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All Chapters of In Love With My Dad's Best Friend : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

125 Chapters

Twenty One : After the Ridge

LianaThe gates shut behind us hard enough to feel it in my teeth.Draven’s yard was full, captains, runners, stable hands frozen mid-task, faces that had only smelled rumor until the moment we rode in. They looked at me first. Then at the space Kael kept between us on purpose. Then at my father, who wore the expression of a man forced to swallow glass and keep it down in public.Road dust sat in the folds of my clothes. My jaw still ached from the second ambush. None of that mattered as much as the quiet that spread when Elias swung down from his horse.He did not wait for a formal greeting.“I am not here as a guest,” he said, loud enough for the nearest captains. “I am here as a father who found out too late. Do not smile at me. Do not perform.”Silence hit the stones in stages.Kael did not correct him. Did not soften him. That single choice told the whole court more than any announcement would have. The bond in my chest pulled toward Kael whether I wanted it to or not, relief afte

Last Updated : 2026-09-28

Chapter Twenty two: Terms in day Light

LianaThey did not give us a private room for it.Elias chose the smaller council chamber on purpose, windows open to the inner court, door left wide, enough witnesses that nothing said could be softened later into rumor. The southern note from last night lay on the table under a flat stone, wax dull in daylight. People had already heard a version of the line. Elias wanted the conditions spoken where the same people could not pretend they had not.Adrian stood near the wall. Seraphina beside me. Kael opposite my father is like a man called to account in his own house.Elias set both hands on the table and did not sit.“These are not suggestions,” he said. “They are conditions for my daughter remaining under this roof while hunters are still moving, and while southern wax can reach a Draven post overnight.”Kael’s face stayed controlled. Only the bond gave him away, a tight, hard pulse under my ribs.“First,” Elias said. “No mark without her open word and mine in the same room. Not in p

Last Updated : 2026-09-28

Chapter Twenty Three: Court Teeth

KaelThe chamber filled faster than courtesy required.Harren had called it concern. The air smelled like appetite. Old-blood seats took their places with the patience of men who had survived long enough to mistake caution for wisdom. Adrian held the door line. Seraphina stood where she could see exits and faces. Elias took Liana’s left shoulder without asking permission from my house. I took the right and kept my mouth closed until silence would have become its own statement.Lord Harren spoke first, voice polished, eyes cold.“A mate bond without stabilisation is a vulnerability. Southern hands are already counting her. If Draven will not secure what fate has placed in its walls, others will.”“Secure,” Elias said flatly. “Say what you mean.”Harren did not look at him. He looked at me. “A mark. A formal claim. Public enough to end speculation. Private enough to keep her from becoming a banner every enemy can aim at.”Liana stood.She did not ask permission.“If you want to discuss m

Last Updated : 2026-09-29

Twenty Four : Cold Distance

LianaThe inner court lasted until the second report came down from the east wall.Not an assault. Not a retreat clean enough to celebrate. Scouts had pushed the tree line, marked angles, and melted when Draven steel answered in force. They left two spikes in the outer earth and a strip of cloth with the same bridge stamp as the note. Counting, then. Measuring how fast we moved when someone stepped on the edge of the map.I hated the room they put me in while it happened.Not a cell. A chamber with a view of the inner yard and two guards who pretended they were furniture. Seraphina came and went with updates. Elias came once, looked at my face, and said, “Stay where a second line can reach you.” Then he left before I could turn fear into a fight with him.Kael did not come.I felt him on the wall through the bond, focus, kill-ready, locked down and the distance sat between us like a third person who had been invited on purpose. After the chamber, after the terms, after I had told him n

Last Updated : 2026-09-29

Chapter Twenty Five: First Crack in the Wall

LianaThe search of the service routes ran past midnight and still had no name worth hanging.I left Seraphina in the infirmary doorway with my bandaged training hands and a short list of closed holds for tomorrow. Elias had finally gone to the east rooms under protest. The inner court was quiet in the false way of a house that had learned to listen to its own walls.Kael’s study door was half open.I should have walked past it.I did not.He stood at the map table with the dock slate spread under one hand, the southern coin set above the gap where a seal should have been. He looked up when I entered, and the bond hit me full, strain, hunger, the leftover edge of watching scouts measure his wall while I sat behind a choke point.“You should sleep,” he said.“So should you.”“Liana.”“If you tell me to go back to the inner room for my own good, I will put that coin through your window.”Something almost like a smile cut and died on his mouth. He set the slate down.“Close the door.”I c

