Lahat ng Kabanata ng Bound By His Protection : Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

By the time we returned to the Valerius estate, Kaelen had become a stranger wearing a familiar face.He drove with both hands on the steering wheel, his attention fixed on the road and his expression untouched by the conversation we had left behind at Saint Oran’s. The phone that had vibrated twice during our departure lay silent beside him. I watched his fingers tighten around the leather whenever we approached a bend, and each time I considered asking about the messages, I remembered the way he had looked at me outside the medical centre. He had seemed close to telling me something then. Whatever it was, he had taken it back before I could hear it.When the gates opened, Kaelen spoke without looking at me.“We are expected in the east drawing room at six, sir. Your father has arranged a briefing for the courtship event.”I turned my head slowly.“Sir?”His eyes remained on the driveway. “Mr. Valerius, if you prefer.”The words were polite. His tone was perfectly controlled. That wa

I made it through the rest of the reception without looking at Kaelen again, although I felt his presence following me from one conversation to the next like a hand pressed between my shoulder blades. Every time someone approached, I smiled. Every time a trustee praised my father's generosity, I thanked him. When Sebastian Cross clasped my shoulder and spoke about the importance of unity between our families, I managed not to laugh in his face. I had become exceptionally good at performing the life Arthur wanted for me, and the most humiliating part was that Kaelen knew exactly how much of it cost me. He had seen me without the performance, without the practiced smile or the careless remarks, and now he was treating that knowledge like another security risk to contain.Daniel found me near the terrace doors shortly before the reception ended. "You look as though you've been sentenced to another hour of conversation with people who enjoy hearing themselves speak.""An hour would be mer

Arthur summoned Kaelen at eight the following morning, and by eight fifteen, the entire east wing seemed to know that something had gone wrong at Saint Oran’s. Staff members lowered their voices whenever I passed. Two security officers stood outside my father’s study, their expressions carefully blank, while a third carried a sealed folder toward the private security office. My father did not summon people before breakfast unless he wanted an answer he could use, and after the previous night's messages, I doubted this had anything to do with ordinary concern for my safety. I found Kaelen outside the study, dressed in a dark suit with his hands clasped behind his back. He looked as though he had slept as little as I had, but there was no sign of the man who had held my hand in my doorway. When his eyes met mine, the warmth I had felt beneath his fingers seemed to belong to another life. “Your father wants a full account of yesterday’s incident,” he said. “I gathered that from the armed

The security monitors remained black for eleven seconds. I counted every one of them, standing beside Kaelen while the silence in the office thickened around us. He had not moved since the assignment record disappeared, his attention fixed on the dead screen as though he could force the missing name to return through sheer refusal. When the system finally restarted, the ordinary surveillance feeds appeared first: the entrance gates, the east corridor, the servants' quarters, and the empty driveway beneath the security lights. Nothing looked disturbed. That was the most unsettling part. Someone had entered a restricted archive, altered a report, recovered a source document, and erased the evidence before we could read it, yet the estate continued to present the same immaculate face it had shown the world for years."Can you recover the file?" I asked.Kaelen leaned toward the terminal and entered a series of commands. "Not from this station.""Why?""Because whoever interrupted the sys

The first thing I learned about secrets was that they rarely stayed buried because nobody knew where to look. They stayed buried because someone had made certain that looking came at a price. At two seventeen in the morning, seated before a locked archive on the third floor of my father's estate, I was beginning to understand exactly how expensive the truth could become.The screen glowed against the dark room, displaying the same denial I had received earlier that evening. **ACCESS RESTRICTED. REQUEST LOGGED.** Beneath it, the system listed my name, the time of my search, and the archive I had attempted to open. STORAN_ARCHIVE. I had tried three different routes since midnight, using an old administrative directory, a maintenance account, and a security index that should have been decommissioned years ago. Every attempt had led me back to the same locked door.Kaelen stood behind my chair, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him without turning around. He had removed his jac