All Chapters of MY CRUEL PROTECTOR : Chapter 31 - Chapter 34

POV RUBYThe smell of ozone and Silas’s cooling blood lingered in the sub-basement as the heavy thrum of helicopter blades vibrated through the stone foundations of the Wicklow manor. The Ascendancy was no longer a shadow; they were a storm on the horizon.Nevan stood over Silas’s body, his silhouette jagged against the flickering emergency lights. He didn't look like a man who had just killed his brother-in-arms; he looked like a king who had realized his throne was built on quicksand. He reached down and tore a small, silver pendant from Silas’s neck—a locket I had always assumed held a photo of a lost love."He didn't do this for money," Nevan rasped, flipping the pendant open.It wasn't a photo. It was a high-density micro-drive, glowing with a faint, malevolent blue light."He was tracking them," I whispered, the Sovereign in my mind instantly identifying the hardware. "Silas wasn't just working for the Ascendancy. He was cataloging them. A fail-safe in case they turned on h

POV RUBY The private jet, a sleek G650 painted in the color of a midnight bruise, cut through the stratosphere at six hundred miles per hour. Inside the cabin, the world was a vacuum of silence and opulence, a stark contrast to the burning wreckage of the Tuscan villa we had left behind only hours ago. The air was pressurized, filtered, and scented with a hint of expensive leather and Nevan’s lingering cologne—a scent that had become my only true compass in a world where north was a shifting variable. Nevan sat in one of the oversized captain’s chairs, stripped to a black tactical undershirt that clung to the hard, restless planes of his chest. He was cleaning his weapon—a ritual that was less about maintenance and more about a man trying to ground himself when his reality had just been rewritten by a dead woman’s letter. I watched him from the shadows of the galley, my skin still humming with the residual static of the "Phase Two" activation. Every time I looked at my hands, I e