Last Updated : 2026-09-30

Chapter Twenty Six: Training Under Eyes

LianaMorning did not soften anything.The steward still had no name worth the rope. The dock slate still had a gap. Adrian’s people opened three more service routes and found only the ordinary dirt of a working keep. Southern coins had come in on purpose. The hand that placed it had not stayed to be caught.I met Seraphina in the closed yard before the second bell. No old-blood seats. No open gallery. Elias on the fence. Kael on the opposite side, arms folded, bond tight under my ribs like a second pulse I refused to lean on in public.“Short strikes,” Seraphina said. “You hold, you release, you recover. No threshold work until collapse. Yesterday almost taught the whole wall your limits.”“Yesterday the wall already had scouts,” I said. “If I only practice pretty control, the next spike still owns me.”“Pretty keeps you alive long enough to be ugly on purpose,” she said. “Begin.”I began.Pressure up. Pressure down. Human shape kept by force. Sweat took my collar. The second wolf pus

Last Updated : 2026-09-30

Chapter Twenty Seven: The Split Almost Win

LianaThe closed session was supposed to be safer.No old-blood seats. No performance. Only Seraphina, Adrian at the gate, Kael on the edge of the ring, Elias watching from the fence like he did not trust any of us with my body.For the first ten minutes I held the threshold the way we had practiced. Pressure up. Pressure down. Human shape kept by force of will.Then the second wolf did not wait its turn.It tore upward hard enough that my vision split and the yard became two places at once. The sound doubled. Smell sharpened into blood, dust, Kael’s fear, my father’s steel. My knees hit stone. My hands cramped into claws before the fingers finished changing.“Liana—” Seraphina started.I tried to drag it down.It did not go.---KaelI felt the rupture through the bond like a wire snapping in my chest.She was half-shifted already, eyes wrong, breath torn, power spilling with no clean form to hold it. The wolf in me lunged for her on instinct, ready to pin, flood, force stability the

Last Updated : 2026-10-01

Chapter Twenty Eight: Soren’s Second Offer

Kael The strike team did not reach the inner court. They did not need to. They hit the east supply gate with false merchant papers and timed charges, enough to kill three guards and collapse a section of the outer track. By the time we cut them down, two attackers were dead, one was dying, and the last had bitten through a poison capsule before Adrian could stop him. No usable prisoner. Only proof: they had moved the moment Liana’s power spiked in the yard. Elias stood over the bodies with blood on his boots and said nothing for a long time. Then he looked at me like the whole failure belonge

Last Updated : 2026-10-01

Chapter Twenty Nine: Kael’s Temper

Liana He lasted until the hall emptied. Then the temper broke. I followed him into the side chamber off the main corridor because leaving him alone with that look felt like handing the next mistake more room. The door shut. Kael’s hands were fists. The bond between us was all heat and violence with nowhere clean to go. “He walked into my house,” Kael said, “and put a courtship path on you like dock inventory.” “I heard him.” “He looked at your hands. Your blood. And he priced you.” &ldq

Last Updated : 2026-10-02

Chapter 30: Teeth

LianaI only stepped into the inner herb garden for air. Bandaged hands. Training aches still in my ribs. The map room had gone stale with names and southern coins, and for five minutes I wanted sky without men attached to it. The garden sat inside the walls. Short path. No outer gate. I did not take a guard because the last report said it was clean. The first wolf hit me from the left hedge. Not a full shift into polite warning. A heavy body slamming me into stone, jaws snapping for my forearm. I got the arm up and it took cloth and skin instead of bone. Pain tore white through me. I screamed once and drove my knife up under its ribs with my free hand. It staggered. Ano

Last Updated : 2026-10-02

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