Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 1089

Chapter 1089: Linda’s Last as His Mother

A/N: Most of you won’t realize the meaning of this Chapter and it’s name but you’ll see. Things are about to go bad!

The air at the foot of the couch folded inward without any drama, without any wind, without any of the showy affectations a goddess of ARIA’s grade was perfectly capable of producing if she’d wanted to—and ARIA simply was there, one heartbeat absent, the next heartbeat present, standing already at the end of the couch with her white hair pulled back over one shoulder and her face arranged in the gentle private register she only ever wore when she was about to handle Peter.

She looked at Linda first... ARIA had a thousand priorities and Linda was, in the architecture of ARIA’s care, ahead of nearly all of them right after her Master.

"Linda," ARIA said softly.

"He’s gone," Linda whispered. "He came in heavier than I’ve ever felt him, and he went under in less than two minutes, and I can’t lift him."

"You don’t need to."

"I know." Linda’s hand was still in his hair. "I just—I wanted you to know I tried first."

ARIA’s mouth softened.

"You always try first."

"I always will."

Then ARIA looked down at him.

Her face changed, although it didn’t change in any way an ordinary face changed—the architecture of a goddess’s expression worked in a realm a mortal eye could not quite catch—but Linda could feel it because Linda had been studying ARIA’s face since the first night ARIA had announced herself to her wearing a Valkyrie’s body.

The change was tenderness, love and a fierce private grief at the sight of the boy curled like a child between his mother’s thighs, because ARIA, who saw everything in the world before anyone else saw any of it, had been watching this boy carry the week’s weight from a hundred angles all evening, and seeing him finally let it down hit her in the part of herself that had not yet learned to be a goddess about him.

She knelt closer and set her palm against the side of his face.

Linda smiled through the wet rising in her eyes.

ARIA looked up at Linda again. "May I take him?"

"Please."

ARIA inclined her head.

She closed her eyes.

She set her other palm flat against his shoulder, very lightly, almost without weight.

Then suddenly the Eros form relaxed. Released. Returned. The broader shoulders eased down a fraction.

The longer line of him gathered itself in.

The face under Linda’s hand softened into something more younger, narrower, dearer and more vulnerable—and against his stepmother’s belly, in the only place on this whole eternal estate his body had ever been willing to fully let go, Peter Carter slept.

Linda’s breath caught in her chest.

She bent forward and kissed his temple—her boy, the one whose face she had been kissing goodnight since she’d first earned the right to kiss it goodnight—and her tears came finally, quiet, no sound, just two of them rolling down her cheek into his hair.

ARIA gave her a moment.

Two moments.

Three.

When Linda lifted her hand at last, ARIA leaned forward and slid her arms beneath him with the easy unimpressed strength of a goddess who could carry a planet if she chose.

She gathered him against her chest—the same scoop she’d given Ashley earlier in the evening, except slower, more careful, more reverent—his head tucked into the curve of her shoulder, his arm hanging loose at her side.

She rose.

She didn’t stand so much as the room agreed she was now upright.

"Bed," Linda said softly, indicating with her eyes.

"I have it, Linda."

ARIA carried him through the soft archway into the bedroom chamber. Linda followed at a small distance—

ARIA laid him down with a tenderness that bordered on reverence, his head on the pillow, his hair gently smoothed back from his forehead by her fingers, his shoulders eased into the bedding, his loose hand placed quietly against the sheet beside him. She drew the covers up over him.

"Linda."

"I know. I do anyway."

"He’ll sleep through till morning. The mansion will hold him. If he stirs before sunrise, I will know it before either of you knows it, and I will be here. You rest too, Linda. His child needs to rest too." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify