HOTTIE NEXT DOOR のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 101 - チャプター 110

Arielle's POV Alaric slept through the rest of the night and until mid-morning the following day. Clara only allowed the others close enough to feel his pulse, and when he finally woke, still delicate and shaken, Victor had already left with the border patrol, which Michael had insisted on doubling after everything my father-in-law had warned us about. Victor returned with blood on his knuckles and a message he'd no doubt been wishing he didn't have to share. "Say it again," Michael said. "Exactly how he said it." "'The Founder sends his regards to his granddaughter.'" Victor's hands hadn't stopped flexing since he walked in, like he was still fighting the urge to hit something. "Then he bit down on whatever he had tucked in his cheek before any of us could stop him. Dead before he hit the ground. No hesitation. No fear, either, which is the part I can't stop thinking about." "They wanted the message delivered," I said. "That's the whole point of sending someone who'd rather di

Arielle's POV Gideon cast a restraint charm on Rosalind's wrists before she could complete what she started, and even with three people to restrain her, she yelled in a voice that didn't quite sound like a person's anymore while she clawed on the floor trying to pull herself toward us. They got her out. That was all I knew for hours, and I got it in the form of a hair-raising, short and steady report from Michael's third-in-command while I tore a hole into the floor of the council hall by pacing around it. They got her out. Nothing about whether Clara was hurt. Nothing about Victor. I hated waiting more than I hated almost anything else this war had asked of me, and pregnant and grounded, waiting was apparently my entire job now. "You should sit," My mom said, appearing at my elbow with a cup of tea I hadn't asked for. "Pacing won't bring them home faster." "I know that." "Doesn't stop you, though." "No." I took the tea anyway, mostly for something to do with my hands. "How d

Arielle's POV Victor had tried to talk me into bed an hour earlier, and I'd sent him off with a kiss and a promise I had no intention of keeping. "Fifteen minutes," I told him. "I just need air." "You said that forty minutes ago." "Did I? Time's been acting strange lately. Very unreliable. Go check on your father, Victor. I'll be right behind you." He'd given me a look that said he didn't believe a word of it, but he'd gone anyway, trusting me enough not to argue, which was somehow worse than if he had. Selene found me on the porch that night, watching the tree line like it might tell me something the council hadn't already. "Can't sleep either," she said. "There's a countdown running in my head now. Days, maybe less. I don't think I'm sleeping again until this is over." She sat beside me without being asked, quiet for a long moment, her eyes fixed on the same dark tree line I'd been watching. "I need to tell you something," she said finally. "About Augustin. About

Victor's POV The door swung open on an Architect scout, and I had him against the wall before he got a single sound out. "Where's Augustin?" I demanded. He laughed instead of answering, and behind him, through the open doorway, I counted at least six more shapes closing in fast through the trees. "Not here yet," the scout managed. "But he knows exactly where you are. He's known for hours." I broke his jaw before he could say anything else worth using against us, and shoved his unconscious weight back out into the yard as the first of the others reached the porch. "Victor!" Arielle's voice cracked behind me, another contraction dragging a sound out of her she couldn't fully hold back this time. "I've got the door. Don't you dare stop breathing on my account." I had to fight in the doorway itself, leaning on the narrow frame to stop them from rushing around me, all my instincts begging me not to take my eyes off that room for a second. I don't remember how many I knocked down,

Arielle's POV The bond had never worked like this before, not once in my whole life, but mid-contraction, gasping, I felt my mother the way I'd only ever felt Victor, a thread of her pulled taut somewhere out past the tree line. Selene was out there. Facing him. "Victor." I grabbed for his hand between waves, my voice barely holding together. "My mother's out there. I can feel her." "I know. Michael radioed it in a minute ago. She walked straight toward him the second the shield cracked." "Why would she do that?" "Because she's the one person on this battlefield he's never been able to walk away from, and she knows it." His jaw was tight, torn between the fight outside and the fight happening right in front of him. "She's using herself as a distraction, Arielle. On purpose." "That's insane. That's actually insane, even for this family." "I believe the exact phrase Gideon used over the radio was 'your mother's gone and done something reckless and terrifying,' so you're not wron