At that moment, Rose's father let out a long, slow breath, and when he finally spoke, his voice was heavy in a way that had nothing to do with tiredness."Something is going on," he said quietly. "Something huge. And I have not been able to get my head around it no matter how hard I try. The more I think about it, the more confused I get. The more it breaks me. The more I cannot make sense of any of it." He stopped for a second, like he was trying to find the right place to start, and then he looked at her directly and said, "First things first. Do you know how you got here? Do you know how you ended up in this hospital?"Rose's mother went still.She blinked once, and then her mind went back, reaching through the fog of everything she could remember, pulling at the edges of it, trying to find a clear picture. The mountain. The things she had seen up there. The horror of it, the kind of horror that does not leave a person easily, the kind that sits behind the eyes long after the body

At that moment, hearing what her husband just said, Rose's mother went completely silent.She did not move. She did not speak. She just sat there in the bed, her hands resting on the blanket in front of her, and she looked at him with eyes that were trying very hard to find something in his face that told her this was all some kind of terrible misunderstanding. Some kind of joke that had gone too far. Something, anything, that was not what he was saying it was.But his face did not change.It stayed exactly where it was. Serious. Heavy. True."Are you kidding?" she said finally, and her voice came out quieter than before, softer, like she was afraid of the answer. "Or are you telling the truth? Please do not tell me you are telling the truth."Rose's father nodded slowly."Yes," he said. "I am telling you the truth. You were not awake to see it. You were unconscious, lying in this bed, and I understand that. But you needed to see what happened in this room. You needed to see the humil

At that moment, Rose's mother was still looking at her husband, and the shock was sitting all over her face like something she could not shake off no matter how hard she tried. Everything he had just told her was still moving through her mind, piece by piece, and none of it was settling anywhere comfortable. None of it was finding a place where it made sense. She let out a slow breath. "Even though I really want to listen to you," she said carefully, and her voice was measured now, thoughtful, the voice of someone trying to be reasonable in the middle of something completely unreasonable, "and even though I want to believe what you are saying, I cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong somewhere. Something does not add up." She paused, pressing her fingers lightly together in her lap. "Think about it. Jonathan is an eight star king of war. A man like that does not simply go on his knees for someone like Alex. He does not cry and beg and confess unless there is something els

Jonathan was pacing.Back and forth, back and forth, across the length of his living room, his footsteps heavy and deliberate on the floor, like each step was an attempt to walk off something that could not be walked off. His jaw was tight. His fists kept opening and closing at his sides. His eyes were dark and distant and burning with something that sat somewhere between fury and humiliation, the kind of combination that does not sit still inside a person, the kind that demands an outlet.He could not believe it.He, of all people.Him.Jonathan, an eight star king of war, a man whose name alone was enough to make rooms go quiet, a man who had spent decades building a reputation that was supposed to be untouchable, unshakeable, the kind of reputation that people spent their whole lives trying to earn and never quite reaching. Him. Humiliated. Embarrassed. Played like a fool in front of everyone, and not by some great rival, not by some legendary opponent who had earned the right to s

At that moment, the second the name left Serena's lips, Jonathan's eyebrows shifted upward before he could stop them.Rose.He repositioned himself almost immediately, straightening slightly, clearing his throat with a casualness he was manufacturing on the spot, and when he spoke his voice came out measured and controlled and completely unbothered."Rose?" he said. "That is why you came in here like that? What has Rose done now? What did she do?"But even as the words left his mouth, his heart was doing something entirely different.It was hammering.Hard and fast, right there in his chest, loud enough that he was almost surprised Serena could not hear it from where she was standing. Because the moment he heard that name, his mind went immediately to the worst possible version of what this conversation could be. Rose had told her. Rose had recorded everything that happened in that hospital room, every single humiliating second of it, and somehow it had gotten back to Serena. Somehow