My Secret "Son", My Royal Love

Saea was never a Valerius by blood. But when the family's true daughter Aurelia committed a crime, it was Saea who took the blame. She spent three years in the Imperial Labor Yard. On the night before her release, a woman she once saved—Mira—locked her in a room with two corpses and called the guards. Saea turned the tables—she dragged the bodies away and placed the blame where it belonged. She walked out alive.

That same night, she found a man hiding in her wardrobe. Purple robes, strong build, eyes like a lost child. He called her "mother." His name was Lucius Dracus—Rome's youngest and most feared general. By day, he was cold-blooded and commanding. By night, he had no memory of his daytime self. He only remembered her, and he could track her by scent. He gave her an ancient bracelet that wouldn't come off. She tried to run. His war chariot passed right by her and kept going.

But the Valerius family hadn't finished with her. They dragged her back—not out of care, but because they needed a bride to offer the notorious madman Cassian Serenus. Their precious Aurelia was already engaged, so Saea would do. Her eldest adoptive brother Marcus shoved her head into a pond while her former betrothed Severus stood on the bank and watched. At dinner, when the family kept pushing, she grabbed a broken pottery shard and pressed it to her throat. "If I die now," she said, "what will you hand over to the Serenus family?" They backed down. That night, she and her maid Leah waited in the dark. When Marcus crept in with a club, they threw a sack over his head and beat him until they could toss his bruised body out the window.

Her days grew stranger. In a clinic, she ran into Lucius in his daytime state. He leaned close, caught her scent—and she slapped him across the face. His lieutenant drew a sword. Lucius said nothing, stood down, and began investigating her. The emperor himself noticed the handprint on his brother's cheek and the change in his temper.

A man like Cassian would not accept refusal for long. But a man like Lucius—split in two, especially split in two—had already started watching her. The general who commanded armies by day and forgot everything by night was beginning to understand what the Valerius family had done. And he was ready to help her tear them down.