Chapter 151: The Unfolding Truth XXXI

Third Person POV

"How?" Helen’s voice cut through the quiet of the room like something thrown. "What does he want? Why now?"

Kai stood at the window with his back to her, hands clasped behind him, the moonlight cutting across his shoulders in pale silver lines.

He had not spoken since he walked through the door. Had not done anything except close it behind him and cross to this spot and stand here, carrying whatever he had brought back from that castle in his chest without yet finding a way to set it down.

The baby slept in the crib across the room. Small breaths, soft and even, entirely unbothered by anything that had happened or was about to happen.

Kai turned.

"He did not name it," he said. His voice was low and stripped of everything except the facts inside it. "He spoke carefully. But he knows about you. He knows what you are."

Helen’s hand went to her chest before she had decided to move it. Her fingers found the pendant and closed around it.

"How?" she said. Quieter now.

He shook his head slowly. "It does not matter how. What matters is that he will move on it. He told me as much, standing there, looking straight at me." He walked toward her, his boots quiet on the stone floor. "When the Alpha King says a thing, he does it. He has never been a man who announces intentions and then waits."

He stopped in front of her.

"We need to act before he does."

Helen looked at the crib. At the small sleeping shape with the black hair and the white streak that mirrored her own in reverse, at the rise and fall of the tiny chest. Her throat tightened so fast it surprised her.

"I am not worried about myself," she said.

"Helen..."

"If he finds out about her." She could not finish the thought as a clean sentence. It came out in pieces, the fear breaking it apart before it could form properly. "If he finds out that we have a child. That she exists. That she carries both of us in her blood..."

She turned to look at him. "He will stop caring about me entirely. Someone like him, collects power, hunts it... and If he finds out that a child exists, a child whom carries Alpha blood and nine-tailed fox blood in the same body..."

She pressed her hand flat against her sternum.

"He will forget I am the target," she said. "...and will go after her."

The fire in the hearth crackled once. The baby’s breathing continued, small and steady, filling the silence with the only sound in the room that did not carry weight.

Helen straightened.

"The main person here is Azura," she said. She said the name without self-consciousness, the name the twins had fought over and that had stayed, the name that now meant the entire shape of her heart. "Whatever happens to me, whatever we have to do... she is what matters. She has to be kept safe."

Kai watched her face. He was quiet for a moment that stretched longer than comfortable.

"There is one way," he said.

Helen looked at him. "What way?"

He hesitated. She could see the hesitation moving through him, the way he shifted his weight slightly, the way his jaw tightened.

"You are not going to like it," he said.

"Kai." Her voice had lost its patience entirely. "Tell me. As long as it keeps her safe, I do not care what it costs."

He held her eyes.

"The Dragon King."

The colour left her face so quickly that it was visible. Her expression closed over completely.

"No," she said.

"Helen..."

"No." Her voice was firm and final and had nothing soft left in it. "You are not handing my daughter to that cruel man. I will not allow it. I do not care what he holds or whom he answers to."

Kai frowned. "How do you know he is cruel?" 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

"Everyone knows." She crossed her arms across her chest. "The rumors. What people say. He is dangerous and he is merciless and he..."

"Since when," Kai said carefully, "did you start trusting rumors?"

She opened her mouth. Then closed it.

Something shifted on her face. "Your sisters told me," she said. Quieter now, and slightly less certain.

Kai closed his eyes. He pressed his fingers against his forehead, right at the point between his brows, and stood there for a moment with his eyes closed.

"Of course they did," he said. "Of course, my two completely unmanageable sisters had a full opinion ready."

"They are the ones who were with me every day." Helen’s defensiveness came back, though softer. "What did you expect? They fill whatever room they are in. Information included."

"Those girls," he muttered. He opened his eyes. He walked to her, took her hand, and guided her gently toward the edge of the bed. She resisted for a breath and then sat beside him.

The crib was visible from where they sat. The baby had not moved.

"I would never do anything that could hurt our daughter," he said. He said it without preamble and without softening it, just placing the fact between them. "You know that. Somewhere underneath all of this, you know that."

