บททั้งหมดของ Three Billionaire Alphas on Their Knees: บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 60

Darcy barely slept the entire night after coming back from the North.At 1:17 a.m., the only light in the dining room came from her laptop screen. Three days' worth of risk department approvals waited in her inbox. Two cross-border risk reports needed signing. At the bottom of her assistant's email, a careful question: Director Clark, are you back tomorrow? The tone was tentative, as if her assistant wasn't sure whether she was still in the North or had already returned.Darcy typed two words: I am. Short, final. No explanation.The screen closed with a soft click, the sound disappearing into the empty room. The sudden silence pressed in from all sides, and Hector's words at the boundary marker crashed back into her mind. They knew before you were eighteen. The sentence looped, refusing to fade. Eight years of believing she had failed. Eight years of carrying that label. And now she knew it had never been true.Darcy pressed

By the time the car pulled through the estate gates, the sky had gone completely dark. The headlights swept across the driveway, catching the edges of frost on the gravel.Darcy had expected the so-called "Pack dinner" to be like the North Barrens. Strict hierarchies, everyone standing in rigid order according to bloodline and rank. She had braced herself for formality, for the cold weight of tradition pressing down from all sides, for the careful distance that always separated the powerful from the rest. She had been ready to feel like an outsider again, the way she had felt her entire life in places like this.But when she followed Asher through the side hall doors, a wave of hot, savory steam hit her instead. The long table was piled with fresh-roasted meat cuts, steaming soups, and thick slices of bread.The hall was loud and alive. Logs crackling in the fireplace, patrol members with their sleeves rolled up laughing over their plates, women carrying trays w

The night wind rattled the metal buckle on the car door.Asher watched Darcy's fingers pause over the screen, his gaze catching the tight line of her mouth. "What is it?"Darcy pressed the screen dark with a single tap and slid the phone into her suit pocket. She turned and fastened her seatbelt. "Spam from the North Barrens. Don't worry about it."Asher held her profile for two seconds, then let it go. He shifted gears and pressed the accelerator. "Back to the estate first."The cabin filled with the steady hum of the engine. Darcy watched the streetlights slide past the window, her fingers curling slowly into her palm, knuckles whitening. That old name, the one she had buried for eight years, could not surface now. Not at this moment.The sharp snap of a folder closing cut through the lingering unease from the night before.Outside the top-floor conference room at Kingston headquarters, the crowd had already gathered for the cross-Pack win

"Miss Clark, may I court you?"Darcy's hand stopped mid-air, water glass suspended halfway to her lips.Her mind raced through possibilities. A risk control audit gone wrong. A border supply emergency. Even another old-guard Pack representative trying to remove her chair. Anything but this. She had braced herself for work, for conflict, for the endless grind of corporate politics. Not for a courtship token.She slowly looked up.

"Should I remove Hector Whitaker from tonight's list?"Hyde's finger hovered over the tablet, waiting for her instruction.Darcy's grip on her coffee cup tightened. The porcelain let out a faint, sharp sound.Across the desk, the blue-and-white table on the screen showed the name "Hector Whitaker" at the bottom of the supplemental entry column. The title beside it was clean and deliberately ordinary: supply chain representative, outer mining district, North Barrens. No family na