The Dragon King's Substitute Bride

Chapter 110

CHIIO

Tsuneo

I couldn't believe it. My own father, the king of the Dragon Empire, a king of the Celestial Realm, had been hiding.

Hiding from what?

"Why?" I asked, my voice filled with a mixture of confusion and anger.

My father took a deep breath, his eyes filled with a mixture of sadness and resignation.

"I... Shame, honestly."

"What?"

He didn't answer at first, as if he hadn't heard me. But then, slowly, he glanced at me, his eyes distant, unfocused. There was a sadness there, one that I hadn't seen before. It was unsettling.

I studied his face for a moment, the lines deeper than I remembered. His eyes, once so sharp and

calculating, seemed guilty.

He looked away, his gaze drifting back to the Pool. For a long moment, he said nothing, just staring into the water as if searching for answers. Finally, he spoke, his voice heavy with. something I hadn't expected-guilt.. "I dreamed of your mother."

The words hit me like a stone to the chest. It was as if I already knew what he was going to say. My mother was his phoenix, his equal in every sense. Her presence still lingered in this palace, in every room, in every corner of our lives, but I'd known when I first woke up and found out that she was considered dead that the only thing holding him on this plane was duty.

Duty did not make the heartbeat.

It was a line from a poem that he read to me often as a child. It was a poem about grief, written by an ancestor who

himself A Husband Without

Was it you?

not a poem, it was simply a journal entry. The last one I made before I left to

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do you mean?" I asked, my voice colder than I intended. "You

no time had passed. We were... together again. I could feel her, hear her voice. For a moment, I thought I was dead. I thought I had finally gone to her." I clenched my fists, the anger rising in me without warning. And you

could see

all the

above a whisper. "I wanted to stay with her. It felt... peaceful. I had

disbelief and fear swirling in my

to fight for what was ours. And yet

to stay if given the

woke up. It had felt the way you would imagine death... We were back in that meadow we met as if we had all the time in the

with no knowledge of how long I had been down there,

asked, approaching him. "Guilt for

I've made you my heir though you are the youngest... Of all my wrongdoings and misteps... it was the knowledge of what would have happened

head. "I had never felt so inadequate as a father until

shook his head. "I have always taught you to face your failures, your mistakes, to try and

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drift into my next life... The shame for wanting to abandon you. Shame for wanting

"Yet, you are here."

to be,"

You could have ended

and turned slowly toward me. My eyes

I knew the moment I woke up and knew that mother was gone that... that you thought of it, that you had a million plans