Chapter 322 Sooner or Later

Emilia’s POV

“They’re asleep. ” he shrugged.

“Aren’t you tired yet? Or have you just gotten a taste for hauling me around?”

“Not tired at all.” He said it low, no joke behind it. “I’d carry you like this the rest of my life.”

Something warm cracked open in my chest. I wound my arms around his neck and squeezed.

He made a strangled noise. “You’re choking me. I can’t breathe. Is this how it ends? Murdered by my own wife on my own driveway?”

“Nobody’s murdering you. You went wobbly on that last turn. I’m just making sure you don’t pitch me into a hedge.”

I pinched his ear. He yelped. We were both still laughing when a car rolled up the drive behind us, headlights sweeping across the gravel.

The engine cut. A door opened.

Titus stepped out.

Sebastian didn’t set me down. He turned, easy as anything, grin still in place. “Evening, Dad. Car died. “

“So I see.” His eyes moved slow between us. “Long walk.”

“Good for the legs,” Sebastian said.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that Titus wasn’t happy to catch me and Sebastian carrying on like this.

The next afternoon, while I was handling work at the office, Titus called.

“Emilia. I’d like to see you. There’s a place on the north end, the Ridgeline Club. Ask the front desk for the Simons room.”

Not the office. Not the house. A private room at a members-only club, the kind with soundproof walls and staff who knew better than to knock.

My stomach knotted. “Sure. I’ll be there in an hour.”

Careful, Eve murmured, uneasy in the back of my mind. He didn’t pick that place by accident.

I already knew that.

The room was all dark leather and low light, a decanter breathing on the table between two chairs. Titus stood when I walked in and waved me toward the seat across from him.

“Sit,” he said. “Have a drink.”

I sat.

For a while he just studied me, turning his glass slow in his hand. Then, quietly, “You two are good together. You and Sebastian. I have to tell you, seeing him this happy—”

He paused, and his face went soft and pained at once. “I never thought I’d see it again. It makes me glad.”

“Thank you,” I said. The unease crept higher up my spine.

“But.” There it was. He set the glass down. “I know my son, Emilia. Better than he’d like. Sebastian lets his heart run ahead of his head, always has. And with you—”

His eyes lifted to mine. “You’re his fated mate. That makes it worse. It makes it harder for him to see clearly. To make the right call when it matters.”

I flattened my hands on the arms of the chair. “Titus. Say what you came here to say.”

He smiled. “Fair enough. First, let me put your mind at ease. What happened to Abigail three years ago, that will never happen to you. I am not here to chase you out.”

Some knot in my chest loosened, just a little. “All right. Then what is this about?”

“It’s about you and Sebastian having a child.”

My fingers slipped. The glass went over and shattered on the floor with a sharp crack. Neither of us moved toward it.

“Easy,” Titus said. “Listen to me. You’re a good woman, Emilia. Mila and I are fond of you, and I don’t need to spell out what my son feels. But carrying on the bloodline, for a pack like ours, that isn’t a small thing.”

I pulled a breath in. “What are you telling me?”

“Perhaps you’d rather tell me your thoughts first.”

“Sebastian and I—” I started, meaning to say we’d already talked about adoption, that we’d decided—

He cut me off before I got there. “If you’re about to say the two of you plan to adopt, let me be clear right now. I will never agree to that.”

My heart dropped through the floor. “Why?”

“Because I won’t watch my father’s hundred-year legacy pass into the hands of a stranger. I want a child with Simons blood in its veins. Do you understand me, Emilia? A real bloodline. A true one.”

Every word landed like a stone. Heat rushed to my eyes before I could stop it, and I hated that I couldn’t. “So,” I said, and my voice came out thin, “you want me gone after all.”

“No.” He said it fast, firm. “I told you from the start, what happened to Abigail will not happen to you. I only—” He stopped. His jaw worked, but nothing came out.

I dragged the back of my hand across my cheek and made myself sit up straight. “It’s fine. Say it, Titus. Whatever it is.”

He looked at me for a long moment, and when he spoke it was almost gentle, which was worse.

“I want you to accept it,” he said, “if Sebastian has a child outside this marriage. You’d raise it as your own. No one would ever know the child wasn’t yours. Your place in this family wouldn’t change, not by an inch. You’d still be his Luna. You’d still be my daughter-in-law.”

The room went very quiet. Somewhere in my mind, Eve had gone still and cold.

I’d heard those exact words once before, drifting through the crack of Titus and Mila’s bedroom door one night, low and careful, meant for no one’s ears. I’d told myself then that this day was a long way off. That I had time.

It hadn’t been a long way off at all.

There was no running from it. The truth was right in front of me, and sooner or later I’d have to look at it and choose.