Chapter 428 --427
Chapter 428: Chapter-427
"Your Highness, stop! You cannot enter the Regent’s private quarters without an audience!" a guard’s panicked voice shouted from the outer room, followed by the heavy thud of spears crossing in front of the door to stop him from actually breaking the lock."Move aside!" Julian’s frantic baritone voice echoed through the thick wood. "I don’t care about your protocols right now! Tell regent it’s an emergency regarding the northern trade routes!"
Elara opened her vacant, glass-bead eyes. Her mind instantly calculated the noise and the interruption. "Ken, Mahir. Stand down," she ordered, her voice a flat, freezing monotone that brooked no argument.
She slid out of the heavy blankets, her movements precise and unhurried. She quickly pulled on her black linen shirt, buttoning it up to the throat, and slid back into her structured charcoal uniform trousers. She didn’t bother to pin her hair back perfectly, letting it fall slightly loose around her shoulders.
Ken and Mahir stepped back into the shadows of the inner room, their bare chests heaving with suppressed fury, their eyes fixed on the doorway like predators waiting to tear an intruder apart.
Elara walked out into the office, smoothed down her vest, and unlocked the heavy iron bolt. She opened the door, looking flatly at the sweating palace guards and the breathless, silver-haired prince standing between them.
"Let him in," Elara commanded the guards. "Return to your posts."
The guards instantly bowed and scrambled away. Julian didn’t even wait for her to invite him further; he practically pushed past her into the office, his chest heaving as if he had run all the way from the eastern wing. He looked completely disheveled, his usual nonchalant attitude entirely gone.
"Your highness, you need to look at this right now—" Julian started, turning around to face her with a thick roll of parchment in his hand.
But the words died instantly in his throat.
Julian stood entirely rooted to the floor, the roll of parchment nearly slipping from his numb fingers. The nonchalant prince who always had a witty comeback or a lazy smirk was completely gone. He was frozen, his ice-blue eyes wide with a shock so deep it felt like a bucket of northern ice water had been dumped straight over his head.
Elara hadn’t just dressed quickly; she had left the buttons of her black linen shirt completely undone around her midsection, exposing the smooth skin of her waist and stomach. And there, pressed deeply into her skin, were massive, dark finger marks from a heavy, territorial grip. Right below her collarbone, a fresh, sharp love bite stood out, bright and completely unbothered by any attempt to hide it.
But what made Julian’s heart completely stop wasn’t just the marks. It was the fact that Ken and Mahir weren’t even trying to hide.