บททั้งหมดของ Seven-Day Claiming: บทที่ 31 - บทที่ 40

Harmony arrived thirty minutes early.She had told herself it was because Saturday trains could be unpredictable, and because she wanted enough time to find the place without rushing. Both were technically true. The less technical truth was that she had been too nervous to sit in her flat waiting for the clock to move.Marcus had chosen the location, and Harmony had to admit he had chosen well. The coffee shop was tucked inside an old bookshop with dark wooden shelves, faded hardcovers, mismatched tables, and warm reading lamps. The place smelled like coffee, old paper, and something sweet baking near the counter. It felt quiet without being silent, the sort of place where nobody minded if you stayed longer than intended.Harmony sat at a small table near the back, playing absently with the cuff of her pink sweater. She had already wandered the shelves and found an old copy of Jane Eyre. She had not read it in years, but she remembered being haunted by it. The ache of loving someone u

Harmony knew the forest before she opened her eyes.Cold air touched her face. Damp earth pressed beneath her bare feet. Somewhere beyond the trees, mist moved slowly between the trunks.Her heart clenched.“No.”The word disappeared into the dark. She had not dreamed of this place in months. Not since Adrian had ended things. Not since the door between them seemed to close and the strange nighttime world that had once connected London to Montana finally went silent. Harmony had grieved it at first. Then she had been grateful. Now dread moved through her. She did not want to be here. She had worked too hard to build something beyond Adrian. Bridget. Marcus. London. Work. Weekends that belonged to her instead of being spent waiting for a man thousands of miles away to appear in her sleep.Harmony turned, searching for a way out.“Let me wake up.”Nothing happened. The forest stretched endlessly around her, colder than she remembered. The trees seemed taller, their branches tangled toge

The little bookshop café looked almost exactly as Harmony remembered it.The same warm lamps glowed over the tables. The same shelves climbed toward the ceiling, packed with old hardcovers and worn paperbacks. Coffee and cinnamon hung in the air, mixed with the faint dusty smell of books that had been handled by too many people to ever truly belong to one person again.Harmony had suggested brunch there without really thinking about why. Maybe because it was familiar. Maybe because this was where she and Marcus had begun.She sat across from him at the same small table near the back, a plate between them that had once held pastries and now held mostly crumbs. Her old copy of Jane Eyre rested beside her coffee.Marcus glanced at it.“Still haunted?”Harmony smiled.“A little.”“I was afraid of that.”She laughed softly. The morning had been good. Of course it had. That was what being with Marcus was like.They had talked about work, Bridget and Tim, a campaign Marcus thought Harmony wa

The CEO stood at the front of the room with both hands resting on the table.“Luxury retreats are not an experiment anymore,” he said. “They are our next major expansion.”Harmony sat three seats down from Penelope with her laptop open, her notes prepared, and the presentation she had built glowing on the screen at the front of the room.She kept her expression professional while her mind automatically arranged categories.Location. Brand story. Guest experience. Existing reputation. Partnership scalability. Audience trust. Market distinction.This was what she did best. She could take a beautiful idea and give it bones. She could hear a company’s vague ambition and find the sentence that made it breathe.“We need our first flagship partner,” the CEO continued. “Not a hotel chain. Not a property trying to appear soulful after hiring a design firm. We need authenticity, land, legacy, and enough luxury to justify the campaign.”Harmony’s fingers went still on the keyboard. Land. Legacy.

Adrian walked the north trail at dawn because silence was easier before the lodge woke.The war, if it could be called that, was over. No formal declaration. No clean ending. Just months of pressure, negotiations, boundary enforcement, council demands, and the slow, exhausting work of making enemies understand that Calder Ridge had not become weak because Daniel Calder was dead.Adrian had held the pack. Barely at first. Then with both hands.He was thinner now. Stronger in some ways. Sharper in others. The grief had carved him down to what could survive leadership, and the pack had finally stopped looking at him as Daniel’s younger brother.They looked at him as Alpha. He had won what needed winning. Protected what needed protecting.Kept Harmony out of danger.And lost her.That was the truth beneath every victory.The morning air was cold enough to sting. It moved through the pines and over the trail, carrying damp earth, old snow, stone, cedar, and the faint smoke from the lodge c