Semua Bab Alpha King’s One Night Mate: Bab 81 - Bab 87

CHAPTER 81 Elara arrived with a bag of ordinary objects: a brass bell, a battery lamp, a metal spoon, and a folded square of foil. Nothing sacred. Nothing dramatic. She lined them up on a sideboard in the apartment while the baby practiced sitting on a play mat, swaying with the solemn pride of someone newly convinced the floor belonged to him.“Today is not theory,” Elara said. “Today is interruption and recovery.”Aria sat cross-legged on the mat in old leggings and a soft shirt, hair tied back in a way that admitted the day would involve kneeling. Damien remained nearby in work clothes incomplete by one cuff link, jacket over the chair, the visual compromise of a man half claimed by the office again.Blackwood Enterprises had stopped treating remote authority as a permanent solution. Quarterly pressure had returned. Damien had agreed to resume on-site mornings three days a week, starting tomorrow. The decision sat in the room with them, practical and faintly painful.Elara rang th

CHAPTER 83 The clip was four seconds long.Damien’s hand rested at the small of Aria’s back as they emerged from the foundation dinner. Aria leaned toward him to catch whatever the microphones had failed to steal. Their mouths nearly met, then did not. The internet decided that almost was worth more than a kiss.By morning, people were already talking about the edit. By noon, two fan accounts had paired it with older clips from the charity premiere and the set visit. By evening, a popular entertainment host had said a quiet goodbye on TV without joking.Sophia turned the television off with her knuckle. “They’re not reporting. They’re casting.”Aria sat on the couch with a script open and unread in her lap. “Let them cast, as long as they stay away from him.”She meant the child sitting on the rug with a soft book, flipping through the pages as if the story had upset him. The public still did not know what the baby looked like; there was only guessing and blurry long-distance photos

CHAPTER 85 Sophia arrived with her mouth still faintly swollen and her pulse still dishonest from the cause of the kiss with Adrian.The apartment was quiet in the careful way of late hours: one lamp on in the living room, the nursery door half closed, the city reduced to a distant glitter beyond the glass. Aria stood in the center of the rug as if she had been pacing and had forced herself to stop. She wore an oversized sweater and exhaustion under her eyes, but her gaze was sharp enough to cut through any prepared story.“You took your time,” Aria said.“You said now.” Sophia shut the door. “I came.”For a moment, neither of them moved. Their friendship filled the space with old loyalty and new doubt, a mix more dangerous than two strangers arguing. Sophia set her clutch on the side table and kept her hands where they could be seen, a habit from years of crisis work.Aria looked closely at Sophia, noticing how uneasy and tense she was. “What happened?” she asked.Sophia had been to

CHAPTER 87 It arrived at Blackwood Tower on thick cream paper, sealed with the old mountain sigil and addressed in handwriting formal enough to make history seem polite. Damien read it once in the upper office while the city moved below the glass. There was no demand to come at once, no harsh wording. Only an invitation to “consult on matters of continuity.”Continuity, in Pack's speech, meant succession, claim, and the public shape of power.He went at dusk, not to the main chamber, but to a smaller private hall in the old wing of the Pack house, where the walls still smelled of smoke-darkened oak and beeswax. Three elders were waiting there: Elder Harran, thin and silver-haired; Elder Mireille, with rings heavy enough to suggest judgment before she even spoke; and Elder Cotter, who smiled as if smiling were a tactic.No guards inside, and it was intentional. Courtesy, they called it.Damien did not sit down until one of the elders nodded. He sat in the chair across from them and ke