?Chapter 919:


    When their bond grew strong enough, Max unveiled her origins—she was born into a mysterious family that held dominion over an ancient and powerful group known as the Serpent Society.


    “Serpent Society?” The name instantly made Elliana think of the two snake-shaped bracelets she owned. She couldn’t be sure if the Serpent Society in the book was connected to her bracelets, or if it even existed at all.


    For five years, Elliana and Adah had built Thorn Rose with their own hands in Delta. In all that time, they had never once heard of a shadowy group called the Serpent Society.


    The book was equally vague about the mysterious family behind Max, offering no details about what made them so secretive.


    For now, Elliana had no way to confirm if they were real. She had to treat the whole thing as just a story.


    While the book was silent on the family’s location, it surprisingly painted a vivid picture of the family’s strange and rigid rules. Some were startling, but the one that stood out the most was their matriarchy.


    The heir could only ever be a daughter. Girls were born noble. Boys, however, were nothing more than servants—bound to obey, stripped of rights, and forbidden from having children or a voice in family affairs.


    At eighteen, every female heir was required to travel the world alone to choose a man fit to father her children. But “fit” wasn’t enough. He had to be remarkable. The goal was blunt and cold—secure the finest male bloodlines to create even stronger daughters.


    Once an heir chose a man, she faced two paths. The first was cruel. She could bear his child and then vanish from his life forever, leaving him lost in endless questions with no hope of reunion.


    The second was harsher. She could take him back to her family, where he would be cut off from the world and kept as nothing more than a breeding stud until hisst breath.


    Max was the family’s current heir. And she had chosen Henry. By her family’s high standards, Henry was far from ideal. He was a good man, but not the kind of titan in wealth, genius, or power that past heirs had taken.


    But Max had chosen Henry anyway—because she loved him and wanted him by her side. Her heart had made the decision. She wanted to bring Henry home. Unlike the heirs before her, Max had been hopelessly romantic, ruled by love instead of calction.


    The women who came before her had been cold strategists. If a man was too powerful to control, they stole only his genes and disappeared. If he could be bent, they dragged him home against his will.


    But Max was nothing like them. Even before she and Henry had been intimate, she’d already revealed everything,ying her family’s secrets bare in the desperate hope that love alone would convince him toe to her home with her. This was a grave vition of her family’s most sacred rule.


    For her bloodline, secrecy was everything. An heir was never to expose the truth to outsiders.


    Yet Max, blinded by love, had trusted Henry with all. She even swore monogamy—he would be the only man she would ever love, the only father of her children.


    But Henry, though touched, had refused. He loved Max with all his heart, yet he couldn’t trade his family, his freedom, and his future for a life as a prisoner in gold. He begged her instead toe back with him, to choose a life of love outside her family’s chains.


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