Chapter 165 Chapter 165

Chapter 165 Chapter 165
Hunter's POV

I sat in front of Edwin, my pulse steady despite the unease crawling through my chest.

"I know the official story," I said carefully. "Aldric tried to seize power by force. The council stripped him of his standing and exiled him."

"That's the story your father allows people to know," Edwin said. "Not quite the whole truth."

"Then tell me the whole truth," I demanded.

Edwin smiled thinly, clearly enjoying the control he held over the pace of this conversation. "Not today," he said. "Truth given too quickly loses its weight, Hunter. I'd rather you sit with pieces first, let them settle, before I give you anything more complete."

"That's manipulation," I replied flatly. "Not honesty."

"Perhaps," he admitted, unbothered.

"Or perhaps I've simply learned, the hard way, that people believe truths they arrive at slowly far more deeply than truths handed to them all at once."

I studied him carefully, trying to read past the calm, practiced exterior.

"What do you actually want from me?" I asked. "You didn't build an entire modeling campaign just to have one cryptic conversation."

"I want you to start asking your father real questions," Edwin said. "About Aldric. About your mother. About decisions made long before you were born that still shape everything happening around you right now."

"My mother," I repeated slowly, something cold settling in my stomach. "What does she have to do with any of this?"

Edwin's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes sharpened slightly. "Ask her yourself," he said. "I think you'll find the answer more than anything I could tell you directly."



I left that meeting more shaken than I expected, Edwin's careful, incomplete revelations sitting heavy in my chest the entire drive home.

He hadn't given me anything concrete, nothing I could bring to Maria or my father directly.

Just fragments, deliberately vague, planting doubt exactly the way Kessler once tried to divide Taylor from everyone she trusted.

I called Maria the moment I got home, relaying everything Edwin had said.

"He's testing you," Maria said, after listening carefully.

"The same way Kessler tested Taylor with half truths and manipulation. He wants you doubting your own family before he ever needs to give you real information."

"But he mentioned my mother specifically," I said.

"That's not random, Maria and not with everything else we already suspect about her."

Maria went quiet for a moment.

"I need to tell you something," she said finally.

"I was going to wait until I had more confirmation, but given what Edwin just said, I don't think waiting serves you anymore."

"Tell me," I said.

"The Luna requested a meeting with the council today," Maria said.

"Privately, before I could formalize the case against her using Kevin's statement. I don't know what she said in that meeting yet, but Hunter, she requested something else too."

"What," I asked, my chest tightening.

"She asked to speak with you," Maria said. "Alone. Tomorrow morning."



I didn't sleep much that night, Edwin's fragments and Maria's warning tangled together in my mind, refusing to let me rest.

Priya stayed with me, quiet and steady, though I could tell my distraction worried her.

"You don't have to go alone," she said. "Bring Maria. Bring your father, even."

"She asked for me specifically," I said. "Alone. If I bring anyone else, I might never get whatever answers she's actually willing to give."

"That's exactly what worries me," Priya said. "What if this is a trap, the same way everything else has been this year?"

"Then I'll be careful," I said, though the promise felt thinner than I wanted it to be.



I met my mother in her private sitting room the next morning, the same warm, elegant space I had spent countless childhood afternoons in, now feeling strange and unfamiliar under the weight of everything I now suspected about her.

"You look troubled," she said, studying me carefully as I sat across from her.

"I met someone yesterday," I said, deciding directness was my best approach.

"Edwin and he owns Artemis, apparently. He mentioned you specifically, said I should ask you real questions about decisions made before I was born."

Something moved across her expression, controlled but unmistakable. "Edwin," she repeated quietly.

"I haven't heard that name spoken aloud in a very long time."

"Who is he to you?" I asked.

She was quiet for a long moment, her hands folded carefully in her lap.

"Someone your father wronged decades ago," she said finally. "The same way he's wronged several people over the years, always convincing himself it was necessary for the greater good of this family."

"Including you," I said carefully.

Her eyes met mine, something raw and tired behind them that I'd never seen from her before. "Including me," she confirmed quietly.

"Though I imagine you're not ready to hear the full weight of that particular truth today, any more than Edwin was willing to give you the full weight of his."

"Then when," I asked, frustration building fast.

"Everyone keeps giving me pieces, Mother. Edwin. You. Nobody's willing to just tell me the truth completely."

She studied me for a long, heavy moment, something shifting behind her expression that I couldn't fully read.

"Soon," she said quietly. "I promise you, Hunter, the whole truth is coming, whether any of us are ready for it or not. I only ask that when it arrives, you remember that everyone in this family, myself included, has made choices out of love twisted sideways into something painful, long before you or Taylor ever became part of any of this."

I left that conversation with more questions than I had arrived with, understanding only that whatever truth waited beneath all these careful fragments.

It was close now, dangerously close, and none of us were fully prepared for how much it might change everything we thought we understood about this family.