บททั้งหมดของ The Stripper Toy for My Hot Stepbrothers: บทที่ 11 - บทที่ 20

Caspian's POVThe silence in the house felt different now. It wasn't the tense quiet of suspicion anymore. It was heavy and awkward—the kind that settles in when you know you've done something wrong but can't bring yourself to say it out loud yet. I stood outside Lyra's door holding a stack of books, the leather warm against my palms.My own books.It felt stupid. I didn't do things like this. But I couldn't stop thinking about her story—the hollow, dead look in her eyes when she told us the truth. Raphael believed her. And I... I was starting to believe her too. The gold-digging schemer I'd imagined didn't match the broken woman who'd stared at the wall for three days straight.I knocked. Nothing."Lyra. It's Caspian." Even I could hear how stiff I sounded.A long pause. Then, quietly, "Come in."She sat by the window, wrapped in a thick shawl. She looked smaller than before. Paler. Her eyes were still empty, but they flickered to the books in my hands. Not with interest exactly. Just

Orion's POVI stood outside her door for a solid minute before knocking. My hand was raised, frozen in the air like some kind of idiot. What the hell was I doing?This wasn't me. I didn't do the whole comfort thing. That was Jeremy's job, or even Caspian's lately with his damn philosophy books. I was the guy who fixed problems with my fists or a scalpel. Clean. Clinical. Done.But I couldn't stop thinking about her face in the library. The way she'd looked at her mother—not with anger, but with nothing. Pure, devastating nothing. And then the panic attack, her body seizing up, convinced she was dying.I knocked. Soft. Not my usual sharp rap."Come in." Her voice was flat. Empty.She sat curled in the window seat, knees pulled to her chest, staring out at the gardens. She didn't turn when I entered. The setting sun painted her skin gold, but she looked washed out. Faded."Brought you food." I held up the tray—soup, bread, some fruit. Simple stuff. "Thought you might be hungry.""I'm not

Lyra’s POVThe air in the study was thick enough to choke on. I sat curled in a large leather armchair, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders even though I wasn’t cold. Orion was on the floor beside me, his back against the chair leg, his presence a silent anchor. The others were a storm of tension in the center of the room.Jeremy stood by the cold fireplace, his face a mask of grim control. Raphael paced like a caged animal, his movements sharp, violent. Silas was at the large oak desk, his fingers steepled, his icy gaze fixed on Jeremy. Rowan and Caspian flanked the room, both silent, watching.“The blood tears are not a human medical condition,” Silas stated, his voice cutting through the silence. “We’ve ruled out every physiological cause. This is something else. Something tied to her biology. To what she is.”“What she is,” Raphael snarled, stopping his pacing to glare at Jeremy. “And what the fuck is that, Jeremy? You brought her here. You’ve been closer to this than any of us.

LYRA’S POVThe idea came from Caspian three days after the nightmare.I sat in the library trying to read one of the heavy books he'd given me, but the words just blurred together on the page. My mind kept drifting back to the darkness. To the feeling of straps tight around my wrists."You need something else to focus on," Caspian said from the doorway. He leaned against the frame with his arms crossed. He looked more tired than angry now. "Something that isn't these walls."I didn't look up. "What, like a hobby? Should I start knitting?""Like an education," he said, his voice even. "Raphael teaches a literature class at the city university. Twice a week. It's part of our cover. Normal pack members with normal lives. You've been signed up. You start tomorrow."My head jerked up. "Signed up? You just... put me in a class?""It's not a question, Lyra. It's smart planning. You sit in a room with thirty humans. You listen. You blend in. It makes you look normal. It makes you harder to fin

Lyra’s POVThe door to my room opened silently. A slice of light from the hall fell across the floor.I froze, pulling the covers up to my chin, my heart hammering again.It was Raphael. He stood in the doorway, silhouetted. He wasn’t in his professor clothes. He wore black sweatpants and nothing else. His chest was bare, the muscles defined in the low light. He looked like he’d just come from training. Or from somewhere else.He didn’t come in. He just stood there, looking at me in the dim room. His expression was unreadable.“I felt that,” he said, his voice a low, quiet rumble that vibrated in the space between us. “All the way across the house.”The silence after Raphael’s words felt heavier than the dark. I clutched the sheet to my chest, my skin still humming, my breath stuck in my throat. He felt it. He felt it. The heat of my release, the private shudder of my body—it hadn’t been private at all.He didn’t move from the doorway. His bare chest rose and fell with a slow, deep rhy