The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 179

Chapter 179 His ‘Always‘

She was quiet for a long time, searching for the right thing. The fire popped and crackled, casting shifting shadows across the room.

“When I was seven,” she began slowly, “I wanted to be a librarian. Not a writer or a doctor, just a librarian. Because I thought they had the key to every room in the world, and they got to decide who got to go in.”

A small smile touched his lips. “That’s a good one.”

“Your turn,” she said. “Tell me something about yourself.”

He was quiet, his eyes returning to the fire. “When I was thirteen, my parents gave me a telescope for my birthday. I set it up on the roof of our house in the city and tried to see the stars. There was too much light pollution. All I could see was a vague and a milky haze. I cried from frustration. My father found me and told me crying was for weak people.” He paused. “I never used the telescope again.”

The story was so sad and so perfectly illustrative of the lonely childhood he must have had, that Elera’s chest ached. “That’s terrible.”

“It was. But it’s true.” He looked at her again. “Another one. Your turn.”

They went back and forth like that for hours, as the fire burned down to embers. She told him about the treehouse she’d built with her mother before she died, about her first crush on a boy who only liked her for her family’s money, about the time she’d failed her driving test three times because she was overthinking the mechanics of the internal combustion engine.

He told her about boarding school, about his first business venture selling stolen test answers, about the stray dog he’d secretly kept in his dorm room for a month until it was discovered. He told her about his mother’s love of gardening, about his father’s cold disapproval, about the sister he’d once been close to before the illness and the bitterness drove them apart.

They weren’t grand confessions. They were small stories. Silly, sad, mundane pieces of their lives that had nothing to do with billion–dollar companies or genetic protocols or revenge plots. They were just… human things.

At some point, Elera moved. She uncurled herself from her end of the sofa and shifted closer to him, until she was sitting right beside him. He didn’t pull away. He lifted his arm, and she settled against his side, her head on his shoulder. He let his arm rest around her, his hand warm and steady on her arm.

It wasn’t romantic, not in a passionate, dramatic way. It was just a bit intimate in a deeper sense. A sharing of weight. A silent agreement that they didn’t have to be formidable or brilliant or strategic here. They could just be two people who were tired, who had seen too much and who were finding a strange kind of peace in each other’s broken pieces.

“I think blue,” she said softly into the quiet.

“Hmm?”

“My favorite color. I think it’s blue. The color of the ocean right before a storm. Or maybe the color of your eyes when you’re thinking too hard. I can’t decide.”

3:49 pm p p p

Chapter 179 His ‘Always‘

She felt his chest vibrate with a quiet laugh. “Blue is good.”

“What’s yours?”

Finished

“Green,” he said without hesitation. “The exact shade of the dress you wore to the patron’s dinner. The emerald one. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Elera felt warmth spread through her, sweet and slow like honey. She didn’t say anything. She just closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of him–soap and clean cotton and something uniquely Drakonius.

They stayed like that until the last ember in the fireplace died, until the room was dark and quiet. He told her one last story, about a summer he spent in Greece with his grandfather, learning to sail on a tiny, weathered boat. His voice was low and rhythmic, and Elera felt herself drifting, not quite asleep but suspended in a safe, warm place between wakefulness and dreams.

His voice was still heard in the dark, her head on his shoulder, the simple, staggering gift of being known. Of choosing to show someone the hidden, unimpressive parts of yourself and having them look back at you like you’ve given them a treasure.

When his story trailed off, she whispered, “Thank you.”

For

tened around her, just for a second. “Anytime.”

ally, they both fell asleep there on the sofa, fully clothed, tangled together in the dark. It was the ep Elera had gotten in years. No dreams of falling, no masks or running. Just peace.

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The Heiress He Underestimated

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