The Professor's Mate Clause novel Chapter 117

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Chapter 117

Chapter 117

KELVIN’S POV

My father is dying.

The battlefield smells wrong-burned earth, blood, ash, and something metallic that clings to the back of my throat every time I breathe. Smoke drifts across the clearing in slow waves, blurring the bodies scattered across the ground. Somewhere in the distance, wolves are still fighting, but here, in this small space at the center of it ail, everything feels strangely quiet.

I stand still for a moment, staring at him.

Asher.

The man who ruled through fear. The man who broke people and called it strength. The man who spent my entire life trying to

turn me into a reflection of himself.

And now he’s dying in the dirt like everyone else.

Freya and Adrian stand near him, both bloodied from battle. Neither of them looks triumphant. Neither of them gloats. There’s no celebration in this moment, only exhaustion and the heavy finality of something ending exactly the way it was always going

to end.

I wait for grief to hit me.

Surely it should.

This is my father.

Some part of me expects pain to split my chest open or rage to rise up out of nowhere. I search for it desperately because sons are supposed to feel something when their fathers die. Even hatred would make more sense than this hollow stillness sitting inside

But there’s nothing there.

No heartbreak.

No devastation.

Just quiet.

And honestly, that scares me more than grief ever could.

For one terrible second, I wonder if he succeeded after all. If years of cruelty carved something empty into me that can never be fixed. But the longer I stand there, the more I realize the emptiness isn’t because I’m broken.

It’s because I mourned him years ago.

You can’t lose a father you never truly had.

Asher was never that to me. He was a ruler who shared my blood. A man who demanded obedience and called it love whenever it suited him. Every painful memory I carry somehow leads back to him every bruise, every fear, every moment I learned to make myself smaller just to survive his attention

SQ.110.

I don’t grieve him.

But I do need to see this end with my own eyes.

Chapter

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Not for closure. Not for revenge. Just certainty.

I need to know the chapter he wrote over my life is finally over.

Slowly, I start walking toward them.

Every step feels heavier than it should. Adrian notices me first. His entire posture changes instantly, tension snapping through him like a drawn blade. Even exhausted, even wounded, he’s still dangerous.

I can’t blame him for that.

To him, I’m still Asher’s son.

Still someone who could become a threat at the worst possible moment.

So I stop a few feet away and raise my hands carefully in surrender.

“I’m not here to fight,” I say quietly.

For a second, nobody moves.

Then Freya reaches out and touches Adrian’s arm.

It’s such a small gesture, barely noticeable, but I watch the tension ease out of him almost immediately. Not completely. Just

enough.

Trust.

That’s what makes her different from men like my father. She doesn’t rule through fear or force. She looks at people and sees what they could become instead of what they’ve survived.

Even me.

Especially me.

I move closer to Asher at last.

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