had strived to maintain shattered like thunder throughout the Grayson estate. At that moment, I found myself in the subterranean briefing room—without windows, without sunlight, without scrutiny. Only the faint glow of conflict, shimmering along my back. They had all witnessed it by this point. The expression on Cleff’s face when the video distorted and I showed up and he remained silent, made no direct accusations, but his quietness conveyed everything. It wasn’t rage. It was a letdown. And that pained even more. "Will you explain it?" Ethan's voice sliced through the room's static like a knife. Regulated. Hazardous. He was positioned at the table's end, with Leena next to him. Her hand rested on the chair's back, knuckles pale. Niina sat opposite