All Chapters of Married To The Forgotten Heir : Chapter 11 - Chapter 15

Vanessa’s hand had barely finished landing on her shoulder before Aurora’s own hand moved.The slap cracked loud through the small apartment, sharp enough that everyone in the room went still for a full second afterward. Vanessa’s head snapped sideways, her hand flying to her cheek, her mouth falling open in stunned silence.“You…” Vanessa’s voice came out strangled, disbelieving. “You hit me.”“You shoved me first,” Aurora said, and her voice came out steadier than she expected, steadier than she’d felt all day. “I’m simply better at finishing things than you are.”For a moment, nobody moved. Felix stood frozen near the kitchen doorway, eyes darting between the two women like he genuinely didn’t know which fire to put out first. Vanessa’s cheek was already going red, her composure completely gone now, replaced by something raw and furious.“You have no idea what you just did,” Vanessa hissed.“I know exactly what I did.” Aurora picked her suitcase back up off the floor, unhurried, li

The car came to a stop in a wide circular drive, gravel crunching under the tires, and Aurora stepped out into air that felt colder than it had in the city, though she couldn’t have said why.The house rose up in front of her, stone and glass and shadow, three stories of it at least, with windows that stayed dark even this close to midnight. It didn’t look like a home. It looked like something built to be admired from a distance, never actually lived in.“This is yours?” she asked.“Ours,” Damien corrected, though the word came out careful, like he wasn’t sure yet if he was allowed to say it. “For now, at least.”The front door opened before they reached it. An older man stood in the entryway, silver-haired, dressed in a simple dark cardigan instead of anything formal, his face breaking into open warmth the moment he saw Damien.“Sir,” he said, and then his eyes landed on Aurora, and his eyebrows rose with unmistakable delight. “And you must be… ”“Aurora,” Damien said. “My wife.”The

Mr. Howard found her still standing in the hallway, arms wrapped around herself, staring at Damien’s closed door like it might explain something if she looked at it long enough.“Mrs. Kingsley,” he said gently, and Aurora startled, not yet used to that name attached to her. “Are you alright?”“I don’t know,” she admitted, because there didn’t seem to be much point pretending otherwise, not with her voice still unsteady and her eyes stinging in the dark. “I heard him. Having a nightmare. I went to check on him and he—” She stopped, unsure how to finish that sentence without sounding pathetic.“He asked you to leave,” Howard said quietly. It wasn’t a question.“He told me to get out,” Aurora said. “I only touched his arm. I didn’t do anything else.”Howard was quiet for a moment, his expression carefully neutral in the dim light, though something in his eyes suggested this wasn’t the first time he’d stood in this hallway comforting someone Damien had shut out.“It isn’t about you,” he s