All Chapters of Cherish Me, Daddy: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

ELI'S POV Darkness should have been quiet. Instead, it hums. It presses against my skin like a living thing, thick and suffocating, but somewhere inside that void… something in me refuses to go still. My chest burns. My lungs feel like they’ve been scraped raw with broken glass. Heat licks at my skin, devouring the edges of consciousness. I don’t know if I’m alive or already halfway to wherever Elion was standing in the smoke. But then... Something changes. It starts in my core. A sharp, instinctual surge that rips through the haze like lightning. My pheromones. They burst out of me without permission. Not controlled. Not composed. Not dignified. Distress. Pure, animal distress. It pours from my pores in frantic waves, thick and desperate, carrying one single message: Help me. Save me. ”Lucen...” help support water. The fire roars louder, answering nothing. Then through the crackling inferno, I hear something else. A voice. Not Liam. Not Elric. Not Lucen. Deep. Commanding. Furio

LUCEN’S POVDarkness in my office has a different weight than the night outside. Outside, the city hums... alive, indifferent, glittering with lights that pretend nothing is wrong. Inside, the darkness breathes with me.And Vulk will not stop howling.The faint glow from the desk lamp casts long shadows across the stack of documents in front of me—pack contracts, territorial disputes, financial reports, enforcement updates. Words blur together. Numbers swim. I read the same line three times and retain none of it.The bourbon burns going down. Good. I welcome the burn. It’s the only thing that cuts through the constant ache under my ribs.A week. Almost a week without Eli’s scent. Without the faint citrus-and-rain undertone that had started clinging to my sheets, my clothes, my skin.A week of nothing. No trace. No signal. No distress. Just absence. And absence is worse. Vulk paces inside me like a caged beast. Restless. Furious. Injured. ”Find him.” The command reverberates through m

LUCEN'S POVThe week had been a slow bleed of every kind of pain. The kind that starts in the chest and radiates out, a hollow ache that no amount of pack business or physical punishment could touch. Six days. Six days since Luke dragged a coughing, smoke-choked Eli out of the wreckage of Elric's cabin, and six days since Luke had simply… appeared in my penthouse, claiming he needed a break from his own pack.I stood in the doorway of my bedroom, the one Eli still hadn’t been permitted to leave. He was curled on his side, the rise and fall of his chest shallow, his face pale against the dark sheets. The doctors’ words echoed: lung damage, scarring from particulate inhalation, recovery will be slow. Every time he coughed... a wet, ragged sound that seemed to tear him from the inside... my fists would clench so tight the bones in my knuckles threatened to splinter.It was my failure. I’d underestimated Elric’s obsession, had let protocol slip, had allowed Eli to walk into a trap with on

ELI'S POVThe black was already wrong. It felt like a cage, heavy and absolute against my skin, which was used to the whisper of white linen, the sigh of cream wool. White was my color. It was safe. It was invisible in the best way. This? This was a declaration. A lie I had to wear, stitched into the very fabric of my being for this night.“Stop fidgeting.”Lucen’s voice was a low rumble from the front passenger seat, a sound more felt than heard. I stilled my hands, which had been twisting the fine material of my trousers. “I’m not,” I murmured automatically, though my fingers had been worrying about the seam for the past five minutes.“You are,” he replied flatly. “Elion never tugged at his clothes like they were strangling him.”Mimic Elion. The words from the contract were burned into my memory, a colder fire than any I’d known. Elion didn’t fidget. Elion didn’t squirm.“You need to be confident, Eli,” Lucen said, not turning around, his gaze fixed o

ELI'S POVPowder...My brows knitted. That wasn’t there before. My stomach tightened.The ship tilted slightly as it cut across a stronger current. I steadied myself against the railing, but my vision blurred unexpectedly.That’s strange.My limbs felt heavier than they should. The wind seemed louder. No... the world was growing distant.My heartbeat quickened. The powder at the bottom of the glass remained, faint and cloudy. Realization struck like ice water down my spine.I didn’t drink much tonight.So why—My knees weakened.I reached for the railing properly this time, fingers barely curling around cold metal. My body felt… slow.Drugged.The music from inside grew muffled, as if I were sinking underwater already.No. No. I tried to straighten, to breathe through it.Think. Who? My mind scrambled uselessly. Kiel? Someone from the rival families? Or—Another sharp tilt.The cruise ship lurched as a large wave struck its side.My fingers slipped.“Shit—”I stumbled, vision doubling