All Chapters of In Love With My Dad's Best Friend : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

LianaWe left the keep before the seven-day story could grow legs long enough to chain me to a bed “for recovery.”Small unit. Hard pace. Father riding like his shoulder was not split, Kael riding like every glance at me cost him blood, Adrian scouting ahead with two silent trackers. The feeder road east smelled of wet pine and old cart oil. Somewhere on it, the limp woman carried the end of my mother’s voice.At the first ridge marker, a Corvin rider waited under peace cloth.Not a messenger boy. A polished man with soft gloves and a hard commission.“Elias Veyne,” he called, ignoring Kael on purpose. “House Corvin offers support for your daughter’s removal from active inland risk. Protective custody under neutral lords. Separate from the Alpha King’s… influence.”The word *influence* was filthy with implication.Father reined in. Dust settled. I felt Kael go still through the bond, violence held on a short chain.“Say what you want,” Elias said.“Your voice,” the man answered. “Publi

LianaWe did not reach the vault road clean.At the second cut, Seraphina forced a halt under rock shade and spread what we had on a cloak like guts: mother’s torn letter, the dual-wolf fragment copy, the prisoner’s rite words, the sun-wheel marks.“No more collecting pieces without naming the animal,” she said. “Listen.”Kael stood behind me, close enough that his heat licked my spine. Father stood apart, operational cold, eyes on the trees.Seraphina tapped each item hard. “Dual-wolf was not written first as a weapon. The old line under the fragment calls it bridge blood. Two split lines. One living span. Your mother did not only fear you would die in opening. She feared you would be used to force a join by conquest. That is why anchor language sits next to mate language. Not romance. Stability.”My mouth went dry. “Say it plain.”“You were born into a design,” Seraphina said. “Not only a family. The design wants your second form opened under control. Doctrine wants it under grief a

LianaThe mine throat did not give Jas back clean.We found his boot first. Then the rope burns on a support beam where he had been held long enough to fight. Blood on the stone, not enough for a corpse. Doctrine preferred living leverage. Father read the marks and went silent in a way that scared me more than shouting would have.Kael crouched, touched the blood, and stood with his decision already made. “They pulled him deeper to drag us out of formation.”“Then we go deeper,” I said.“No.” Adrian’s voice blocked the dark. “Not all of us. That whistle is a funnel call. They want the bridge-born, the grief-key, and the anchor in one narrow throat.”Father wiped his palm on his coat. “I am not leaving that boy in there because your map prefers caution.”“You are not going alone either,” Kael said.The argument could have burned minutes we did not have. I cut it.“Two teams,” I said. “Kael and Adrian take the throat with steel. Father stays on the wide cut with me and Seraphina. If the

LianaThe chalk lines came first.Not men with speeches. Powder and marks. A sun-wheel under my feet. Binding wires retightened until my fingers went numb. The limp woman read from the torn page in short pieces, never the whole, as if full sentences were a resource.“Breath on the count,” she told me. “If you fight the count, we add vapor.”“Add it,” I said. “I am still not opening for you.”She nodded to a man by the vent. A thin sweet thread leaked into the chamber. Not enough to force a full shift. Enough to make my second form scrape upward like a nail under skin. Gold edged my vision. The wires rang when I shook.I let them see a flicker.Then I used the flicker.My right foot smeared through the fresh chalk arc while the men watched my eyes instead of the floor. One line broke. A second mark smeared into nothing under blood from my ankle wire. Small damage. Real damage.The limp woman’s head snapped down. “Hold her still.”They tried. I slammed the side of my skull into a mouth

LianaWe did not give her the night.Seraphina packed my wrist hard enough to make me swear and said I could ride or faint in the dirt. Those were the options. I rode. Father refused a litter. Kael refused the keep’s summons in person and sent sealed orders instead, authority split on paper the way a bone splits under weight. Adrian wore field lead like a brand.The limp woman’s trail went downslope into a service trench cut behind Corvin mining stone. Clove. Cart grease. Fresh blood that was not ours.“She is forced to the ground,” Adrian said. “Page-case slows her.”“Then press,” I said.Kael’s eyes flicked to my sling, my ruined wrist, the places the wires had chewed. The bond carried his fear in a tight, controlled line. He did not tell me to stay back. Progress, paid for in the hollow.We went in.---KaelThe trench opened into a loading bay under collapsed winch gear.They were ready this time with less rite, more blades. Crossbows from the gantry. A vapor flask broke early to