Chapter 229.


    +15 <b>BONUS </b>


    <b>Chapter </b><b>229 </b>


    Alexander


    E was dead.


    She’d passed away duringbor a week ago, and it still didn’t feel real. Not when the coroner came to <b>take </b>


    her away, not when the funeral director asked me to pick out a casket, and not even now, when her body wasying on disy just downstairs.


    She couldn’t be dead. I refused to believe it. I swore my bond to her hadn’t fully severed somehow<b>, </b>as if


    faint threads of it still existed in the ether….


    And yet, she was truly gone.


    There was no going back now, no matter how badly <b>I </b>wanted to reverse time. Oh, how I desperately wished I could turn back the clock and never lock her up. Maybe if she hadn’t felt the need to rush to her family’s burnt home in secret, I could have been there to help her when she went intobor. Or maybe she wouldn’t have gone intobor at all because of the stress.


    But what was done was done. E was dead, and she had left me with our son.


    Our son.


    I’d named him Lucien, after the word “light“. It wasn’t a family name like I’d hoped to give my firstborn, but it felt fitting. He was the only thing keeping me going at the moment–a golden light at the end of a very dark and very long tunnel.


    The moment I lost E and held our son in my arms for the first time was when it finally hit me: I did love her. I’d always tried not to fall for her, even to the point of refusing to think the word to myself, but I knew now that I had. I loved her. Too little, toote.


    All I could do now was regret not telling her in life. And ensure that Lucien, born too early and too small and without a mother, was safe and cared for. If I couldn’t do anything else, then I had to do that.


    Just as I was adjusting my tie in the mirror with one hand, a sleeping Lucien bundled up safely in the crook of my other arm, a knock on the door pulled me from my thoughts.


    “Come in.” I expected it to be Hunter, my new Beta. I’d appointed him just three days ago, when my Alpha King advisors finally brought him to my office and insisted that I needed a Beta. I hardly knew him, but I was too exhausted to turn it down. Besides, I did need the help.


    But it wasn’t him. It was Sophia.


    The sight of her still made my nerves tingle, but I suppressed the urge to send her away. She had been the one to find E in the forest and help her deliver Lucien; if she hadn’t, both E and Lucien might have


    died.


    <b>+15 </b><b>BONUS </b>


    I had to give her credit for what she had done, putting aside her past grievances to help E. So I <b>was </b>currently trying my best to forgive her, even if only a little bit.


    “Hey,” Sophia said, stepping into the room and quietly shutting the door behind her. “How are you feeling?”


    “Fine.” That was a lie, but I kept my face neutral and returned my attention to the mirror.


    Sophia didn’t believe it for a moment, and stepped closer, reaching for Lucien. “You look exhausted, Alex. Let me take him for a little while-”


    “No.” I pulled my sleeping son out of her reach. “I’ve got him.”


    Sophia sighed and dropped her hands back to her side. “You’ll have to getfortable with other people handling him soon. Once you hire a nanny<b>, </b>you’ll have to return to your Alpha King duties.”


    “I know.” I adjusted Lucien in my arms and looked down at him, taking in that scrunched up little face of his and the way his tiny fists were curled around his swaddle.


    He was so small, too small, and even in sleep, his chest was stuttering with the effort of drawing in full breaths. He’d spent most of this week in intensive care, hooked up to machines, and now that he was finally in my arms, I didn’t want to put him down.