"Dalvin." He raised an eyebrow, a hint of the dry humor I remembered from our teenage years. "I'm fine. Eat your pancakes."
I ate my pancakes. Finished the eggs and most of the bacon and half the fruit. Drank two glasses of orange juice and a cup of coffee so good it nearly made me cry. When I finally pushed back from the table, my stomach was pleasantly full for the first time in longer than I could remember.
The silence between us was warm rather than heavy. He was giving me time. Space. Room to process everything that had happened.
But there was a question burning in my chest, and I couldn't hold it back any longer.
"How did you know?" I asked. "About him. About Eli."
Min-ho set down his coffee cup. His expression shifted, becoming careful, measured, the face of a man choosing his words with precision.
"I told you I tracked Vernon for years. Collected every scrap of information I could find. About three years ago, the rumors started circulating in certain circles. The senator's omega had given birth. A son. But the child was never seen in public, never mentioned in interviews, never acknowledged in any official capacity."
My hands trembled in my lap. "Vernon was ashamed of him. Said an alpha son would have been acceptable, but an omega child was worthless."
Min-ho's expression hardened. A flash of rage so intense my vision sharpened. He controlled it quickly, tamped it down, but I'd felt the truth of it. The fury he carried on behalf of a child he'd never met.
"I tried to find out more," he continued. "Hired an investigator to look into it. But the trail went cold. Vernon kept the child's existence buried deep. No birth certificate I could access, no medical records, no photographs. Just whispers and rumors and dead ends."
"So you stopped looking."
"No." He met my eyes, and I saw the truth there, raw and unguarded. "I stopped looking for him specifically. Because I realized that if I could find him, so could Vernon if you ever ran. I didn't want to be the reason your escape route got compromised."
The words hit me with physical force. I sat back in my chair, struggling to breathe, struggling to process what he was telling me.
Min-ho had known about Eli for three years. Had known I had a child, had known I was protecting him, had deliberately chosen not to dig deeper. Not because he didn't care, but because he cared too much. Because protecting Eli's hiding place was more important than satisfying his own curiosity.
"You could have used that information," I whispered. "Could have leveraged it somehow. Found me through him."
"I know."
"But you didn't."
"I would never." His voice was quiet but absolute. "Whatever happened between us, whatever choices you made, Eli's safety was never something I would compromise. He's yourson. Protecting him meant protecting the most important part of you."
The tears came without warning.
They spilled down my cheeks in hot streams, blurring my vision, choking off my breath. All the walls I'd built, all the careful control I'd maintained for years, crumbled to dust in the face of this simple truth. Min-ho had known. Had cared. Had made choices based not on what would benefit him, but on what would keep my child safe.
No one had ever done that for me before. No one had ever put Eli's wellbeing above their own desires. Not my father, who had sold me to Vernon without a second thought. Not Vernon, who had seen his own son as a disappointment to be hidden away. Only Rosa, and now Min-ho.
I was sobbing openly now, ugly heaving sounds that came from somewhere deep in my chest. The grief and relief and overwhelming gratitude tangled together until I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
Min-ho crossed the space between us in two strides. His arms came around me and he pulled me against his chest, lifting me from the chair, carrying me to the bed where he could hold me properly. I clung to him with desperate strength, my fingers digging into his sweater, my face buried against his neck.
"I've got you," he murmured against my hair. "I've got you. Let it out. You're safe now."
I cried for a long time. Cried for the years I'd lost to Vernon's cruelty. Cried for the year I'd spent running, terrified, alone. Cried for the fourteen-year-old boy who had almost kissed his step-brother in a moonlit hallway and had his whole life destroyed because of it.
Min-ho held me through all of it. His hand stroked my back in slow, soothing circles. His lips pressed against mytemple, my forehead, my hair. I could feel his love like a physical thing. It was steady and patient and asked nothing in return.
When the tears finally slowed, when I'd cried myself dry and lay limp and exhausted in his arms, he shifted us so we were lying side by side on the bed. His hand found mine and laced our fingers together, anchoring me to him, to the present, to the reality of what we'd built in the forest.
"Tell me about him," Min-ho said softly. "Tell me about Eli."
And so I did.
I told him about the pregnancy I'd hidden as long as possible, wearing loose clothes and avoiding Vernon's scrutiny until my body betrayed me. I told him about the terror and the desperate hope when I'd realized I was carrying a child, the moment when the pregnancy test turned positive and I understood that everything had changed. I told him about Vernon's reaction, the cold satisfaction of a man who saw a baby as a political asset rather than a person.
