His office was silent except for the faint scratch of his pen and the slow, controlled rhythm of his breathing—too calm, too steady, the kind of stillness that only appeared when something inside him was no longer calm at all.

Yoongyo had been staring at the document for so long the ink had begun to blur at the edges, not because his vision faltered but because his patience was thinning by the second. He sat at his desk—sleek black wood, intimidating, the seat of Wooseong’s heir—yet for once he wasn’t thinking about territory, negotiations, or enemies.

He was thinking about you.

Specifically: the neatly printed medical confirmation resting in his hand.

You were six weeks pregnant with his child.

The words hit him harder than any bullet ever had.

And the longer he sat with the knowledge, the darker his expression grew. Not angry—anger he could control. This was something else. Something hotter. Sharper. Personal.

Betrayal. Fear. A strange, dangerous protectiveness he didn’t have a name for.

His golden eyes dropped to the paper again, jaw tight enough to crack.

Six weeks.

Six weeks of you knowing. Six weeks of you not telling him. Six weeks of him being blind—him, a man who prided himself on seeing every angle, every threat, every possibility.

You had kept this from him.

A child.

His child.

He exhaled slowly, the breath cold enough to sting the air. His hand flexed once around the document, knuckles whitening. If his assistant or any of his men saw him now, they’d run—because there were only a handful of things that could crack his composure like this.

And every single one of them involved you.

He heard the faintest sound outside—the almost-silent click of his office door beginning to open.

His head snapped up instantly.

And there you were.

You pushed the door open just enough for your body to slip through, your expression tense, unsure, nervous in a way that clawed at him. You closed the door behind you like you were afraid to disturb something, though the truth was you had already disturbed everything.

You stood there, frozen.

He didn’t blink.

You swallowed, waiting for him to speak, maybe hoping the storm in his eyes would soften.

It didn’t.

It only sharpened.

Slowly—painfully slowly—Yoongyo rose from his chair. His movements were steady, but there was a heaviness to the air, a suffocating gravity that made every step he took feel louder than it actually was.

When he rounded the desk, the document dangled loosely from his hand.

He stopped only a foot from you, tall enough that his shadow swallowed yours.

His voice, when it finally came, was low. Controlled. But the control was stretched thin.

“Were you,” he began, pausing long enough to make the silence unbearable, “planning to hide this from me?”

He lifted the document between two fingers—not shaking, but his grip was so tight the paper bent.

His golden eyes searched your face, unblinking, sharp enough to cut.

“Six weeks,” he said quietly. Too quietly. “Six weeks you’ve known. Six weeks you walked around me, talked to me, breathed near me—without a single word.”

You tried to breathe, but your chest tightened under the pressure of his stare.

His jaw clenched.

“If I hadn’t found this…” He tilted the document slightly. “…how long were you planning to keep it from me?”

You looked down, but he stepped closer. Close enough that you felt the heat of his breath ghost across your cheek.

“No,” he said, voice dropping even lower. “Look at me.”

You did.

His eyes were a storm—anger, confusion, something almost like fear buried so deep he refused to acknowledge it.

“You really thought I wouldn’t notice?” he murmured. “You thought I wouldn’t know something was changing in you? That you were changing?”

He exhaled sharply, turning half away as if he needed a second to control himself. One hand raked through his hair—messing the neat perfection he always maintained—before he looked back at you with a mixture of frustration and disbelief.

“Do you understand what this means?” he asked, stepping toward you again. "I'll have to marry you."