The table was set for three. My brother’s chair remained empty.


    “Alexander sends his apologies,” ric said lightly, as if my brother’s absence were a small weather inconvenience. “Something urgent. He thought it best we continue without him.”


    I nodded. The room felt wrong. Alexander’s penthouse was supposed to be an extension of him—every polished surface carrying his order. With ric sitting at the head, it felt less like home and more like a table already set for negotiation.


    We spoke first of polite things. The hotel’s construction schedule. The dy in the suite below ours. How long he would be staying with us until it opened. He smiled easily, though there was calction in the way his eyes lingered on mine—as if he were reading not just my words but what I withheld between them.


    It didn’t take long for the conversation to turn.


    “The ord is weighty,” he said. “But the spine will hold if the right heirs continue it.”


    “Children,” I said evenly. “Not heirs.”


    A faint lift of his brow, the ghost of a smile. “Of course. Children.”


    But he didn’t mean it. He spoke with the certainty of someone who’d only ever known lineage asw.


    I leaned forward. “I’ve already made my terms clear to my family. If I marry—if there are children—they will be raised by me. Not by handlers. Not by dynasty tutors. Decisions about education, security, health—those will be mine.”


    He set his fork down. “That is… not tradition.”


    “Neither is love,” I said quietly. “And yet children need it more than tradition.”


    For the first time, hisposure changed. “Dynastic children belong to more than their mothers. They belong to the house. To the Dynasty bloodline.”


    “My child will belong to me,” I corrected. My voice didn’t rise. I wouldn’t let him mistake calm for weakness.<fnfe3a> Find the newest release on Find?Novel</fnfe3a>


    He studied me. A long silence followed.


    “Our children,” he said atst. “Ours will be raised with discipline.”


    The wordnded like a cut. Ours.


    It echoed in my chest, terrifying. For a second, I couldn’t feel the room around me—the candles, the wine, the white linen. Only that single word tightening around me like a im I hadn’t agreed to.


    I swallowed carefully. My face stayed still. Inside, that was different.


    I let out a slow breath. “If you think discipline is the opposite of a mother’s authority, then you misunderstand me. I’m not asking for indulgence. I’m asking for protection. That requires rules. Rules made by the one who carries the child, not the one who names it.”


    His mouth lifted, faint and unreadable.


    “Most daughters,” he said finally, “concern themselves with gowns and guest lists. You concern yourself with guardianship. It’s… admirable.”


    I didn’t thank him. Admiration was not what I wanted. Agreement was.


    He lifted his ss. “Perhaps there is strength in it. To raise one’s own blood. To write your hand into the spine instead of letting it write you.”


    The rest of the meal blurred. He asked about books I’d read. I asked about ports his family controlled. Polite exchanges, practiced phrases. Yet the word he had said—theirs, ours—stayed in my chest like a stone.


    When I rose from the table, he stood as well. Formal. Already a shadow of tomorrow’s negotiations.


    “I look forward to seeing how far you’ll take these terms,” he said.


    I inclined my head. “As far as I must.”


    After dinner, drinks were offered. Which only meant one thing. He wanted me to charm him, entertain him.