All Chapters of Cherish Me, Daddy: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

ELI'S POVHickeys. There were a lot of hickeys.The realization settled quietly and heavily inside me. Those weren’t wounds from battle. They were too soft. Too intimate.My lungs suddenly felt tight.So it was true. The citrus scent. The omega pheromones. Luc... Lucen—had been with someone.During the three days he was gone. During the marking ceremony night. During the time when I was here alone, burning through heat and clutching his clothes just to breathe... just to survive the burning sensation from within me.I watched him slip through the hallway with the same careless confidence that had once made me think I could belong in his world. He didn’t glance at my face, but maybe he did and simply chose not to acknowledge it.He walked past me toward the walk‑in closet.“I need to change, by the way I needed to go again... follow up planning regarding the crisis” he said casually.“Alright,” I replied softly, the words already half‑lost in the trembling of my throat.The closet door

LUCEN'S POVMy brows lifted slightly. Alpha Osen. Of course. The name rang like a bell I had stopped hearing months ago, when I was too busy trying to find Eli. I met Osen ,way back to the war. The war had been over, the borders redrawn, the treaties signed. Osen, once a rival commander, had become an uneasy ally. The thought of him standing in my hallway now felt… inevitable.I rose from the chair, the leather creaking under my weight, and headed downstairs. The corridors smelled of polished wood and faint incense, a reminder that even in a house built for war, there were still rooms meant for quiet.When I entered the main hall, Osen was already standing near the living room, his broad shoulders framed by the fire’s amber glow. Beside him, Emon... tall, lanky, with a nervous energy that made his hands tremble, shifted his weight as if trying to find a comfortable stance on a floor that suddenly felt unfamiliar.“Lucen,” Osen greeted, his voice gruff but not unkind.“Osen,” I replied

ELI'S POVEmon gently sat down beside me, his hand finding mine and giving it a tentative squeeze. “Do you feel better now?” he asked, voice as soft as the rustle of a leaf.“A little,” I whispered, the words barely carrying the fatigue that settled in my bones.His expression softened, and he leaned in, his forehead almost touching mine. “I was really worried about you,” he said. “After what happened on the cruise ship… I was afraid something terrible happened again.”I blinked, trying to piece together the fragments of that night. “You mean… when I fell into the ocean?”Emon nodded, his eyes clouded with the memory of frantic waves and cold water that had pulled me under. “That night scared me a lot. As an omega, I seemed to feel what you feel that night. Every pain seeing those things and helplessness floating in the pitch black ocean.”I gave him a weak smile. “Thank you… for worrying about me.”From that night on, Lucen became strangely attentive. Like clockwork. Every morning, a

ELI'S POV Inside the estate time moved like syrup... slow, thick, and stubborn. Days slipped into weeks unnoticed, weeks folded into months, and the world outside turned from winter to spring to summer while I still wore the same wool coat I’d bought the night before the first snow. When I first arrived at Blackthorn, the house was a promise. Its vaulted ceilings and sprawling gardens whispered a life I could share with Lucen... my Alpha, my partner, the man who had taken me to be the shadow of my late brother. I lingered over his smile, over the way his eyes lingered a fraction longer than protocol required. I kept hoping, day after day, that something would shift, that the walls between us would crack and let the warmth I felt for him spill out. But the estate kept its rhythm, and Lucan kept his. The endless litany of duties... pack matters, border patrols, council meetings, rogue wolf sightings, negotiations with neighboring territories, filled his mornings, his afternoons, his

LUCEN’S POVThe eastern border was silent when we arrived.Too silent.The kind of silence that was followed by the storm... by something big.The forest stretched for miles, a wall of ancient pines whose branches knotted together so tightly that even moonlight struggled to slip through. The air smelled of damp earth and iron. Vulk caught it before the scouts even finished their report. Blood.I stepped out of the vehicle before it had fully stopped. Drew followed behind me, already speaking into the comm unit clipped to his collar.“Alpha on site,” he said. “All units report position.”Voices crackled through the speaker.“North ridge secure.”“South perimeter clear.”“Two rogues spotted fleeing west.”I listened to the reports without speaking, my eyes scanning the treeline. The wind carried dozens of scents... pine, soil, gunpowder, but none lingered long enough to suggest a full‑scale attack. Which meant one thing.“They were testing the border,” I said.Drew looked at me. “A prob