Interstellar Beastworld: Raising A Cub With My Mummy System!-Chapter 39: WHO IS LIN YUE?

"Keep me updated by the hour," he said. "If the situation escalates, I will be there. Until then, I am staying with my family."

"Understood. I will handle security at the estate as well. Full rotation at the nursery, no one approaches Lin Yue or the child without your approval."

Uriel nodded. "Good. And Magus, find me their weakness. There is always something they want more than war. I just need to know what it is."

The call ended.

Uriel stood alone in his study, the afternoon light fading toward evening. Somewhere in this house, his son was waking up, and the woman who carried his name was learning to be a mother. He could not give them the life he wanted if he was always looking over his shoulder.

He opened his tablet and began to work.

The King’s study in the palace was a room of old stone and older books, shelves rising to the ceiling with volumes that had been collected over centuries.

Alistair Khyrnos sat behind a desk that had belonged to his grandfather, his dark hair only beginning to grey at the temples, his face still carrying the sharp angles of the young man who had taken the throne at seventeen.

At forty-seven, he was young for a king, and he ruled like a man who had never known a day of uncertainty.

Across from him, his wife sat in a chair by the window, a data tablet balanced on her knee, her posture perfect even in repose. Lyanna Khyrnos had been eighteen when she married him, a bride from a minor noble house with a reputation for intelligence that had proven more useful than any alliance. At forty-six, she was still the sharpest mind in the court, and she had never let anyone forget it.

"The hospital records are confirmed." Lyanna said, her voice calm, measured. "They have a son. Auriel Chaohong Khynos-Lin. The mother was granted citizenship on her fourth day here, she gave birth the following day, and she was discharged yesterday morning. They are at his estate now."

Alistair set down his pen. "A human woman."

"A human woman with no documented arrival, no travel history, no connections to anyone in the system. She appeared on Primus eight days ago. Within twenty-four hours she was pregnant. Within five days she had given birth to our grandson."

Lyanna looked up from the tablet. "The timeline is irregular, to say the least."

"You mean impossible."

"I mean it requires more information than we currently possess." She set the tablet aside.

"The child exists. So does the mother. Our son has given them his name and installed them in his estate. Whatever questions we have about how she arrived, the fact remains that she is there and he is committed."

Alistair leaned back in his chair. His son was thirty years old, a man who had made his own way in the military, who had refused to be shaped by the court or his father’s expectations. He had been a difficult child and a more difficult adult, but he had never been careless. Whatever had happened with this woman, it was not an accident.

"The council will want answers," he said. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

"The council will want what they always want." Lyanna’s voice carried an edge of impatience. "They will talk about legitimacy and bloodlines and the propriety of a prince taking a human bride. They will ask questions about the child’s place in succession. They will demand explanations we do not yet have."

"And what do you want?"

Lyanna was quiet for a moment. She was a woman who had spent her life reading people, studying texts, understanding the world through the lens of information. The human woman was a puzzle, and puzzles interested her.

"I want to meet her," she said. "I have read her psychological profile from the hospital intake. The physicians noted she was cooperative, intelligent, and unusually composed for someone who had just given birth after a difficult labor. She named her child with a name that echoes our son’s. She gave him a second name from her own culture. These are not the actions of someone who stumbled into this situation by accident."

"You think she planned this?"

"I think she is more than she appears." Lyanna stood and walked to the window, looking out at the same garden where Uriel had played as a boy. "Your son has always been stubborn, Alistair. He has always resisted being told what to do. If we push against this woman, he will push back harder. You know this."

"So you suggest we do nothing?"

"I suggest we learn." She turned back to face him. "I will go to the estate. I will meet her, I will see the child, and I will decide what kind of woman has earned our son’s loyalty. You can stay here and manage the council’s concerns until I return."

Alistair studied his wife for a long moment. She was not asking permission. She was informing him of her decision. After thirty years of marriage, he had learned to recognize when to argue and when to let her work.

"Do not frighten her," he said.

Lyanna almost smiled. "I never frighten anyone. I simply make them think."

She left the study.

Alistair sat alone, staring at the data tablet she had left behind. The file on Lin Yue was thin, barely a few pages of observations and medical records.

A woman with no history, no family, no past.

A woman who had appeared from nowhere and given his son a child.

He picked up the tablet and read through it again, looking for something he had missed.

There was nothing.

The woman was a ghost, and ghosts made him uneasy.

He set the tablet down and made a note to have his intelligence service dig deeper. If there was something to find, he would find it. Until then, he would wait and watch.

His son had made his choice.

Now the rest of them had to live with it.