Helen said nothing, which was not the same as disagreement.

"But we have to think quickly," he said. "And clearly. And right now the only option I can see that actually protects her from someone like Lysander is the Dragon King."

Helen looked at her hands in her lap.

"I have heard things about him," Kai continued. "He has been looking for a mate for years. Decades. He has not found her. Not because he has not searched, because finding a fated mate is not something that works on effort or patience. It simply happens or it does not."

He paused. "What if we approached him? Not to hand her over. Not like that. But to ask for his protection. In exchange, when she is old enough, if they are compatible, if she is willing... a betrothal. A formal one. His protection of our daughter now, and a future built on her own choice when she is old enough to make it."

The silence that came after that was the kind that had a shape to it.

Helen pulled her hand from his and stood up. The movement was sharp and the words that followed were sharper.

"You are talking about trading my child’s future for her present safety." She turned to face him. "You are talking about putting her life in the hands of a man I do not know, whose reputation I do not trust, and calling it protection."

Kai stood. "I am talking about keeping her alive."

"There has to be another way."

"Name it." He was not cold about it. Just honest, which was worse? "Because I spent the entire ride home trying to find one. Tell me what I missed."

She pressed her lips together.

He stepped forward. "I do not see the Dragon King as cruel. I want to be clear about that. Not because I am naive... because I have looked at what he has actually done versus what people say about him, and the gap between those two things is significant." His voice dropped. "Rumors about someone powerful are rarely the whole truth. You know that. They called you dangerous before they ever spoke to you."

Helen looked at him. Something in that landed differently than the rest.

"I am not saying trust him blindly," Kai said. "I am saying go and see for ourselves. Look him in the eye. Put it to him directly and watch how he answers." He held her gaze. "If what I see in that room tells me our daughter is not safe with him, I walk away and we find another path. But I am not willing to rule it out without looking first."

Helen’s eyes were wet. She did not wipe them. She stood with her arms at her sides and her jaw tight and her eyes moving between Kai’s face and the crib where Azura slept.

"What if he says yes," she said quietly. "What if we go to him and he agrees and she goes with him. And she grows up without us." Her voice fractured slightly, right in the middle. "What if she grows up not knowing what we felt about it. Not knowing it was not..." She stopped. Started again. "That it was never because we did not want her."

Kai walked to her.

He did not say anything for a moment. He simply stood in front of her and let her feel that he was there, solid and real, and then he raised both hands and held her face in them, his thumbs resting at the line of her cheekbones.

"She will know," he said. "Because we will tell her. And we will keep telling her. Every time we are with her. Every letter we send. Every visit. She will know that this was never about not wanting her." His voice was very low now. "She will know that it was the opposite. That we wanted her so much that we could not let the world harm her."

The tear that had been sitting at the edge of Helen’s eye slipped down her cheek.

He caught it with his thumb. Did not move his hand.

"So when?" she said. Barely above a whisper. "When do we ask him?"

"Tomorrow morning," Kai said. "We go to his kingdom. We ask."

She turned her head toward the crib.

At Azura.

Three months old, sleeping with her tiny hands curled up near her own face, the black hair falling softly across her forehead, the white streak pale as winter light. She had no idea. She was dreaming the uncomplicated dreams of someone who had never yet been afraid of anything.

Helen watched her breathe.

In and out. In and out. Each breath was a small ordinary miracle that Helen had not taken for granted once in three months.

"Tomorrow," she said. Not a question. Just the word, settling into the room like something she was learning the weight of.

She crossed to the crib without speaking. She placed her hand flat on the mattress beside her daughter, not touching her, just close. Close enough to feel the warmth radiating off the small body.

"My little Azura," she whispered.

The baby’s lips moved in her sleep. A small twitch. A reflex. Nothing intentional and somehow the most complete thing Helen had ever seen.

She stood there for a long time with her hand beside her daughter and her husband behind her and the weight of tomorrow pressing in from every direction.