Chapter 150: All I am
Chapter 149
Ciel
I feel out of place in the room, these days.
In the corner, Jack flips through documents, brow furrowed, pen moving across pages with the kind of focus that makes him look like he’s dissecting the secrets of the universe.
On the bed next to me, Nolan stares at his laptop screen, scrolling through spreadsheets full of numbers and graphs I don’t pretend to understand.
His jaw is set, lips slightly parted, the way he gets when he’s deep in something. Supply chain optimization algorithms. Logistics forecasting models. The kind of math that makes my eyes glaze over and his light up.
They look so attractive. All engrossed in work. Focused. Useful.
And I’m just here.
A pretty face.
That’s all I am.
I sit on the edge of the bed, hands folded in my lap, and try not to spiral. I can only sit and twiddle my thumbs. Smile when they look up. Nod when they say something. Exist.
At the beach house, I had the kitchen. The garden. The rhythm of a home I could control. I could measure my worth in meals cooked, in flour dusted on my sleeves, in the way Jack’s eyes would light up when he stole a cupcake off the counter.
Here? I’m expected to have duties. A royal consort doesn’t cook. Doesn’t clean. Doesn’t do anything that might suggest she’s anything other than decorative.
I tried. The first week, I marched into the palace kitchen with a recipe book and an apron. The head chef nearly fainted. Staff materialized out of nowhere to gently, firmly, escort me back to our wing.
"Your place is not here," one of them said. Not unkind. Just certain.
So now I sit.
And watch.
And try not to feel like I’m disappearing.
One thing I haven’t given in on, though: Lanny’s food.
I don’t care what palace protocol says. I don’t care how many chefs offer their services, how many nutritionists present their credentials, how many servants smile and say, "We can handle this for you, Your Highness."
No one touches my son’s meals.
I prepare everything. Measure everything. Taste everything. Every morning, before the meetings and the obligations and the endless being looked at, I go to the small kitchenette in our wing—the one I had to fight for and I make his food.
It’s the only thing I still do.
The only thing that reminds me I’m more than something to be displayed.
Nolan’s phone buzzes.
He glances at the screen, frowns slightly, and answers. "Harlow."
I watch him. The way his posture shifts. The way his voice changes to something deeper, steadier, the kind of voice that means business.
"Yeah," he says, eyes scanning his laptop screen. "The Q3 logistics report?"
A pause. His fingers move across the keyboard, pulling up something. The screen glows, reflecting off his glasses—he only wears them when he’s deep in data, and he’s been wearing them more and more lately.
"The routing data doesn’t match the warehouse intake logs," he says, quieter now, more focused.
"There’s a discrepancy between the northern hub and the central distribution center. About twelve percent variance."
He listens. Nods. His jaw tightens the way it does when he’s found something.
"If the numbers are off by that much, it’s not a rounding error. Someone’s moving product without hitting the main ledger. Probably routing through the secondary warehouse to avoid the central audit."
He pauses, eyes narrowing.
"Yeah. I can run a full chain trace. Give me forty-eight hours to cross-reference the shipping manifests with the GPS telemetry from the trucks."
Product. Manifests. GPS telemetry.
Is this the Nolan I know?
He got his diploma in logistics and supply chain management. Crammed months of coursework into weeks, because that’s what Nolan does when he sets his mind to something. He masters it. He excels.
And now he’s here.
He’s not that boy anymore.
He’s this. Confident. Competent. Needed.
I’m so proud of him.
And once again, I’m grateful to Jack for coming into our lives.
I have nightmares of what our lives would be like without Jack in them.
Nolan still working odd jobs, hiding in the shadows. Me still running, always running. Lanny—no, I can’t even think about that.
I stop thinking of what-ifs and grab my phone, needing something to do with my hands. Something to fill the space before my thoughts go somewhere dark.
I scroll through the gallery, the pictures that make me smile. Jack with flour on his nose after I dared him to help me bake. Nolan asleep on the couch, Lanny sprawled across his chest, both of them drooling. The three of us on the beach, the sunset turning everything gold.
A message notification pops up.
Ivan.
I can’t help but smile. He texts like he speaks—fast, chaotic, zero filter.
💬Ivan: Heyyy Ciel how’s it goinggg
I type back:
💬okay.
A pause. Then three dots. Then:
💬Ivan: booo. give me more than "okay." that’s like a crime against friendship
💬Ivan: i shared my whole dramatic saga. your turn
I laugh under my breath.
💬okay okay. hey, Ivan, how are you doing?
💬Ivan: oh i’m okay NOW. but i WASN’T during the day. let me tell you about these organizers who think because they’ve been running this modeling competition for ten years they know more than ME about—
He proceeds to tell me about the argument he had with the competition organizers. How they wanted to cast an omega who was "visibly distressed" because "it makes for better drama." How Ivan told them, in his words, absolutely not and also go choke.
How he had to call in the big guns.
His alpha.
Who, apparently, is extremely wealthy. Like, owns-the-company-that-owns-the-competition wealthy. Showed up, said approximately five words, and the organizers became extremely cooperative.
I can’t help my smile as I keep texting him.
I’m envious of Ivan.
He’s a retired model. He’s beautiful—effortlessly, unapologetically beautiful. He’s confident in a way that doesn’t need to prove anything. He’s outspoken.
I can’t help but wonder: maybe I would be like that, if I wasn’t born in Solmere like him?
I look up at Jack and Nolan.
Jack is still reading, still focused. Nolan is typing something on his laptop, brow furrowed, the line of his jaw sharp in the lamplight.
I wouldn’t change my life for the world.