The Alpha‘s Personal Chef

Chapter 10: What Matters More

Ella did not sleep. The third recipe lay open on her desk, its symbols dark and waiting. She had read the first line a dozen times. The words did not change. The heart of a Moonbound chef.

She closed the parchment and carried it to Dorian's study.

He was at his desk. She set the parchment before him without speaking. He read it. His face did not change. But his hand, resting on the polished wood, curled slowly into a fist.

"Burn it," he said.

"I am not going to make it."

"I know." He looked up at her. "I am not asking. Burn it. In front of me."

Ella did not move. "My grandmother kept this for decades. She did not burn it. She wanted whoever came after to know the truth, then choose. I choose not to make it. But I am keeping it."

Dorian's jaw tightened. "Keeping it means Kael can take it. Keeping it means you carry the one thing he wants most."

"Kael already knows what it says. He does not want the recipe. He wants the heart that goes in it."

The words hung between them. Dorian stood and walked to the window. His back was to her when he spoke.

"I have spent eighteen months dying. Every meal was ash. Every breath was borrowed time. And then you made soup." He turned. "You are not dying for me. Do you understand? I would rather lose every sense I have than watch you pay for them."

Ella held his gaze. "Then we find another way."

The door burst open. Victor stood in the frame, his face gray, his chest heaving.

"Kael changed his orders. He knows you refused Sera. He sent word through the old channel." His voice cracked. "He is taking my son. Tonight. He will bring Emil to the estate border and kill him so that you can see. He said it is the price of refusal."

Ella set down the parchment. "Where is Emil being held?"

Victor gave her the location. He had pieced it together from fragments in the messages he was forced to pass. An old hunting cabin, two hours north, near the Ironclaw border. Two wolves are guarding him. The information was not given freely by Kael. Victor had listened for it in every exchange, hoarding clues like scraps of bread.

Dorian was already moving. "Rowan." His voice cut through the room. "Take three wolves. Go now."

Rowan appeared in the doorway. He listened to the location, nodded once, and vanished. Victor stood frozen, his hands shaking at his sides.

Ella walked to the kitchen and put a kettle on. She did not tell him it would be fine. She did not tell him to sit. She just made tea and set it in front of him. The cup warmed his hands. He did not drink. But after a moment, his breathing slowed.

The hours passed. Ella stayed in the kitchen. She did not cook. She waited. The kettle went cold. She boiled it again. Sometime after midnight, the front door opened. Footsteps. More than one set. Victor stood so fast his chair fell over.

Rowan walked in. Behind him, a boy. Fifteen, thin, with Victor's dark eyes and a bruise high on his cheek. But alive. Victor crossed the room and pulled his son into his arms. He did not speak. He just held on, his shoulders shaking.

Ella watched them. Victor's hand cradled the back of Emil's head the way her father used to hold hers. She looked away. She did not know what to do with the ache in her chest.

Dorian appeared beside her. He did not touch her. He just stood there, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him. She did not move away.

The next morning, Ella walked to the estate border. The moonbloom bulbs Kael's wolves had planted were gone. Not dug up by Rowan. Removed. The earth was smoothed over as if they had never been there. Kael had taken them back himself.

Sera stood at the gate. She did not ask to enter. When Ella approached, Sera's amber eyes were unreadable.

"Kael withdraws his invitation," she said. "And his claim. You saved a boy he meant to kill. That takes something he did not expect. He is no longer interested in asking."

"Then what," Ella said.

"The next full moon. He will come himself."

Sera turned and walked into the trees. She did not look back.

Ella stood at the gate long after she was gone. The sky was pale and clear. She looked up. The moon hung low in the morning light, a white sliver fading against the blue. Seven days until it was full.

She walked back to the garden. The basil stood green and reaching. The rosemary spread along the wall. The thyme crept low across the soil. And in the center, beside her grandmother's herbs, she had planted something new. A single moonbloom bulb, taken from the border before Kael's wolves removed the rest. She did not know if it would grow in her soil. She did not know what it would mean if it did.

She knelt and pressed her palm to the earth.

"Seven days," she said. "Let's see what I can grow."