"What did he do?" Julian let out a shaky breath that sounded dangerously close to falling apart. And then the truth finally ca out. All of it. The obsession. The manipulation. The violation hidden behind dical procedures and legal docunts.
Every sick detail he had been carrying alone. By the ti he reached the end, his voice had beco hollow with horror.
"He made them inseminate her with his sperm, Mother." The room fell deathly silent. Julian stared downward, unable to breathe properly anymore.
"The baby..." His voice cracked violently. "The baby she’s carrying might be his." The confession shattered sothing in the room. Madam Vale jerked upright so fast her chair scraped harshly across the floor.
"What?" The word exploded from her. The tea tray rattled violently from the force of her movent. For the first ti that night, she looked completely stripped of composure.
Not elegant. Not controlled. Furious. Purely furious.
Julian flinched slightly at the sound of her voice, but he kept going because now that the truth was out, he could not stop it anymore.
"Amara doesn’t even know how to live with it yet," he whispered hoarsely. "Every day she wakes up carrying that uncertainty." Madam Vale turned away abruptly and began pacing.
Sharp. Fast. Her heels struck the wooden floor rhythmically, each click carrying more rage than the last. Julian watched silently as his mother transford before his eyes.
The grieving widow disappeared. In her place stood sothing colder. Older. Dangerous. "He did this intentionally?" she asked quietly. That quietness frightened even Julian. "Yes."
Madam Vale laughed once. A terrible sound. Not amusent. Disbelief sharpened into fury. "That coward," she hissed. Her eyes flashed with sothing vicious now.
"He thinks he can violate her body and walk away untouched?" Julian said nothing. Because he had asked himself the sa question every night since finding out. Madam Vale stopped pacing abruptly and looked at her son again.
For the first ti in years, Julian saw sothing terrifyingly familiar in her expression. The sa ruthless instinct his father once carried. The sa look his older brother used to get before destroying anyone who threatened the family. Only now it was directed at Seb.
Julian let the words fall between them like a final, desperate confession. The weight of his love for Amara was so imnse it seed to bow his shoulders, his voice thick with a raw, jagged honesty.
"I love her, Mother. She is my life, and I can’t lose her. I’m sorry if I have disappointed you, but I will do right by her and the baby. I don’t care who the father is," he sobbed, the tears finally spilling over and tracking hot paths down his face. He braced himself, head lowered, waiting for the lecture, for the rejection, or for her to call his devotion a weakness.
Instead, the room remained still until he felt her hand under his chin. Madam Vale looked at him with an expression that wasn’t disappointnt, but a fierce, shimring pride.
"I’m your mother, Julian. I know you better than you know yourself," she said, her voice steadying him. "I could never be disappointed in you. You are just like , you love hard, with everything you are. You are my son through and through." She paused, her gaze hardening into sothing ancient and unbreakable. "And this child is a Vale. Blood or not, that baby is ours."
She began to pace again, her mind turning like a well-oiled machine of war. "It’s about ti I deal with that boy myself. Arabella God bless her soul, left Amara to deal with him alone, and he grew wings because of it. He thinks he is untouchable. I will show him exactly how fragile he is."
"Mother, no," Julian interrupted, his protective instincts flaring even through his grief. "Leave Seb to . I don’t want to poke him unnecessarily; he’s dangerous, he’s unpredictable."
Madam Vale stopped in her tracks and looked at him, her eyes narrowing. "Where is my son?" she challenged, her voice dripping with a cold, aristocratic fire. "My son Julian would have finished that man off long before he even learned how to speak his own na again."
"I don’t want Amara thinking I’m insecure about her love," Julian stamred, his logic fracturing. "And what if he tries to take her? What if he tries to take my son? My wife..." He broke down then, the composure he had fought so hard to maintain finally shattering into a thousand pieces. The fear wasn’t for himself; it was the terrifying realization that he had everything to lose.
Madam Vale stepped forward and pulled him to her shoulder, holding him with the sa strength she had used when he was a child. "Your wife loves you, and she is carrying the future heir of the Vales. Let him try to take what is ours," she whispered fiercely.
She held him tightly as he sobbed against her, a deep, guttural sound of release. The last ti she had felt him break like this was seven years ago, the day the news broke that Amara and Seb were to be wed. For seven years, he had buried this pain; now, it was flooding the room.
The heavy, emotional atmosphere was suddenly pierced by a sharp, rhythmic knock on the door. Julian stiffened, quickly wiping his eyes and pulling away, trying to reconstruct the mask of the Vale heir before the world could see the man underneath.
The heavy door groaned on its hinges as Julian’s Uncle Kalian stepped into the room, his eyes scanning the scene with a cold, predatory hunger. He took in Julian’s tear-stained face and the way he had been seeking comfort in his mother’s lap, a mocking smirk twisting his lips.
"Is this the new Prince of the Vale?" Kalian drawled, his voice dripping with calculated disdain. "Crying as if you are a baby while the world waits for leadership. It’s a pathetic sight."
"What do you want, Kalian?" Madam Vale snapped, her voice like the crack of a whip. She stood partially in front of Julian, her protective instincts flaring.
Kalian leaned against the doorfra, crossing his arms over his chest. "The rest of the Vales are gathered in the next room. They’re waiting to know what happens next. It’s unsettling to think the man ant to handle our hundreds of billions is a crybaby who can’t hold his liquor, let alone his emotions."
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