All Chapters of The Trapped Heiress: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

They did not subside slowly this time; they unraveled, like ink dissolving in clean water, the dark silver lines thinning, fading, and finally vanishing beneath his skin. The angry red around the wound on his shoulder dulled to pink, and the color drained from his lips. Under Laurel's bowed head, his heartbeat, so faint, steadied into a strong, even rhythm.Her own strength was pouring out of her, and she could feel it going. Her vision swam, and her knees, braced against the bed frame, were beginning to give. Somewhere behind her ribs, something small and stubborn was whispering that she should stop, that she was spending too much, that she had a child at home who needed her to be okay.Just a little longer.She held on until the last of the light faded. Only then did she loosen her teeth and lift her head, tasting blood, her lips trembling.The room was very quiet.Noah lay still against the pillows, but the ashen gray was gone from his face, replaced by faint warmth. His chest rose

"It's a start," he said.It wasn't an answer, but it was more than he had ever given her before. Laurel nodded slowly and stepped past him into the room.Morning, she thought. I can wait until morning.She could wait, and she could listen, and she could keep her own secret a little longer. Somewhere half a world away, a small boy was sleeping in a cot beside a woman with herbs in her hair and a man who had promised to guard him. She held that thought like a coal against the cold.Behind her, Noah lingered in the doorway a moment longer, looking at her back, at the curve of her shoulders under the cardigan. Then, quietly, he closed the door and left her to the night.The phone buzzed against the nightstand just as the bedroom door clicked shut.Laur

"Who were you talking to?"The question hung in the lamplight, quiet and precise, the way all of Noah's most dangerous questions were.Laurel's heart slammed once, hard, against her ribs. Her mind raced through everything he might have heard, Wyatt's voice, Kian's babbling, and her own murmured I love you both, and she forced her fingers to loosen around the phone before he noticed how tightly she was gripping it.She swallowed, and her throat felt like sandpaper."It was Mum," she said, keeping her voice light, almost bored, the same tone she used to talk her way out of pack dinners she didn't want to attend. "She wants me to visit tomorrow. She has made my favourite cooki

 Sara turned to them, mortified, waving a smoking oven mitt in the air. "It's not funny! I got distracted, and—" She caught sight of Laurel's face, caught between exhaustion and helpless laughter, and her own indignation crumbled. "Oh, don't you dare laugh at me, young lady." “I am not laughing," Laurel said, laughing. Sara set the ruined tray down with a clatter and pressed a hand to her forehead, leaving a faint streak of flour across her brow. "Sorry, Laurel. I burnt the cookies." Laurel crossed the kitchen and wrapped her arms around her mother, smoke and burnt sugar and all, and felt, for the first time in what felt like months, something in her chest ease. "It’s okay, Mom," she murmured and meant it in more ways than one. "We will make another batch together.” 

 The car had barely turned onto the estate's private road when Noah's phone buzzed against his thigh. Laurel felt it before she saw it, a subtle shift in the air beside her, his shoulders squaring, his jaw setting into something harder than the easy warmth he had worn all through their shopping trip. He glanced at the screen, and whatever he read there drained the last of the softness from his face entirely. "Talon," he said, low. "Take us to the villa first." "Alpha—" "Now, Talon." Laurel watched the exchange in silence, her stomach tightening. She recognized this version of Noah, the one with the distant eyes and the tense line of his shoulders, the Alpha rising up beneath the husband. She had seen it before, in board meetings, in council calls, in the space