His Baby Daddy [ Taekook ]

Chapter 35

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The silence of the King’s solar was absolute, yet it was a different kind of quiet than the one that had reigned for thirty years. It wasn't the heavy, suffocating silence of a tomb, but the fragile, ringing stillness that follows a fever dream.

Outside, the sun began to crest the Frost-Spine mountains, bleeding a pale, watery gold across the room. The light caught the dust motes dancing in the air—real dust, not the grey ash of a dying King.

Taehyung sat in an armchair by the hearth, his body swathed in the silver-fox furs Yoongi had provided.

He hadn't moved for hours. He watched the embers in the fireplace shift from orange to grey, his mind a chaotic library of memories that no longer made sense. Every "tunics" he’d been forced to wear, every "meditative" silence he’d been ordered to keep—it all looked like iron bars now.

He felt... heavy. For the first time, his skin didn't feel like a cage that was too small. His wolf, the obsidian beast that had torn through the night, was curled at the base of his consciousness, panting and satisfied. But the man, the prince, was exhausted.

His gaze drifted to the massive bed at the center of the room.

Jungkook was buried under layers of down and silk, his breathing deep and rhythmic. Seokjin had spent the early hours of the morning working over him, weaving stabilization spells until the golden glow of the Resonance had finally settled into a soft, internal hum. Jungkook looked small and vulnerable against the pillows.

Taehyung wanted to reach out. He wanted to cross the three feet of floor between them and press his face against Jungkook’s neck, to breathe in the lavender and honey until the world felt right again.

But he didn't move.

The thirsty steps away rule Jungkook has asked for before—a reminder that while the war was won, the trust was still a ruin.

"You should sleep, Taehyung."

The voice was low, gravelly with the same exhaustion Taehyung felt. Taehyung looked up. Ruhan was standing in the shadows by the door.

The Alpha looked different in the morning light—less like a legendary warrior and more like a man who had finally found the ghost he'd been chasing.

"I can't," Taehyung whispered. "Every time I close my eyes, I feel the silk tearing again."

Ruhan walked over, his movements silent, and sat on the edge of the stone hearth. He looked at Taehyung—not with the command of an Alpha, but with the raw, aching wonder of a father.

"That was the sound of you waking up," Ruhan said. "The first time is always the loudest."

Taehyung looked at his hands—the hands that had once felt so cold, now radiating a steady, wolfish heat. "He lied to me about everything. He made me believe my own blood was a poison that killed me at birth."