ONE NIGHT STAND WITH HOT DUKE-Chapter 137: Like father like son

Marquess Kosler narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

The eldest elder laced his fingers together and spoke in a tone that made the temperature in the room seem to drop.

"This is the same as awakening the curse that lies within him."

Ivanka froze. "A curse?" she echoed.

"The Morvex blood," the elder said quietly. "Since the first generation, they have been bound by one truth, a bond formed in a certain way can never be undone without destruction."

He paused, ensuring every word sank in.

"His father once tried to defy it. We all know how that ended."

The name haunted the room once more.

Ivanka swallowed. "So... if that happens—"

"Then his instincts will rise," another elder cut in. "Not as a duke. Not as a lord of the land. But as a Morvex."

Marquess Kosler let out a heavy breath. "And after that?"

"After that," the eldest elder answered, "Demian may hate you. He may reject you in his heart. But his body and his blood will not."

The sentence made Ivanka close her eyes for a moment. Part of her wanted to scream, to run, to say no. But another part harder, more wounded refused to lose.

"So this isn’t about love," she said softly. "It’s about shackles."

"Love has never been a tool we could rely on," the elder replied coldly. "Tradition is."

Ivanka opened her eyes again. There was no hesitation left only resolve, built upon the ruins of her pride.

"Very well," she said firmly. "If you want me to be the key that awakens that curse... then make sure of one thing."

All eyes turned to her.

"Make sure," she continued, "that there is no path left for him to return to that woman afterward."

Demian arrived just as night once again spread its heavy silence over the wings of the castle. His steps halted at the threshold of the chamber a room that now felt different, quieter, more fragile.

Valerie was still asleep.

He stood beside the bed, looking down at the woman whose breathing was steady yet weak. Her face was pale, her lashes trembling faintly, as if even her dreams were too heavy to bear. Demian slowly lifted his hand, hesitated for a moment in the air, then let it fall to the sheets near Valerie’s wrist as though he feared that a direct touch might wake her from that fragile sleep.

He knew.

Inside her body, a seed of his own was growing.

The realization pressed against his chest in a way he had never felt before. Not fear. Not pride. But something closer to an attachment he could not explain with the words he normally used to face the world.

At last, Demian sat in the chair beside the bed. He rested his elbows on his knees, lowered his head, and for the first time that night allowed his thoughts to wander without restraint.

In truth, he did not fully understand why he had been drawn to Valerie that night.

There had been no calculation. No plan. No political motive, no need to test anyone. He remembered only one thing with absolute clarity, the way she had looked at him without demands. Without false hopes. Without the belief that she was entitled to him.

And that somehow had pierced through every boundary.

Demian had been raised under rules that were never written, yet always binding, a Morvex was not meant to desire any woman other than his destined partner. Attraction was a trial. Closeness was temptation. And women, until now, had been merely instruments a way to measure how strong the bond assigned to him and Ivanka truly was.

For years, he had treated it all exactly like that.

A measurement.

A proof.

But with Valerie... all of it collapsed without a sound.

The bond he had long considered sacred, heavy, and unshakeable suddenly meant nothing at all. Not because he hated it. Not because he had deliberately defied it. But because, in the presence of the woman now lying so weak before him, that bond had never once demanded to be considered.

Demian’s gaze drifted to Valerie’s stomach, still flat, betraying almost nothing yet for him, it was enough to change everything.

"I wasn’t looking for you," he whispered softly, as if Valerie could hear him. "I never intended to find this either."

His hand moved, finally closing around Valerie’s fingers. Warm. Real. And this time, Valerie did not pull away not because she was conscious, but because she trusted sleep itself.

For the first time, Demian felt something he could not control, could not measure, and could not turn into a tool.

Not a bond.

Not an obligation.

But a choice that had come into being without being asked for.

And there, seated beside the bed of a woman who was utterly unaware of the storm surrounding her, Demian finally understood the most dangerous truth of all, It was not the curse of Morvex blood that had made him cross the line but the fact that, with Valerie, he had never felt as though he were crossing it at all.

The memory of the meeting earlier slipped back into his mind without permission.

The elders’ words cold, calculated, deliberate echoed again, especially the cruelest insinuation of all, his father.

Demian let out a long, slow breath, as though the air in his chest had grown too heavy to hold. His hand was still wrapped around Valerie’s fingers, yet his thoughts were dragged into a past he had kept tightly sealed for years.

His father had done the same thing once.

Abandoned the bond.Abandoned his lawful partner.Abandoned everything for a woman who like Valerie had managed to cross a boundary that should have been impenetrable.

His father’s bond with Demian’s mother had not collapsed because of crude betrayal, but because of something far more lethal to the Morvex order: a choice of the heart.

His mother had never truly recovered after that.

She did not die in a single night. Not in some great tragedy fit to become legend. She died slowly of stolen honor, of a position quietly stripped away, of a loneliness no one ever acknowledged. And his father... his father followed later. Crushed by politics, by exile, by a world determined to make him pay dearly for his choice.

Two deaths.One choice.

Demian lowered his head, his thumb brushing unconsciously over the back of Valerie’s hand.

"So this is what you meant," he murmured softly, almost as if speaking to himself. "This is the price."