All Chapters of In Love With My Dad's Best Friend : Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

LianaThe high hall felt too wide after the small breakfast room.I sat at Kael’s left because that was the seat of a marked mate, and because hiding would make the whole keep invent worse stories. Father sat farther down the table. He ate. He did not look at my collar. Captains watched without staring. An envoy from the coast cleared his throat and started talking about “sequence” and “seasonal seats” until Kael cut him off with two sentences that left no air in the room.“The mark is done. The border still stands. Next matter.”My knee touched Kael’s under the table once. He pressed back. The bond carried his tension into me, not fear, readiness, the old habit of waiting for a blade in soft places.I spoke before the envoy tried again. “If anyone here thinks I am a private deal pushed past the table, say it to my face. I am not under the woodwork.”A couple of captains smiled into their cups. Father’s jaw flexed, but he did not shame me. That was something.After the meal I walked

LianaI took the left table in the map room and made a mess on purpose.Not a symbolic mess. A real one. Ink, bloodline notes, Seraphina’s lists, a crust of bread I kept forgetting. Kael’s side stayed sharp and ordered. Mine looked like a person lived there. Every time a captain walked in and flicked eyes at the clutter, I left it where it was.The bond made concentration hard. Kael could be three corridors away and I still felt him, temper under control, hunger under that, a constant low pull toward wherever I was. When he entered the room, my body noticed before my mind finished the sentence I was writing. It was intimate and inconvenient and I didn’t want it gone.Near midmorning he came in, read one page over my shoulder, and set his hand on the back of my neck. Thumb near the sealed mark. Heat poured down my spine so fast I hissed.“Working,” I said.“I can feel that you’re not only working.”“Then stop touching the mark in a room with a door that opens.”He did not move his hand

LianaThe morning after the clearing, my hands still expected blood and got ink.I sat with Seraphina’s supply lists and miswrote the same number twice. My wolf was not loud, she was attentive, ears pricked toward the part of the keep where Father moved through his hours. The bond carried Kael in pieces: council focus, a flash of temper, then a pull of heat when his mind brushed mine too long. I pressed my knees together under the table and kept my pen moving.Seraphina took the page out of my hand. “You’re useless like this. Go find him before you poison a dose with bad math.”“My father—”“Your father is not doing these counts. Go.”I went.Kael was leaving the council room as the last captain filed out. He read my face in one look. Through the bond my need hit him and came back doubled, rough enough that his eyes edged silver.We didn’t speak until a storage room door shut behind us.Then his mouth was on mine, hungry and impatient, and my back hit a crate. I got his belt open wit

LianaFather packed like a man trying not to wake a house.No stacked trunks in the yard. Just quiet piles in his room: a blade stone, a spare coat, letters tied with old string. I stood in the doorway with tea and watched his hands work. Those hands used to fix estate fences and tug knots from my hair. Now they were sorting a departure.“You can come in,” he said without looking up.I set the cup down. “You don’t have to fold like you’re doing something wrong.”“I’m not doing anything wrong.” He paused on a shirt. “I’m trying not to give them a show.”I sat on the edge of his bed. The bond tugged Kael below, focused, then a soft press of attention as he felt my chest tighten. I sent back *I’m here*, and the pressure eased.Father finally looked at me. “You and him are louder than you think.”Heat climbed my neck. “If you mean the bond—”“I mean the way you turn toward him before you finish a thought.” He picked up the tea, drank, and grimaced. “I’m not angry at your body. I’m an old

LianaMy wolf had been quiet for days, and that should have worried me more than it did.Not gone. Quiet. Like an animal that had finally gotten the thing it hunted and was content to lie in the sun with blood still on its teeth. Since the mark sealed, she hadn’t clawed at my ribs the way she did through the war. She hummed. Paced only when Kael was too far. Pushed heat into my belly when he looked at me too long.Then Father’s supper words landed, and she lifted her head.I felt it in the night, a low growl under my sternum, not at Kael, at the shape of goodbye. Wolves didn’t understand estate calendars. They understood pack leaving the den. She didn’t want Elias gone. She also didn’t want to chase him and split us apart. The conflict made her restless, and the restlessness made me snap at a young healer over a clean bandage tray for no good reason.Seraphina took one look at my eyes after and said, “Gold at the rim. Shift or fuck or run. Don’t take it out on staff.”I chose the yar