Billionaire's Betrayal a contracted revenge (Aurelia) novel Chapter 163

Chp 163: What I Did.

Aurelia’s POV

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I woke up alone in my own bed, and the first thing I felt was not happiness or satisfaction or any of the things I had felt in his arms hours before.

The first thing I felt was the ring.

It still sat coldly on my hand, and I stared at it for a long moment before I made myself get up and dress, because looking at it too long felt like an accusation.

I am still married.

Whatever Rieck had done, whatever he had let happen with Selene, whatever anything, I had walked into that room last night with my eyes open and let myself want something I had no right to want.

I could tell myself it was one night. I could tell myself grief and betrayal made fools of better women than me. But none of it changed the truth.

I had done it too now. Not the same as him, never the same as him, he had lied for a year and I had told the truth from the first breath, but close enough to keep me standing at the mirror a long moment, looking at my own reflection for whatever had changed.

I found Kaelen in the yard, already dressed, already grinning at me like the whole world had turned out exactly the way he wanted it to.

“You look like a woman doing arithmetic she doesn’t like the answer to,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“You aren’t fine. You have that face again.” He came closer, and something in his own expression softened, the teasing dropping away for one honest second. “Whatever you are carrying this morning, little thing, you don’t have to carry it alone.”

“I am married, Kaelen.”

“I know.”

“That is not nothing to me. Whatever it did or didn’t mean to you.”

“It wasn’t nothing to me either.” He said it quietly, no teasing in it at all. “I am not going to pretend last night was small, and I am not going to let you pretend it was either. But I am also not going to make you stand here and confess your sins to me on an empty stomach. Come. Walk with me. Let the guilt breathe a little instead of choking you.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“Nothing about you has ever been simple, Aurelia. I’m not asking you to solve it today. I’m only asking you to eat something before you decide how badly you hate yourself for it.” He held out a hand. “Come. Please.”

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16:55 Mon, Aug 31

Billionaire’s Betrayal, a contracted revenge

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I didn’t have a better plan than his, so I went, though the guilt walked with us the whole way down the mountain road, quiet and patient, waiting for its turn.

The town was an hour’s ride from the villa, small stone buildings and narrow cobbled streets that had clearly never once expected a king to walk them, and Kaelen moved through it like a man who had spent years learning exactly which shopkeepers to greet by name.

“You grew up here,” I said. “Really here. Not just the mountain.”

“My mother kept a house two streets over, before Ridgeline was mine to keep.” He nodded towards a bakery with a cracked blue door. “I used to steal bread from that exact window. The baker still remembers, and still charges me double out of spite.”

“That’s fair, honestly.”

“It is deeply unfair, and I pay it anyway because the bread is worth it.” He steered us around a puddle, hand light at the small of my back. “What did you steal, when you were small enough to steal things? Every child steals something.”

“Nothing. I was too afraid of being sent somewhere worse.”

His face changed, just slightly, and I regretted saying it the moment it left my mouth.

“There’s no need to look at me like that,” I said. “It was a long time ago.”

“It wasn’t that long ago.” His voice had gone quiet. “You were a child with nowhere worse to fear, and you still feared it enough to steal nothing at all. That isn’t a small thing to carry, little thing. Don’t shrink it just because it makes me uncomfortable to hear.”

He let the quiet hold a moment before his voice found its lighter footing again. “Your turn. Tell me something true about the girl before all of this. Before husbands and contracts and wolves.”

“There isn’t much to tell. An orphanage doesn’t leave a person with many stories.”

“There is always something.” His voice stayed light, but his eyes weren’t. “One true thing, Aurelia.”

I thought about it as we walked. “I used to sit by the window on nights I couldn’t sleep and make up names for the stars, because no one had ever bothered giving me anything of my own to name.”

“That’s a good one.” He said it softly. “What did you name them?”

“I don’t remember most of them. I remember I named the brightest one Derek.” My throat tightened unexpectedly. “I didn’t even know that was really his name yet. I think some part of me already knew.”

Kaelen didn’t say anything clever. He only reached over and took my hand, and I let him, and we walked the rest of the block in a quiet that didn’t feel like the bad kind.

“Your turn,” I managed, once I trusted my voice again. “Tell me something you have never told anyone.”

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16:55 Mon, Aug 31

Billionaire’s Betrayal, a contracted revenge

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“I have told entire rooms of people things I claim I have never told anyone. It is a very effective seduction technique.” He caught my look and laughed. “Fine. Truly, then. I was afraid of the dark until I was fourteen. My father used to leave a candle burning outside my door and pretend he had just forgotten to blow it out, so I would never have to ask.”

“That’s sweet.”

“It is deeply embarrassing, and I am trusting you with it because you told me about the stars.” He bumped his shoulder gently against mine. “We are even now.”

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