The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 405

Callum’s POV

The hallway was empty and cold after the warmth of the room.

I pulled the door shut behind me and leaned against the wall, looking down at my phone. My father’s name sat on the screen, the call still active, and I stared at it for a second before I brought it to my ear.

“Dad.”

“Callum.” My father’s voice was even, the way it always was. Hard to read. “Your mother’s here too.”

“I figured.” I pushed off the wall and walked a few paces down the hall, lowering my voice so Liora couldn’t hear. “If this is about Bianca—”

“It is,” he said.

I stopped walking.

My mother’s voice came through then, softer than my father’s. “Callum, sweetheart. We’ve been talking.”

I said nothing. In my experience, conversations that started this way ended with me agreeing to something I didn’t want to do, or being told something I didn’t want to hear. I ran through the possibilities quickly. They’d heard about my breakup with Bianca and were furious I’d ended the relationship, even though the baby wasn’t real. They were going to find a way to twist this. Again.

“We want you to know that we support your decision,” my mother said.

I waited for the rest of it. The condition buried underneath. The but.

It didn’t come.

“We’ve been unfair to you,” she continued. “Your father and I spoke at length about it last night, after everything came out about that girl. And we realized that we put you in an impossible position.”

My jaw went slack. “You… did,” I said.

“We know.” There was a pause. “You should be able to love who you choose, Callum. Not be forced into a contract with a girl who tried to trap you with a fake pregnancy, regardless of whether she’s a princess or not.”

Or rather, she was. But I’d stupidly broken the bond. I intended to repair it, though, and I knew she wanted it; we’d both felt that moment just now, just before we reached our peak together, when the ghost of that invisible thread between us had pulled taut and my fangs had grazed her skin. I’d controlled myself for now, but I wanted it more than I had ever wanted anything before.

“Right,” my mother said. “Liora. We’d like to have you both for dinner this weekend, if she’s willing.”

I exhaled slowly through my nose. Dinner. As if that word had ever meant anything good in our family before.

And yet, despite my best efforts, a little voice in the back of my mind whispered… What if it could be good? What if, after two decades of hoping, I could finally have what I had always wanted? A family. A real one. People who shared meals and stories, where every moment spent together didn’t need to be misery.

It still felt like an awfully far-fetched hope. More of a trap than a real possibility.

But I couldn’t help it. The words came out before I could stop them.

“I’ll ask her,” I said. “See if she’s interested.”