Chapter 101: With
??Aurora’s POV
??The silence that followed was suffocating.
??Oliver didn’t say a word again. He simply turned his back to
and went back to the vegetables on the cutting board. The rhythmic sound of the knife hitting the wood was no longer steady and calm. It was sharp and aggressive. I could feel the wall going up between us, brick by brick, and I imdiately regretted opening my mouth.
??The warmth that had been wrapping around us in the pool was gone, replaced by an icy wall I hadn’t seen coming.
??I stood there in his oversized shirt, feeling small and foolish. We were supposed to be having a perfect afternoon, and I had just ruined it by poking at a question I shouldn’t have asked. I looked down at my bare feet on the marble floor, wishing I could take the words back.
??As if sensing my guilt—or perhaps hearing my heart sink—Oliver stopped.
??He took a long, ragged breath that seed to vibrate through the entire kitchen. He slowly turned around and leaned back against the counter, his large arms crossing over his bare chest. He looked exhausted, as if the weight of his crown had suddenly doubled.
??"It is not that I do not want children, Aurora," he said, his voice dropping into a low, rough whisper. "It is that I am terrified of bringing them into a world this full of danger."
??He looked away for a second, his jaw tightening as he stared at the far wall, the tension in his jaw obvious.
??"Right now, I am the Alpha King. Every enemy I have would see a child of mine as a target. They would never be safe. They would spend their lives looking over their shoulders just like I do." He paused, and when he looked back at , his blue eyes were dark with a pain that made my heart ache. "And with the way I grew up... with the violence I have seen... I do not know if I could ever be a good father. I do not know if I have enough softness or gentleness left in
to raise a soul."
??The honesty in his voice broke my heart. I stepped toward him, closing the distance until I was standing right in front of him. I reached up and placed my hands on his warm, solid chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heart beneath my palms.
??"Oliver," I whispered, looking up into his troubled face. "The way you held
when the plane was about to crash... the way you knelt to dry my feet just now... that is gentleness. You have more softness than most people ever find. You are not the monster you were forced to beco."
??He looked down at , and for a fleeting second, the cold King was gone. He looked like a man who was just as scared and lonely as I was. He looked vulnerable. He looked like the boy in the photo I had seen earlier, before the world had tried to harden him into stone.
??He reached out and cupped my face, his thumb grazing my cheek with a tenderness that made my eyes sting.
??"You see things in
that I have spent a lifeti trying to hide," he murmured.
??He leaned down, his forehead resting against mine. The sll of garlic and his woodsy cologne wrapped around . I could feel the heat radiating off him, and in that mont, I didn’t care about the danger or the titles. I only cared about the man who was holding
as if I were his only anchor in a storm.
??Slowly, he leaned down and captured my lips in a kiss that felt like it was claiming every part of . It wasn’t the desperate, frantic kiss from the pool. This was slow. It was deep and passionate.
??He pulled back just an inch and looked
straight in the eyes. "I love you."
??He said it so freely. He said it so naturally, like it was a fact of life he had known forever.
??I swallowed hard, my heart hamring against my ribs. I didn’t know what to say. The words were stuck in my throat, tangled up with the mory of Raymond and the fear that this was all too good to be true. Oliver didn’t seem to mind my silence. He just gave
a small, knowing smile and turned back to the cutting board as if he hadn’t just shifted the earth beneath my feet.
??He went back to chopping the vegetables with a relaxed rhythm, the tension from before completely gone.
??"Do you want kids?" he asked suddenly, his voice teasing as he kept his eyes on the parsley.
??I blinked, my face heating up instantly. I was still reeling from the "I love you," and now he was circling back to the very topic that had just frozen the room. "Yes," I managed to say, my voice a bit more certain this ti.
??He stopped what he was doing and looked at
over his shoulder. A playful, cocky glint sparked in his blue eyes. He looked entirely too smug, as if he knew exactly how much I was struggling to stay upright.
??"How many?" he asked, his voice full of curiosity.
??I stared at him, my pulse jumping in my neck. He wasn’t even surprised by my answer. He knew I wanted kids. I looked at his mouth and then back at his eyes, trying to find a bit of my own boldness.
??"Five," I said.
??Oliver let out a low, rich chuckle that made my toes curl against the cool floor. He set the knife down and wiped his hands on a towel, slowly closing the distance between us. He didn’t stop until his heat was radiating off him and onto , his large hands reaching out to pull
by the waist until I was flush against his chest.
??"Only five?" he murmured, his breath brushing against my lips. "I think you are underestimating , Aurora. I was thinking more along the lines of fifty. But we can start with five."
??He leaned in, his nose brushing against mine, and I closed my eyes as I felt his lips touch mine. The "No" from earlier seed a million miles away now, replaced by the heavy, hungry promise in his touch.
??"Five little yous running around the packhouse," he whispered against my mouth. "That is a lot of trouble, darling."
??My heart skipped a beat, then began to throb with a sudden, overwhelming realization. This wasn’t just a hypothetical conversation about my future or so distant dream of mine. The way he looked at , the way his large hands held my waist as if he already owned every tomorrow I had, told
everything.
??He was talking about us.
??He was imagining a life with . He was picturing
as the mother of his children, the woman who would stand by his side as he tried to be the father he was so afraid of becoming.
??The weight of it made my head spin. For so long, I had been running from a past that tried to break , and here was the Alpha King, a man the world feared, offering
a legacy. He had gone from a cold "no" to picturing a house full of our children in the span of a few minutes.
??"You..." I whispered, my voice caught in the back of my throat. "You an with ?"
??
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