Shattered Bonds A Second Chance Mate (by Yui) novel Chapter 237

Chapter 237

Chapter 237

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Dawn found us the way mercy sometimes does–late, fragile, and not quite believing it was welcome.

The room kept the night a little longer than the windows wanted. Coals in the hearth held their red breath. The curtains lifted and fell as if they were practicing speech.

I woke to the weight of Francesco’s arms around me and the feeling of a man trying to learn how to be careful with the thing he thought he had broken.

His cheek rested against my temple. He wasn’t asleep. His breaths came too evenly, as if counted.

The bond lay between us like a rope that had held through a storm–frayed in places, but still faithful, still

warm.

I did not move for a long minute.

Sometimes stillness is the only balm that doesn’t sting.

When I finally turned, the light shifted and showed me his face.

The shadows under his eyes cut deeper than night ever could. In the muted morning, he looked younger and older at once–the boy who had taught his body to be a shield because no one told him he could ask to be held; the king who wore guilt like an heirloom he hadn’t chosen and did not know how to put down without breaking it.

He’s my Francesco..

“Good morning,” I said, because ordinary things are a defiance.

He swallowed, and the sound felt like a knife asking permission to become a spoon. “Ellaine, I hurt you.”

“No, you frightened me,” I answered truthfully. “And then you came back.”

His gaze flicked to the scarf I’d tied loosely around my throat. Purple would bloom there by noon; Monica had said as much with her healer’s hands that never lied.

I tucked two fingers beneath the silk and found my pulse–not racing anymore, not shy. Present. “It looks worse than it feels,” I added, softer. “It always does.”

He winced as if the truth had teeth.

A quiet knock at the door.

Audrey didn’t wait for permission; she never does when permission is a cruelty. She slipped in sideways, carrying a basin and a cloth, eyes taking in the room in one long blink that made a ledger of everything: the angle of my scarf, the set of Francesco’s mouth, the stillness of the coals.

Behind her, Monica hovered with a jar, and Alfonso stood like a pillar, listening to the corridor, not the conversation. Marlow leaned in the frame without crossing it, a part of the wall by practice and choice.

12:18 Mon, Oct 20

Chapter 237

Only the circle we trust. As it must be.

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“Warm water.” Audrey said quietly, setting the basin on the table. Her voice had worn night but not invited it. “Lira’s salve,” Monica added, lifting the lid to let the steam carry rosemary and mint. “It will draw out the ache.”

Francesco’s hand tightened around my fingers.

Shame rolled off him like heat from a forge.

The bond caught it, tempered it, sent it back as something gentler–you are here, that is already a different story than the one she thinks you belong to.

“No rumor leaves this room,” I said before anyone asked, and because they are mine, they nodded without making vows grander than necessary.

“Yes, Luna,” Alfonso said simply, taking the hallway again as his watch.

Audrey dipped the cloth and wrung it until the water ran in a thin line like a lullaby. She glanced at me for permission; I nodded, and her hands became the careful ones she keeps for babies and old men and women who say fine when they mean later, please.

Monica dabbed the salve on the cloth’s edge and passed it over; the heat met the bruise and made the bruise honest.

Francesco flinched as if pain had moved from my skin to his. “I can-”

“You can sit,” I said quickly, and almost smiled when Audrey looked startled, not because I had taken the command but because I had made it sound like an invitation to stay a person.

He sat…

No, he knelt and did not let

of my hand.

go of

Marlow’s voice cut the quiet like silk, not steel. “Rotations adjusted. No change to the outward rhythm. Inside, we close ranks. If anyone asks why, we are tightening after last week’s border scan.”

Audrey’s mouth twitched. “You like that lie because it’s true.”

“I like that lie because it makes men who want gossip do arithmetic instead,” he returned, and the corner of my mouth lifted in a sigh that remembered what laughter felt like.

Monica’s fingers checked my throat again. “It will fade,” she said, more to him than to me. “It will not become a story written on her skin.”

He lowered his head. “I don’t deserve-”

“Bread,” I cut him again, gently. “You don’t deserve bread yet, Maria will tell you when.” I tipped his chin up with my free hand because I wouldn’t let him disappear into the floorboards. “Deserve is for ledgers. We are not ledgers, Francesco.”

12:18 Mon, Oct 20

Chapter 237

He breathed.

It was a beginning.

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Alfonso returned once to say the kitchen had gone on as if nothing had happened, which is to say as if everything always happens and the answer is porridge. He left again without letting the door say his name.

When the basin cooled and the scarf settled and the salve made the air taste like green, Audrey straightened, a feline stretch she’d never admit to. “Call,” she told me, a single word with a long story behind it. “If the air shifts, if the light changes, if your breath catches wrong.”

I nodded. “I will.”

She scanned Francesco once more–measuring steadiness, not strength–then left with Monica, their footsteps a duet that sounded like competence.

Marlow paused, thumb against the doorframe, and pressed his knuckle there in a sign he thinks is secret. We let him keep the illusion. “We hold,” he said softly, and the door closed after.

Only us again. The room exhaled.

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